This is going to shock you! A guy who has a reputation for being a total creep is reportedly a total creep. I KNOW!! I don’t even remember the first time I heard a story about Jeremy Piven being skeevy, or hitting on barely legal teenage girls, or not keeping his hands to himself. Those stories have been out there for a long time. I remember, years and years ago, when Megan Fox was first becoming really famous, there was a story about Piven being really gross in the way he was hitting on her. If anything, his role on Entourage probably helped him – he could be skeevy and gross in daylight and people were just like “hey, he’s The Piv, from Entourage!” Well, who could have predicted that The Piv would be “outed” in the wake of the Weinstein controversy? I swear, we should make a list.
An actress who appeared on “Entourage” has accused Jeremy Piven of sexual assault. Ariane Bellamar tweeted to Piven on Monday, “‘Member when you cornered me in your trailer on the #Entourage set? ‘Member grabbing my boobies on the [couch] without asking??” She also tweeted, “‘Member when I tried to leave; you grabbed me by the ass, looked at yourself in the mirror, & said what a ‘beautiful couple’ we made?”
The actress later clarified that Piven cornered her and “forcefully fondled my breasts & bum” on two occasions. “Once at the [Playboy] mansion & once on [the ‘Entourage’] set.”
You can read Ariane’s tweets here. She also accuses him of sending her “abusive, explicit texts” and she claims that HBO had some knowledge of his behavior too. At first, Piven didn’t release any statements but once Ariane’s tweets started getting picked up by major outlets, he released this statement:
“I unequivocally deny the appalling allegations being peddled about me. It did not happen. It takes a great deal of courage for victims to come forward with their histories, and my hope is that the allegations about me that didn’t happen, do not detract from stories that should be heard.”
“Being peddled about me” is strange wording, right? She didn’t go to Star Magazine – she told her story on her Twitter page, as many assault and harassment victims have been doing with the #MeToo campaign. “Peddled” implies, in my mind, that we’re supposed to believe Ariane is looking for money or attention, that her motives are in question. That sh-t doesn’t fly anymore, Piv. Especially since HIS motives are being questioned by his current and former employers.
CBS’s statement reads, “We are aware of the media reports and are looking into the matter.” Piven currently stars on the network’s show “Wisdom of the Crowd,” which premiered earlier this month.
HBO also released a statement asserting that the network has a zero tolerance policy for sexual harassment and that they had not heard of any of any misbehavior from Piven towards Bellamar before Bellamar’s Tuesday allegations.
The statement in full reads: “Today, via the press reports, is the first we are hearing about Ariane Bellamar’s allegations concerning Jeremy Piven. Everyone at HBO and our productions is aware that zero tolerance for sexual harassment is our policy. Anyone experiencing an unsafe working environment has several avenues for making complaints that we take very seriously.”
I really hope Ariane has some receipts about HBO’s knowledge of Piven’s behavior. I would imagine they knew all about it, because Ariane was likely not the only victim. CBS possibly has cleaner hands here, because they only recently started working with him.
Photos courtesy of WENN.
Wow what a surprise 😉
There’s been skeevy rumours about him for years.
Can any of these guys keep their hands to themselves? Scary that we hear about another pervert evey day.
Maybe they need to start outing guys who never do such things… Might be a smaller group, but worth tracking down. Confirming stories of non-groping could be collected under #MeNeither.
Was just thinking how this would be a shorter list! Also hoping Patrick Stewart is on THAT list.
Scarier still that we haven’t been hearing these stories until now. I’m glad that things have shifted. Out them all, TBH.
He’s so pathetic in so many ways. With his reputation it’s no surprise that women are speaking out about him.
He’s repulsive.
Awesome – nothing would please me more than never having to see him on-screen again.
And now Brent Ratner is on deck to get what he deserves!
Considering their Usual Suspects grouping, and his pretty loud previous allegations, I’ve been waiting on Bryan Singer.
