Quentin Tarantino admits he knew enough about Harvey Weinstein to do more

Last Updated on July 30, 2021

When news of the Harvey Weinstein scandal erupted, long-time collaborator Quentin Tarantino released a statement through Amber Tamblyn, saying, "I need a few more days to process my pain, emotions, anger, and memory, and then I will speak publicly about it." That day has now arrived, and unfortunately, Tarantino has admitted that he "knew enough to do more than I did." Having worked with Harvey Weinstein for decades, Quentin Tarantino told the New York Times that he wasn't in the dark about Weinstein's behavior, saying, "There was more to it than just the normal rumors, the normal gossip. It wasn't secondhand. I knew he did a couple of these things."

At the time, the director failed to appreciate the seriousness of the allegations, but Quentin Tarantino now feels ashamed that he didn't take a stand. "I wish I had taken responsibility for what I heard," he added. "If I had done the work I should have done then, I would have had to not work with him." When Tarantino began dating Mira Sorvino in 1995, the actress told him that Harvey Weinstein had "massaged her without asking, chased her around a hotel room and even showed up at her apartment in the middle of the night." Describing himself as "shocked and appalled," Tarantino said that he "couldn't believe [Harvey] would do that so openly." Tarantino thought that perhaps Weinstein was infatuated with Sorvino, which caused him to cross the line, but, as Quentin Tarantino and Mira Sorvino were now dating, his attitude was, "I’m with her, he knows that, he won’t mess with her, he knows that she’s my girlfriend."

Quentin Tarantino continued to hear stories of Harvey Weinstein's inappropriate behavior with a variety of women over the years, including Rose McGowan, and he even confronted the producer on one occasion when an actress friend told him about Weinstein's unwanted advances. According to Tarantino, Weinstein offered the woman a "weak apology." Embarassed, Tarantino added that anything he said now would "sound like a crappy excuse… What I did was marginalize the incidents… Everyone who was close to Harvey had heard of at least one of those incidents. It was impossible they didn’t." As for why Weinstein did what he did, Tarantino had no answer, but he's calling upon others who knew about the abuses to speak out.

I’m calling on the other guys who knew more to not be scared. Don’t just give out statements. Acknowledge that there was something rotten in Denmark. Vow to do better by our sisters. What was previously accepted is now untenable to anyone of a certain consciousness.

When asked how he thought the scandal would affect the public's opinion of his own movies, Quentin Tarantino said "I don't know. I hope it doesn't."