Paris Hilton says Harvey Weinstein left her “freaked” by following her into a toilet and banging on the door of her stall while howling: “Ya wanna be a star?”
Paris Hilton says Harvey Weinstein left her ‘freaked’ by following her into a toilet and banging on the door of her stall while howling: ‘Ya wanna be a star?’
The 42-year-old hotel heiress opened up about the incident – which she claimed ended with Weinstein being dragged away by security – in an interview in which she relived being abused at school and attacked by a man who knocked her unconscious with a date rape drug when she was 15.
She told the February issue of Glamour magazine about her terrifying encounter with Weinstein at The Foundation for Aids Research gala during the Cannes Film Festival in 2000, when she was 19: “I was at lunch with my girlfriend and he came up to the table and was like, ‘Oh, you want to be an actress?’
“And I said, ‘Yeah, I really want to be in a movie.’
“I was a teenager, so I was impressed by him. I was like, ‘Oh my god, Harvey Weinstein is so cool!’ and he said, ‘Well, we should have a meeting. You can come up to my room and read scripts’… and I just didn’t want to go, so I never went.”
Paris said about the following day, when Weinstein was hosting the Aids Research gala which she attended: “I went into the bathroom and then he followed me.
“He tried to open the door, he was hammering on the door, banging on it. And I wouldn’t open it, because I was like, ‘I’m in a stall, why do you want to come in here?’
“And I just wouldn’t open it. And security came and literally carried him away and he was like (shouting), ‘This is my party,’ going nuts. It scared me and freaked me out.”
Paris’ Glamour interview was published on Thursday (23.02.23), hours before Weinstein was sentenced to another 16 years in jail for rape and sexual assault in LA – on top of his current 23-year term for a 2020 conviction for raping an aspiring actress and sexually abusing a TV and film production assistant.
When asked if she had heard rumours of his abuse, Paris said: “Yeah, and it was just someone so powerful in Hollywood who everyone was terrified of.
“I didn’t even want to say anything about it because I was like, ‘I don’t want people getting mad at me for saying anything,’ because it was just a known thing.
“He was just like that and people were like, ‘OK, just turn a blind eye.’”
Paris, who this month had her first child with her 42-year-old venture capitalist husband Carter Reum – a boy she has named Phoenix Barron Hilton Reum – also told in the chat how she was picked up by an older man at a mall in LA when she was 15, before he drugged her, leaving her with memories of waking up with him on top of her covering her mouth and telling her: “You’re dreaming.”
She also told how she suffered abuse during her two years in various schools for troubled teens, such as Provo Canyon School in Utah, where she spent 11 months.
Paris said she was force-fed drugs at the institutions, and subjected to late-night gynaecological examinations.
She added: “This was something that I had blocked out from my memory, but after hearing the story from other survivors, I started having flashbacks.
“Late at night, staff members would come in and take certain girls and bring them into this room. And literally you would scream and cry, they would hold you down, four of them, men and women, and literally just be putting fingers… and just doing things on a regular basis to certain girls.”
Read the full interview in the Glamour UK February digital issue, online now.
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