Not sure if Fox its protecting because of all the xmen reboot he’s still working on. They cant claim they knew nothing with all the court dates and films made about him.
Jeremy is pretty much known as an inappropriate pervert, again, it’s about as good as a secret as Weinstein. They all knew.
Forgot about Bryan Singer….makes me wonder if Michael Bay will be called out too
Six women have accused Ratner as of this moment. Several high profile names too.
This is not new. That entire set was known to be a predators playground
With all the shows getting pulled they can start to run all-day programming about Eleanor Roosevelt and Susan B. Anthony and Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth and…
Rosa Parks! Alice Paul! Angela Davis! Billie Jean King! On and on. So many great women and stories to tell.
It refreshing to see people coming forward especially since 45 basically was outed as A PREDATOR and NOTHING was done = other than Billy Bush being fired. To me it seems like Weinstein (as horrible as he is) is the sacrifice being offered up so the rest can stay under the radar. But women are getting pissed and taking back their power and as much as i hope that all these F’ers go down i think we’ll see a few get blacklisted for a while, but come back in the end 🙁
Wow Total Surprise!!! Not! The one thing I would say about of all these companies, is it doesn’t surprise me if the company doesn’t know much. Sure they probably knew, like we all know, but they didn’t KNOW with proof, because women really didn’t report this that much. Partly because there aren’t good avenues for reporting at a lot of companies, the women were scared for their careers or on some of the lesser cases they just kind of shrugged and thought this was the way it is. This is why this tell all is not only cathartic but may change the way women think about this and how companies proceed when someone is accused, because then we may be able to actually get some of these men in a criminal way or punishment before they rape someone.
It does say a lot about our sexist society, that men who have these rumors out there, granted no charges, but hot rumors keep getting work, while women who have one mediocre movie or tv show and a few lines on their face or lbs on them and they are unemployable.
ITA – this is really a workplace issue, and the fact that ‘art’ is what is being produced at the workplace shouldn’t change the fact that there should be a robust HR department in place.
I can’t believe that Piven is fool enough to deny these accusations, because (hopefully!) all the denial will do is make other victims angry enough to come forward.
Come on now, the guys nickname for YEARS now has been “The Pivert”. Are people reaaaaallly surprised? 🤔
Honestly I’m surprised it took this long for something like this to be publicly said about him.
He was quick to deny these allegations, but I’m guessing she’s not the only woman he did this too. I hope other victims are brave as well and speak up. Sadly in these situations one accuser doesn’t seem to be enough.
No surprise at allllllll 🤔
I hope she saved those text messages from him, even if they’re just screen shots.
I heard she is working with the phone carrier to retrieve those messages. She tweeted about that.
Not even surprised. Dude looks like a creep and acts like a creep. He’s been gross since day one. Those poor women – sexual assault is traumatizing but to have it be at the hands of this creepy gremlin ugh
I’m not surprised about this at all. Didn’t he have a falling out with John Cusack a few years ago? I remember it was nasty. He always came off as a jerk.
Wow he’s such a smug asshole, the wording of his statement is so pompous. I’m sure he crafted/edited it himself. His doubling down in the statement will just entice other women to come forward… and I really hope they do. He’s had the worst reputation for so long, and you can just tell he’s a skeevy jerk.
His co-star Kevin Connolly is also a huge skeeze. Not surprised.
I have a Piv story too: years and years ago, they filmed in Cannes for Entourage, at the Hotel du Cap/Eden Roc, while the Film Festival was going on. The crew was not staying at the hotel, but my husband and I were, courtesy of FIL, who is friends with the owners.
For about two days Piv tried to pick me up – telling me to smile, trying to grab my hand at the buffet, having a glass of something delivered that I rejected, promising me a bit part, being generally creepy, when I was on my way from A to B without my husband.
And then, finally – don’t you know who I am? I answered that it appeared that he clearly didn’t know who I was. (no one in the world of cinema, just a German working in neuroscience)