Mira Sorvino described being gagged with a condom when she was 16 in a heartbreaking interview
Mira Sorvino has been a staunch advocate of the #MeToo movement since its inception, bravely sharing her own experiences with sexual harassment (she was one of the first actresses to come forward with accusations against disgraced movie producer Harvey Weinstein). And now, in a new interview, the actress opened up about the physical assault and sexual harassment she faced at the hands of two other directors.
On the July 11th episode of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association’s HFPA in Conversation podcast, Sorvino said that a casting director once bound her to a chair and gagged her with a condom when she was auditioning for a horror movie. She was only 16 years old at the time. Now 50, the actress and #MeToo activist said that the unnamed director had done this “to scare me for this horror movie scene.”
"And at the end he takes the gag out of my mouth and he said, ‘Sorry for the prophylactic,’ so he had gagged me with a condom," she explained on the podcast. "I was too young to even know, thank God, what a condom tasted like. It was so inappropriate, and what the heck was a casting director doing with a condom in his pocket in an audition?"
This Mira Sorvino story is horrifying: https://t.co/x8OV9TMeFv
— Marlow Stern (@MarlowNYC) July 12, 2018
In the same podcast, the Mighty Aphrodite star also said that a different, Oscar-winning director known for “his social justice profile” once refused to cast her because she declined to sleep with him.
"You know, as I look at you my mind can’t help but traveling from the artistic possibilities to the sexual," Sorvino said the director told her at the end of an audition.
Sorvino said that she initially thought it was “a legitimate meeting.”
"I thought this was an actual, you had me here, because you thought I was talented or that I brought something that would be good for this role," she said. "Not that you were here fishing to see if I was going to have an affair with you."
She contended that not sleeping with the man cost her the role.
HFPA in Conversation: Mira Sorvino, the Unexpected Activist. [Podcast] https://t.co/Ak81CQw1w0 #actorslife pic.twitter.com/IptscWzYWl
— Golden Globe Awards (@goldenglobes) July 12, 2018
Since coming forward with allegations against Weinstein, Sorvino has been an advocate for all survivors. In a January open letter to Dylan Farrow in HuffPost, she apologized for working with Farrow’s alleged abuser and adoptive father, Woody Allen. And in March, she spoke with Salon about her work with California senators to pass new state laws preventing sexual harassment.
Sorvino’s latest allegations are heartbreaking, and it’s important to remember that these are in no way isolated incidents. We will continue to stand with survivors until sexual harassment and assault are things of the past.
