David Arquette once got in 'shady' Harvey Weinstein's face
Actor David Arquette considered Harvey Weinstein “shady” years before the mogul faced dozens of sexual misconduct accusations from actresses including Arquette’s former Scream co-star Rose McGowan and his sister, Rosanna Arquette.
During a Facebook Live interview with Yahoo Entertainment on Friday, Arquette explained that he became annoyed with Weinstein at a movie screening hosted by Arquette’s Hollywood club, Bootsy Bellows. Weinstein had produced the Scream movies, but Arquette felt like he was being blown off.
“I got all in his face one time because he didn’t know who I was,” Arquette says. “He’s at my club, they’re screening Black Swan, and I just got pissed off. I was going through this sort of crazy time … because I kind of knew that he was shady.”
Eventually, Arquette threw out that question that often gets celebs into trouble: “Do you know who I am?”
“My partner was like, ‘David, what are you doing? What are you doing?’” explains Arquette, who split from wife Courteney Cox two months before the Natalie Portman movie was released. “So then I went down to the party, just started dancing, and I fell in the pool.”
Arquette noted that he was better acquainted with Bob Weinstein, Harvey’s brother and fellow film exec, and had no issues with him. Harvey was another story.
“We mainly worked with Bob [on the Scream movies], and I love Bob,” Arquette said. “I didn’t see any of that [sexual misconduct] stuff, but I knew some stuff about Harvey. I had a little chip on my shoulder about him.”
Arquette’s sister Rosanna told the New Yorker back in October 2017 that she was sexually assaulted by Weinstein in the ’90s. When she was called to a meeting with him in his hotel room, she said, he answered the door in only a bathrobe and pulled her hand toward his erect penis. She said that she told him she would “never do that.” After that, “he made things very difficult for me for years,” she told the magazine. (Throughout the months of sexual misconduct claims against him, Weinstein has denied any nonconsensual sex.)
McGowan, who has been particularly outspoken about her experience with Weinstein, is still someone with whom David Arquette keeps in touch.
“Yeah, we’re still friends. We saw each other at a horror convention relatively recently,” he said. “She’s great. She’s really strong. My sister also — Rosanna — was a big part of that [movement] and standing up. … And, you know, it’s a heavy situation. I’m glad all that stuff’s coming out. I’m glad people are talking about it. You know … it’s even hard to talk about because you can get in so much trouble. You don’t mean to.”
Arquette also said there have been “blurred lines of moral ambiguity for a long time.” He recalled being grabbed in his crotch area at clubs “a lot” by strangers.
“I’m glad it’s all coming to light,” Arquette says. “I’m glad people are talking about it. I’m glad the rules are becoming a lot clearer.”
He had one reservation, though: former Saturday Night Live star-turned-politician Al Franken’s resignation from the United States Senate in December, after eight women accused him of sexual misconduct.
“There’s still, like, a level of … we have to figure out where the line is,” he says. “Just personally, I think the Al Franken thing was … I just thought it was a little extreme to completely kick him out of the Senate. I think a little too harsh, personally, on that specific thing.”
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