"I didn't know how to advocate for myself or know how to say no because I had been conditioned and trained to never talk back, to just soldier through."
Trigger Warning: This story contains details of rape that may be disturbing to readers.
Almost a year after Evan Rachel Wood accused ex, Marilyn Manson of rape, she has now alleged that he "essentially raped" her while they filmed the music video "Heart-Shaped Glasses" (When the Heart Guides the Hand) together in 2007.
The revelation was made in "Phoenix Rising," a new documentary about Wood’s life and career which premiered at the 2022 Sundance film festival, according to Guardian.
"It's nothing like I thought it was going to be," Wood said. "We're doing things that were not what was pitched to me. ... We had discussed a simulated sex scene, but once the cameras were rolling, he started penetrating me for real. I had never agreed to that. I'm a professional actress, I've been doing this my whole life; I've never been on a set that unprofessional in my life up until this day."
Marilyn Manson Denies Evan Rachel Wood's Claim He "Essentially Raped" Her While Filming 2007 Music Video https://t.co/Ur6RuqNgCD
— E! News (@enews) January 25, 2022
"It was complete chaos," she continued, per PEOPLE. "I did not feel safe. No one was looking after me. It was a really traumatizing experience filming the video. I didn't know how to advocate for myself or know how to say no because I had been conditioned and trained to never talk back, to just soldier through."
Wood then alleged that she was fed absinthe on the set of the video—where she plays a character styled as Lolita— and was barely conscious to stop Manson from assaulting her.
Wood said that afterward she "felt disgusting and that I had done something shameful, and I could tell that the crew was very uncomfortable and nobody knew what to do."
"I was coerced into a commercial sex act under false pretenses," she added in the documentary, which was directed by Oscar nominee Amy Berg. "That's when the first crime was committed against me. I was essentially raped on-camera."
Evan Rachel Wood Says Marilyn Manson Essentially Raped Her On Camera At 19 Years Old - Perez Hilton https://t.co/v2mvHVsBWG pic.twitter.com/G4uTy9QTpM
— Lorraine Jo King (@lahlahbean) January 25, 2022
The "Westworld" actress explained that she was "scared" to speak out about the incident at the time, citing violence that would "keep escalating over the course of the relationship." She said it took her a "really long time" to stop blaming herself and realize what was happening to her was not her fault.
Meanwhile, Manson's lawyer, Howard King, has denied these allegations against his client, he revealed in a statement to the Guardian.
“Of all the false claims that Evan Rachel Wood has made about Brian Warner, her imaginative retelling of the making of the Heart-Shaped Glasses music video 15 years ago is the most brazen and easiest to disprove, because there were multiple witnesses."
"Evan was not only fully coherent and engaged during the three-day shoot but also heavily involved in weeks of pre-production planning and days of post-production editing of the final cut. The simulated sex scene took several hours to shoot with multiple takes using different angles and several long breaks in between camera setups."
Evan Rachel Wood: Marilyn Manson forced me to have sex on camera https://t.co/aRjuaEvoDV pic.twitter.com/P1TXjMY7WZ
— New York Post (@nypost) January 24, 2022
“Brian did not have sex with Evan on that set, and she knows that is the truth.”
"Phoenix Rising" will air on HBO in the US in March. The documentary also follows the creation of the Phoenix Act, legislation led by Wood that extends the statute of limitations for survivors of domestic violence to pursue charges against their abusers, which was signed into law in October 2019.
References:
https://people.com/movies/evan-rachel-wood-alleges-marilyn-manson-raped-her-in-music-video/
Cover Image Source: Getty Images | Photo by Scott Wintrow
