A professional dancer is hired to be a body double “Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights”Harvey Weinstein was questioned by her Friday. She claimed that she did not get to shoot the one scene she went to Puerto Rico for, because she was ordered off the set and whisked away in a limousine.
The witness, also known as “Ashley M.”At trial, she was testifying in Los Angeles for the second day. She was only the second of eight women who will be heard and their stories told. “prior bad acts”Witness, it is not one case for which Weinstein has been charged.
The day before, Ashley M. described how, arriving to the set alone for a dance scene as a body-double for the film’s lead, someone told her that “Harvey’s going to like you.” When the then-Miramax head and film’s producer arrived, he immediately asked her about a “naked massage,”She was finally tracked down. “meeting,”She was told to get in the limo along with a female assistant. He then sexually assaulted her in his hotel room, while she was crying in hysterics.
“I felt really violated. Part of me was still emotional, part of me was really upset,”She said. After going through Weinstein’s ordeal, and missing her one call-time, she said she returned home the next day.
“I was just a wreck and crying and just wanting to go home and talk to my mom. In my head I’m just wanting to get out,”She spoke.
Mark Werksman, Weinstein defense attorney, interrogated her about her first conversation. She asked her what she thought of Weinstein’s suggestion that she meet him for coffee. “naked massage.”
“He made it pretty clear he wanted to have sex with you?”Werksman.
She replied, “I told him I was engaged and said I have to be on set.”
Werksman pressed Ashley M. on why she followed Harvey’s aggressive order to “go to Bonnie” [Bonnie Hung, Weinstein’s assistant]He drove her to the car, even though she was already anxious.
“I just basically did what I thought he wanted to do,” she said, adding that she believed because Bonnie – who had assured her it was only to be a work meeting – was there she would be OK.
Werksman said in his opening statements that Weinstein’s accusers were all out to advance their careers – and he pressed Ashley M. on that matter, too.
“I really had no interest in being an actress,”She spoke. “I spent my life dancing and doing ballet, I was engaged and I wanted to possibly start a family. [My career] was not a focal part of my life.”
Werksman asked her why it was okay to go with Weinstein when her scene was about being shot.
“I assumed he’s in charge and everyone answers to him,”She responded. “I figured he’d arranged something.”
She said Weinstein called her once sometime after the assault – though she says she never gave him or Bonnie Hung her phone number – to offer her a part. “I vaguely remember something about the movie ‘Damn Yankees’,”She replied, saying that she declined the offer, and that she would not work with Weinstein ever again.
Earlier, Deputy District Attorney Marlene Martinez asked Ashley M. about running into Weinstein years later at a pre-Oscars party, which she attended with her then-husband, a well-known director whom Weinstein told Ashley M. he knew – just hours before allegedly pinned her on the hotel room bed, tore off her shirt and fondled her naked breasts while he masturbated. (Ashley M. stated that she called her then-fiancee both before and after the assault when she felt threatened.
Martinez wanted to ask Ashley M. about what they did when Weinstein came. Ashley M. made sharp gestures with her right hand and said, “We quickly ran the other way.”
Once she was excused from the stand, prosecutors called the director Charlie Matthau, Ashley M.’s fiancee at the time, and now ex-husband, though he testified that the two are still friends. Matthau confirmed that they had made numerous phone calls, and claimed she was concerned about Weinstein at the time of the assault. “in shock” afterwards.
Weinstein is facing 11 sexual assault charges stemming from allegations dating back to 2004 and 2013. The trial is expected to last into December after a two-week jury selection process seated a panel last Thursday of nine men and three women. Weinstein could be sentenced to up to 140 years imprisonment if convicted.
He is already serving 23 years in a New York prison for criminal first-degree sexual assault and third-degree rape, a conviction he has been granted the right to appeal. Weinstein has maintained his innocence ever since the New York Times published allegations against him five years ago.
Friday afternoon was the next day of testimony.