Paris Hilton, an American media figure, recently opened up about her “threatening” encounter with director Harvey Weinstein. In an interview with Vogue UK released on February 23, the 42-year-old celebrity disclosed an awkward encounter with the 70-year-old s*x criminal at the 2000 Cannes Film Festival when she was only 19:
“I was frightened and stressed out.”
Paris Hilton was at the film festival to attend the annual amfAR dinner, which was emceed by Harvey Weinstein that year. She mentioned meeting the director a day before the occasion while having brunch with a friend:
“He approached the table and said, ‘Ah, you want to be an actress?'” ‘Yes, I really want to be in a movie,’ I said. I was an adolescent at the time, so he amazed me. ‘Oh my goodness, Harvey Weinstein is so amazing!’ I exclaimed, and he replied, ‘Well, we should meet. You are welcome to come up to my chamber and peruse screenplays’… and I didn’t want to go, so I didn’t.”
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Harvey Weinstein once accompanied Paris Hilton to the restroom.
In the same conversation, Paris Hilton disclosed that the next evening, Harvey Weinstein reportedly trailed her to the restroom and asked:
“Would you like to be a celebrity?”
She went on to say:
“I went into the restroom, and he followed. He attempted to unlock the door by pounding and bashing on it. And I refused to open it because I was thinking, ‘I’m in a cubicle, why do you want to come in here?’ And I simply refused to open it. And security arrived and actually dragged him away, screaming, ‘This is my celebration,’ and going insane. It terrified and frightened me.”
Before meeting Weinstein at the Cannes Film Festival, Hilton discussed the allegations regarding his sexual behavior, saying that everyone knew what he was like but spoke out against it:
“Yes, and it was just someone so strong in Hollywood who everyone feared. I didn’t want to say anything about it because I didn’t want people to get angry at me for saying anything because it was already known. He was exactly like that, and folks said, ‘OK, just turn a blind eye.'”
Hilton’s talk comes on the same day that Harvey was sentenced to 16 years in prison for three counts of r*pe and sexual assault in Los Angeles. The former film director was already receiving a 23-year sentence in New York after being found guilty of r*pe and s*xual assault during a judicial trial in that state in 2020. He was sentenced to serve both his New York and Los Angeles terms concurrently, which means he will be imprisoned for the remainder of his life.
