Former Fox News anchor Lauren Sivan predicted more women will come forward with stories about movie mogul Harvey Weinstein, who she said exposed himself to masturbate in front of her at a New York restaurant a decade ago.
“It was kind of a horrible kept secret in Hollywood that he had this type of behavior,” Sivan, now an anchor at KTTV, a Fox affiliate in Los Angeles, told NBC’s Megyn Kelly during an interview on Monday. “But you have to understand, he was a titan in Hollywood. He could ruin people’s careers if he didn’t like you.”
{mosads}Sivan joined “Megyn Kelly Today” on Monday to share her account of the 2007 meeting with Weinstein, who resigned from his studio after The New York Times published a story that included numerous claims of sexual harassment by the Hollywood titan.
“I’m positive that more women will come forward,” Sivan told Kelly, a former coworker of hers when the two were at Fox News in New York.
She said Weinstein exposed himself after suggesting the two go on a tour of the restaurant he owned. After making an advance on her, which was rejected, Sivan said Weinstein told her she could just “stand there and shut up.”
“More than the disgusting act itself, which of course was gross, the demeaning part of it all, that just 20 minutes earlier he was having this great conversation with me and I felt so great and flattered by it,” she told Kelly. “And then, ‘stand there and be quiet,’ just a few minutes later just negated any warm feelings I had and I realized ‘oh, that is what this is all about.’ ”
Kelly made headlines last year after telling an outside law firm conducting an internal investigation at Fox News looking into sexual harassment allegations against Roger Ailes that she had been subjected to unwanted sexual advances by the former chairman and CEO of the network.
Ailes was ousted by the network quickly after Kelly’s account was shared with the law firm Paul, Weiss in July 2016. Kelly would jump to NBC a few months later.
The Weinstein Company’s board of directors announced it was dumping Weinstein on Sunday.
“In light of new information about misconduct by Harvey Weinstein that has emerged in the past few days, the directors of The Weinstein Company — Robert Weinstein, Lance Maerov, Richard Koenigsberg and Tarak Ben Ammar — have determined, and have informed Harvey Weinstein, that his employment with The Weinstein Company is terminated, effective immediately,” the statement from the board said.
Weinstein said on Thursday that he plans to sue The New York Times for up to a reported $50 million over its story. Weinstein’s new attorney Charles J. Harder called the story “false and defamatory” and promised to donate all proceeds of the lawsuit, if successful, to women’s organizations.
The Times reported on Thursday that Weinstein paid off at least eight women after they alleged sexual harassment. In order to guarantee their silence following the undisclosed payments, he reportedly required each to sign a confidentiality agreement.