Judi Dench believes convicted rapist Harvey Weinstein has “done his time” in prison for sexual assault.
“I saw a bit of film of Harvey walking with two sticks and you think, ‘Well… I knew Harvey, and I knew him well and worked with him, and I had none of that experience — very fortunately for me,” the “Skyfall” actress, 90, said during an interview with the Radio Times.
“I imagine he’s done his time. I don’t know, to me it’s personal — forgiveness,” she added of the disgraced movie producer, who is currently serving a 16-year sentence for forcible rape and other sex crimes.
Dench also shared that she has remained in contact with Kevin Spacey, who was acquitted of sexual assault charges in the UK and was also found not liable in a civil case brought in New York. (Spacey, 66, is set to face three more claims of sexual assault in a London civil court next year.)
“Kevin has been exonerated and I hear from Kevin, we text,” she told the outlet.
In 2019, Dench told the Radio Times that people should separate Spacey and Weinstein’s work from their personal lives.
“Are we going to negate 10 years at the Old Vic and everything that he did, how wonderful he’s been in all those films?” Dench said of the “House of Cards” alum.
“Are we just not going to see all those films that Harvey produced? You cannot deny somebody a talent,” she added.
“You might as well never look at a Caravaggio painting. You might as well never have gone to see Noel Coward.”
Dench — who worked on several of Weinstein’s films, including “Shakespeare in Love” and “Philomena” — has long insisted that she was unaware of the convicted sex offender’s actions.
In 2017, Dench said she was “horrified” by the allegations against Weinstein and spoke out in support of the victims.
“Whilst there is no doubt that Harvey Weinstein has helped and championed my film career for the past 20 years, I was completely unaware of these offenses, which are, of course, horrifying, and I offer my sympathy to those who have suffered, and wholehearted support to those who have spoken out,” she said at the time.
That same year, more than a dozen women came forward in an exposé, accusing Weinstein of sexually harassing, assaulting or raping them.
In 2020, Weinstein was initially sentenced to 23 years in a New York prison for third-degree rape and one count of criminal sexual act.
However, that ruling was overturned four years later by the New York Court of Appeals.
Weinstein also received a separate 16-year sentence in 2023 for forcible rape, forcible oral copulation and sexual penetration by a foreign object after a California trial. He has also appealed that decision.
In March, the Miramax co-founder was found guilty in his sexual assault retrial in Manhattan Criminal Court.
Read the full article here
