A Norwegian model and actress testified Wednesday that Harvey Weinstein raped her after the 2008 British Film and Television Academy Awards and just months later “tricked” her into coming to a New York hotel room before forcing her to she gave a three.
The model, identified in court as Natassia M., told jurors in Los Angeles Superior Court that although she had met Weinstein several times, she was shocked in 2008 to find the producer banging on her London hotel room. Worried that her publicist lingering in the hallway would overhear, she quickly opened the door and said Weinstein “just burst in” before making the ominous statement.
“He said, ‘Nobody’s going to be an A-lister unless it goes through me,'” Natassia M. said Wednesday. “I was just so afraid of the guy, he had so much power… he epitomized the movie business.
As Natassia M. described how she “had to go through everything” to make it in Hollywood, Weinstein said he removed his pants and pushed her onto the bed before raping her. She said the rape didn’t last long because she “played dead” and Weinstein “ejaculated in her hand” and left immediately.
Too scared to go to the police, she said she tried to figure out how to get over the attack, even reaching out to Weinstein in April 2008 to put down a recording of her voice for an audition. While she wanted to drop it off at Weinstein’s office, she said, the producer replied that she should drop off the CD to his assistant at the Peninsula Hotel — and she came up with the idea of a trio.
“I’m not the type of person to do threes, I’m just not that into it. I said I didn’t want any tissues. I told him,” Natassia M. testified.
But when she went to a hotel in New York, she said an assistant escorted her to a hotel room, where she immediately saw Weinstein and another woman in the room. Tearfully on the stand, Natassia M. described how she was “furious” when she saw the other woman, saying they were both “trying to get me to have a threesome with him.”
“He’s got you under his belt because he knows if you don’t comply… your career is ruined because you know you’ve been working on this thing for months…” And that’s not right,” she added. She explained that she was trying to “manage the situation” because she wanted the film part.
Natassia M. added that during the incident, another woman in the room told her “she’s so shy” before laughing along with Weinstein – and giving him a “smoke”. During cross-examination, the model said she wore the gown because she felt obligated to participate and watch Weinstein have sex with another woman.
The harsh reality of Weinstein’s enormous power in Hollywood is at the heart of the prosecution’s case against the 70-year-old man in Los Angeles. In his second sex crimes trial — he is already a convicted rapist — Weinstein pleaded not guilty to seven charges after prosecutors alleged he assaulted four women between 2003 and 2014.
Weinstein was previously convicted of similar crimes in a New York trial in 2020.
While Natassia M.’s allegations against Weinstein are not part of the criminal case against him, she is among several supporting witnesses to help the prosecution prove that he is a serial predator. Like several women who testified before her, Natassia M. spent much of Wednesday morning describing to jurors how Weinstein assaulted her — and how she felt she had no choice but to remain silent and forget the abuse to save her own career .
She described how after the rape in February 2008 – in which she said she just looked under the covers and was “frozen” – she didn’t even think about going to the police and instead told her boyfriend, director David Nutter.
“Because when you’re an actress and you’re troubled, you don’t work. If you’re difficult, the buzz in Hollywood is that this person is difficult,” she noted. The model also noted that she weighed 98 pounds at the time of the assault, and Weinstein “reminded [her] from a boar.”
During cross-examination, Weinstein’s lawyer Mark Werksman grilled Natassia M. about the details of the 2008 rape, asking her if she said out loud that she “didn’t want to have sex that night.”
“You didn’t say no, you didn’t even get out of my bed, you said I’m not doing the casting couch thing,” Werksman added, prompting Natassia M. to agree.
“I didn’t fight him, I didn’t punch him, I didn’t kick him off me, things that I thought later in my head I should have done,” she later added.
Defense attorneys also grilled her on the Peninsula incident, asking why she followed Weinstein’s assistant into the hotel room and whether she was asked to be in the threesome.
“They didn’t ask me… he planned to put me in an uncomfortable position to humiliate me,” Natassia M. said. “It was more like blackmail… he just wants you to comply.”
The model also admitted that she met Weinstein several times over the years and that the producer put her in uncomfortable positions during many of those meetings. In one encounter, she said Weinstein tried to force her boyfriend to have oral sex with him, prompting Natassia M. to stand up for her boyfriend and take the brunt of his attack.
She said Weinstein moved her to another room where he masturbated while touching her. The meeting, she said, was “humiliating and humiliating.“
Years after the attack, Natassia M. said, she saw Weinstein at an Oscars party at Soho House — which also included Nicole Kidman and Lady Gaga. She said Weinstein pulled her aside and asked her why she “didn’t go public” about their past encounters.
In response, she told Weinstein that she would never do that and was “playing with the most powerful guy in Hollywood.”
Weinstein, she said, simply replied, “It pays to be my friend.”
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