Disgraced Hollywood bigwig Harvey Weinstein shamelessly argued he’s the real victim in a new jailhouse interview — not the dozens of women who accused him of sexual assault.
The 73-year-old convicted sex offender boldly claimed that his accusers “wanted to be victims” in the Rikers Island sit-down with The Hollywood Reporter that quickly spiraled into a self-pity fest — from everything about the conditions at the notorious Manhattan jail to the so-called witch hunt against him.
“If the camera’s on, I’m just going to say Rose McGowan, Rosanna Arquette, Gwyneth Paltrow, Angelina Jolie — they just exaggerated,” Weinstein claimed in the January interview that was published Tuesday.
“They wanted to be victims. They wanted to be part of the club. And they destroyed me,” Weinstein claimed about the major stars who have all come forward with accusations against him.
The sleezy inmate admitted to making passes at women and being “pushy or overly seductive,” but gave the same tired victim-blaming excuse that they should have known what was coming.
He claimed they weren’t as “naive as they liked to pretend.”
“I will say, though, when a guy invites you to his hotel room in the middle of the night, you know what’s on the agenda,” he said.
The once powerful producer would often force women seeking acting roles to meet him at his hotel rather than his office, according to multiple accusers.
When THR interviewer Maer Roshan pushed back on his assumption, Weinstein alleged that some of the women who accused him were acting more innocent than they were.
“Are you saying that everyone who went to meet with you knew they’d end up being groped and chased around the room?” Roshan asked.
“Not at all. I had lots of people come see me,” Weinstein said. “But there were some women who knew exactly what was expected. Maybe they felt bad later or they regretted it. Maybe they saw an opportunity for a payout. But not all of them were as naive as they liked to pretend.”
The Oscar-winner has repeatedly denied that he ever assaulted anyone. He was convicted last June of forcing oral sex on one woman and acquitted of forcibly performing oral sex on another woman, while the jury remained hung on the rape charge.
He is currently being held at Rikers while awaiting retrial for the third time on charges of raping an aspiring actress inside a Midtown hotel in 2013.
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