Actress and former Boardwalk Empire star Paz De La Huerta has now joined the chorus of more than 60 women who have accused producer Harvey Weinstein of sexual harassment, abuse, or assault in recent weeks. De La Huerta told her story in a Vanity Fair piece that ran today, alleging that Weinstein sexually assaulted her twice in the span of a month late in 2010.
De La Huerta offers a now-familiar story of Weinstein’s alleged actions: a meeting at a hotel, an offer of a ride home, an escalation of aggression, leading to rape, once the two of them were alone. “Immediately when we got inside the house, he started to kiss me and I kind of brushed [him] away,” De La Huerta said. “Then he pushed me onto the bed and his pants were down and he lifted up my skirt. I felt afraid. It wasn’t consensual. It happened very quickly. He stuck himself inside me. When he was done he said he’d be calling me. I kind of just laid on the bed in shock.”
According to De La Huerta—who also provided VF with a letter from her therapist, the only person she told about the incidents at the time, corroborating her account—Weinstein repeated the act a few weeks later, appearing in her building lobby when she was on her way home from a photo shoot. “He hushed me and said, ‘Let’s talk about this in your apartment. I was in no state. I was so terrified of him. I did say no, and when he was on top of me I said, ‘I don’t want to do this.’ He kept humping me and it was disgusting. He’s like a pig. He raped me.”
De La Huerta says the fallout from Weinstein’s alleged attacks was a major factor in the collapse of her career the following year; she began drinking heavily, and was removed from the cast of Boardwalk Empire after its second season. “I was very traumatized,” she said during the interview yesterday. “I don’t think I was taking very good care of myself. What happened with Harvey left me scarred for many years. I felt so disgusted by it, with myself. I became a little self-destructive. It was really hard for me to deal, to cope.”
There is a possible silver lining to De La Huerta’s story, though; because the alleged assaults took place in 2010, they’re well within New York’s statute of limitations for rape in the first degree. The state’s attorney general is reportedly examining De La Huerta’s claims, as part of a wider investigation into possible criminal charges against Weinstein at some future date.