Actress Rose McGowan, now 46, tweeted on August 17th that she had sex with academy award winning writer and director Alexander Payne, now 59, when she was just 15 years old.
McGowan tweeted:
Alexander Payne. You sat me down & played a soft-core porn movie you directed for Showtime under a different name. I still remember your apartment in Silverlake. You are very well-endowed. You left me on a street corner afterwards. I was 15. pic.twitter.com/mVqiN4S9NW
— Rose McGowan (@rosemcgowan) August 17, 2020
“I Was 15”
The former Charmed star and now female activists McGowan said in a 2018 interview with Ronan Farrow that she couldn’t fully process what had happened to her until she was much older, “I’d been attracted to him, so I always filed it away as a sexual experience”.
McGowan said that while she doesn’t want to “destroy” Payne, but she wants an apology.
I just want an acknowledgement and an apology. I do not want to destroy. This was me at 15. pic.twitter.com/XeNpsrpY4s
McGowan also wrote about the allegation in an Instagram post, saying the sexual experience made her quit acting until she was “discovered” again when she 21 years old.
“Last night I dropped a bomb of truth. For years I had thought a man I had sexual relations with was a a sexual experience I had. I now know I was groomed. I auditioned for him at 15. After my experience with him, I quit acting entirely until I was ‘discovered’ at 21. When that happened, I was like, fuck it, let’s do this. I even tweeted a congratulations on his Oscar win in 2012, that’s how deep in the Cult of Hollywood I was. It wasn’t until three weeks after the Weinstein story broke that I re-evaluated the situation. I feel badly about throwing a bomb into someone’s life and career, but I guess that’s social conditioning. I’m more sad than angry. Sad for 15 year-old me. Sad for the adult me that still thought it was a choice I made. Grooming is real. I want you all to know that it’s not your fault if you were mentally massaged into thinking it’s okay. It is not. I know this now. I would even go up to this director at events and ask him, with a smile, “remember when you had sex with me at 15?” And I would laugh it off. That is deep societal programming. If you are out there trying to have sex with an underage minor, you are committing a crime, even if the minor doesn’t know it. I was attracted to him, so I thought it was on me, but that’s not correct. I was not an adult. When it happened, I’d recently been left behind in Hollywood by a family member to fend for myself. The wolves preyed. Please recognize that if this has happened to you, the shame is not yours, it’s theirs. Give it back. Groomers are skilled operators and at 15, I was not aware of the warning signs. I named him on Twitter, but since Instagram is my softer side, I just don’t want his name here. Goddess bless us all, except for those that abuse their power. Here’s to freedom, yours and mine.”
Rose McGowan was one of the first sexual abuse victims to accuse Harvey Weinstein of sexual abuse publicly. Although she didn’t divulge the details of her underage sexual encounter, from her allegations Payne at least exposed himself to her inside of his apartment.
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