I’ve just gotten in to Riverdale and it made me so happy to see Molly Ringwald make an entrance – I had no idea she was in it. With her filmography, Molly was my spirit guide through adolescence, I have a huge spot in my soul for her. Unfortunately, when I see any actress’ name in a headline presently, I cringe, worried that “victim of assault” will follow. Sadly, that was exactly the case when I saw Molly trending yesterday. Molly, in addition to acting and singing, is a writer – a good writer too. She wrote an op-ed for The New Yorker about her experiences both with Harvey Weinstein and with sexual assault/harassment. Her perspective on Harvey is quite interesting because when she met him, she was established and he was the up-and-comer. He didn’t wield the power he’d come to have. She wasn’t surprised to hear the allegations against him and not just because she found him to be a bully but because of her experiences with other industry people that were just as terrible. You can read her whole essay including her thoughts on Weinstein here.

While my own Harvey story may be different, I have had plenty of Harveys of my own over the years, enough to feel a sickening shock of recognition. When I was thirteen, a fifty-year-old crew member told me that he would teach me to dance, and then proceeded to push against me with an erection. When I was fourteen, a married film director stuck his tongue in my mouth on set. At a time when I was trying to figure out what it meant to become a sexually viable young woman, at every turn some older guy tried to help speed up the process. And all this went on despite my having very protective parents who did their best to shield me. I shudder to think of what would have happened had I not had them.

In my twenties, I was blindsided during an audition when I was asked by the director, in a somewhat rhetorical manner, to let the lead actor put a dog collar around my neck. This was not remotely in the pages I had studied; I could not even fathom how it made sense in the story. The actor was a friend of mine, and I looked in his eyes with panic. He looked back at me with an “I’m really sorry” expression on his face as his hands reached out toward my neck. I don’t know if the collar ever made it on me, because that’s the closest I’ve had to an out-of-body experience. I’d like to think that I just walked out, but, more than likely, there’s an old VHS tape, disintegrating in a drawer somewhere, of me trying to remember lines with a dog collar around my neck in front of a young man I once had a crush on. I sobbed in the parking lot and, when I got home and called my agent to tell him what happened, he laughed and said, “Well, I guess that’s one for the memoirs. . . .” I fired him and moved to Paris not long after.

After I moved to Paris, I put my career on the back burner, but I came back to the U.S. occasionally to work. The magazine Movieline decided to feature me on its cover, I guess because anyone who leaves Hollywood after having success seems intriguing on some level. In that article, the head of a major studio—and, incidentally, someone who claims himself to be horrified by the Harvey allegations—was quoted as saying, “I wouldn’t know [Molly Ringwald] if she sat on my face.” I was twenty-four at the time. Maybe he was misquoted. If he ever sent a note of apology, it must have gotten lost in the mail.

I could go on about other instances in which I have felt demeaned or exploited, but I fear it would get very repetitive. Then again, that’s part of the point. I never talked about these things publicly because, as a woman, it has always felt like I may as well have been talking about the weather. Stories like these have never been taken seriously. Women are shamed, told they are uptight, nasty, bitter, can’t take a joke, are too sensitive. And the men? Well, if they’re lucky, they might get elected President.

[From The New Yorker]

To save you all a little time, the man with the grotesque quote from Movieline is Jeffery Katzenberg. The quote first appeared in Esquire a year earlier. He’s denying he said it, claiming it was misattributed to him. He did, however, apologize to Molly that she had to read those words and that she thought it was him. The only problem is, according to this thread from Kyle Buchanan at Vulture, Katzenberg was well aware of the Esquire article and his quotes since he got in trouble at Disney for them.

And Katzenberg must have read that quote when it was first published because the article got him in trouble at work. From the book DisneyWar pic.twitter.com/7PFXghy6ec

— Kyle Buchanan (@kylebuchanan) October 18, 2017

In her conclusion, Molly details her hope that things change, really change. It’s hard to hold any kind of hope during this travesty but that is my hope as well. Her last two lines read, “It’s time. Women have resounded their cri de coeur. Listen.” Please know that we at CB are listening.

Photo credit: WENN Photos and Twitter