‘I will kill you’: Salma Hayek’s horrifying alleged encounter with Harvey Weinstein

EMBATTLED bigwig Harvey Weinstein has responded to Salma Hayek’s claim that she was forced into a lesbian sex scene.

HARVEY Weinstein has come out swinging against Salma Hayek, disputing her claims that he once threatened to kill her after she turned down his advances.

In an opinion piece for The New York Times, Hayek, 51, revealed she was urged by friends — including Ashley Judd — to open up about her experiences with the Miramax mogul, but didn’t because she thought she had “brainwashed” herself “into thinking that it was over” and that she “survived”.

Weinstein broke his public silence after the piece was published today, issuing a statement arguing that he was a vocal supporter of Hayek’s career and that “all of the sexual allegations as portrayed by Salma are not accurate and others who witnessed the events have a different account of what transpired.”

2. Harvey Weinstein responds to Salma Hayek's powerful op-ed in the New York Times. pic.twitter.com/sJNgABQYvl

— Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yashar) December 14, 2017

In her NY Times piece, Hayek details working on Miramax’s Frida, for which she earned an Oscar nomination, and learning her good friend Weinstein, 65, wasn’t the person she thought he was.

“I was so excited to work with him and that company. In my naïveté, I thought my dream had come true. He had validated the last 14 years of my life. He had taken a chance on me — a nobody. He had said yes,” Hayek wrote. “Little did I know it would become my turn to say no.

“No to opening the door to him at all hours of the night, hotel after hotel, location after location, where he would show up unexpectedly,” she wrote, “including one location where I was doing a movie he wasn’t even involved with. No to me taking a shower with him. No to letting him watch me take a shower. No to letting him give me a massage. No to letting a naked friend of his give me a massage. No to letting him give me oral sex. No to my getting naked with another woman.”

Hayek quickly learned Weinstein didn’t take “no” for an answer. Hayek claimed Weinstein dragged her “out of the opening gala of the Venice Film Festival, which was in honour of Frida,” so that she could attend a private party with him and some models, who she later learned were “high-priced prostitutes”.

She also claimed he threatened her. “I will kill you, don’t think I can’t,” she recalled Weinstein saying.

“Knowing what I know now, I wonder if it wasn’t my friendship with them — and Quentin Tarantino and George Clooney — that saved me from being raped,” Hayek wrote.

Out of alleged revenge, Weinstein forced her to have the Frida script completely rewritten, the movie recast and more. Hayek got everything done, which only further angered the disgraced movie producer and caused him to constantly “berate” Hayek’s skills.

She also claimed he forced her to add a lesbian sex scene to the script, in a bid to see “his fantasy” played out.

“I arrived on the set the day we were to shoot the scene that I believed would save the movie. And for the first and last time in my career, I had a nervous breakdown: My body began to shake uncontrollably, my breath was short and I began to cry and cry, unable to stop, as if I were throwing up tears,” Hayek said.

My mind understood that I had to do it, but my body wouldn’t stop crying and convulsing. At that point, I started throwing up while a set frozen still waited to shoot. I had to take a tranquilizer, which eventually stopped the crying but made the vomiting worse. As you can imagine, this was not sexy, but it was the only way I could get through the scene.”

Salma Hayek and Ashley Judd kiss in Frida.

“It was soul-crushing because, I confess, lost in the fog of a sort of Stockholm syndrome, I wanted him to see me as an artist,” she admitted.

Hayek continued to win her production battles with Weinstein, fighting for theatrical release and ultimately scoring his company two Oscars.

“I still didn’t see any joy,” she wrote. “He never offered me a starring role in a movie again.”

Hayek’s account comes two months after explosive reports in The New York Times and The New Yorker revealed decades of Weinstein’s alleged sexual abuse.

Dozens of women have since come forward to accuse the disgraced producer, sparking an international movement against sexual harassment and assault by men in power - a reckoning that’s now also claimed the careers of Kevin Spacey, Brett Ratner and Louis C.K.

This story appeared in the New York Post and is republished here with permission.

Originally published as ‘I will kill you’: Salma Hayek’s horrifying alleged encounter with Harvey Weinstein