Director denies telling Geoffrey Rush he was being ‘creepy’ to actor
THE director of King Lear told a court today he did not tell Geoffrey Rush that his actions towards his female co-star were becoming “creepy” and “unclear”.
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THE director of King Lear told a court today he did not tell Geoffrey Rush that his actions towards his female co-star were becoming “creepy” and “unclear”.
Director Neil Armfield was giving evidence in Mr Rush’s defamation trial against The Daily Telegraph after it reported in 2017 an actor in the 2015-16 production of King Lear had lodged a complaint with the Sydney Theatre Company over his “inappropriate behaviour”.
The actor was later named as Eryn Jean Norvill, who played Mr Rush’s daughter Cordelia in the STC production.
In a pre-trial hearing, the court was told that Ms Norvill would give evidence that she was the target of sexual harassment during the King Lear season including an incident during a preview in which Mr Rush ran his hand “down her torso and traced across her right breast”.
The newspaper’s barrister Tom Blackburn, SC, today asked Mr Armfield if Mr Rush had on one occasion “traced down the right side of her torso directly across the ride side of her breast.”
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Mr Armfield said: “I have no memory of that as an action.”
Mr Blackburn said: “You were concerned weren’t you that there was something developing in the way Mr Rush made contact with Ms Norvill when she was lying in that final scene … and the motions he was using with his hands were becoming unclear in some way? And indeed creepy.”
Mr Armfield said: “Not at all.” And he said he had no memory of giving Mr Rush a direction about it.
The director also told The Federal Court today: “To ask someone to pick up someone’s torso and hold it against his head as I asked … I suspect it would be impossible to do without his hand touching her breast. I never saw any gratuitous action for his manipulation of her body for that scene.”
Also giving evidence by video link from London, UK, was actor Trevor Smith who said he was “besties” with Mr Rush.
After the allegations were published last year Mr Smith spent time with The Pirates of the Caribbean star in London, having dinners, brunch and trips to art galleries.
He said: “We talked him into coming to Adelaide. He said I don’t want to go out in Adelaide, I think people might spit on me … but people just loved him as though there was not anything written at all.”
The Oscar winner denies any wrongdoing and claims two front page articles in the newspaper about the alleged incident painted him as a “pervert” and “sexual predator”.
The newspaper argues the stories published on November 30 and December 1 last year draw on allegations made by Ms Norvill and are true.
The hearing continues.