actress Rose McGowan accused Ben Affleck of lying on Tuesday about his knowledge of Mr. Weinstein’s alleged sexual harassment and assaults of women.
.. Ms. McGowan, in a tweet and a subsequent email exchange with The New York Times on Tuesday night, said she had told Mr. Affleck that Mr. Weinstein had behaved inappropriately with her.
.. Mr. Affleck has not responded to Ms. McGowan’s tweet. He did not respond to requests for further comment.
The Times emailed Ms. McGowan to confirm that she was asserting that Mr. Affleck knew about Mr. Weinstein’s mistreatment of her because she had told him, and that she was accusing Mr. Affleck of lying because his statement did not acknowledge awareness of Mr. Weinstein’s behavior.
“I am saying exactly that,” she replied to The Times. She wrote nothing further.
.. Mr. Affleck, in his statement posted to Twitter Tuesday, wrote that he was “saddened and angry” and that new reports of more serious assaults — which include accounts of forced oral sex — “made me sick.”
.. While several prominent actresses spoke out on Monday against Mr. Weinstein, Mr. Affleck was one of a small cadre of prominent male figures in Hollywood with ties to Mr. Weinstein who criticized him on Tuesday after the new reports in The Times and The New Yorker.
Matt Damon, Mr. Affleck’s longtime friend and film collaborator, said in an interview with Deadline on Tuesday that he “never saw” Mr. Weinstein harass or abuse women and that he would have put an end to it if he had.
.. Several directors with close ties to Mr. Weinstein, such as Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez, have not responded to requests asking them to comment about what it was like to work with him.
.. Mr. Affleck later dated Ms. Paltrow, though it is not known whether she relayed news of the incident to him.
.. George Clooney has also weighed in on the controversy, telling The Daily Beast in an interview that was published Monday night that while he was aware of rumors that young actresses had slept with Mr. Weinstein to get roles, he had been unaware of any misconduct or the settlements Mr. Weinstein had reached with women.