Rose McGowan says she would rather Harvey Weinstein ‘just fell off the planet’

'I don’t often hold out a lot of hope for justice'

Rose McGowan has spoken about her feelings towards Harvey Weinstein, revealing she would “just rather he fell off the planet”.

The 45-year-old actor and activist was one of the first of dozens of women to accuse the Hollywood producer of sexual misconduct and has since become a figurehead for the #MeToo movement.

“I don’t often hold out a lot of hope for justice,” McGowan told Harper’s Bazaar with regards to Weinstein’s trial, which is tentatively scheduled for May.

“But I still have that little girl flame inside that’s like please, please, please world, do what’s just and right,” she added. “But my rational self says I don’t know.”

Weinstein is charged with raping a woman in 2013 and performing a forcible sex act on a different woman in 2006. He denies all allegations of nonconsensual sex.

The actor detailed how she was allegedly sexually assaulted by Weinstein in her autobiography Brave, published in January 2018.

In the book she refers to him only as “the Monster” and claims that the assault took place at the Sundance Film Festival in 1997.

Speaking to the publication, McGowan goes on to reflect on what the film industry needs to do in order to change and reach gender parity.

“Short of burning it down and starting all over, I’m not really sure what it can do,” she said. “But I hope it does something because otherwise it’ll be hopelessly out of date.”

However, the former Charmed star did explain that she had noticed slight improvements since the allegations against Weinstein emerged in October 2017, with female writers telling her that they’re now being listened to “for the first time” in writers’ rooms.

McGowan added that women working in the industry have come up to her on the street in London and Los Angeles saying they now feel safer on film sets, which she describes as “a great thing”.

The actor also suggested that more progress could be made if people address their understandings of masculinity so that men can join women in the fight towards gender equality in a meaningful way.

“There is a way into the conversation, but it’s not about how I become a better man; it’s how I unlearn what they’ve taught me about what being a man,” she said.

“There’s nothing wrong with being a man. But’s it’s what they’ve [been] taught, how they’ve enforced it and how they’ve benefited.”

As for how changes can be made in the way society views women, McGowan highlighted the problem with the the way female anger can make people feel “uncomfortable”.

“Anger does cause discomfort,” she said, “but it passes like a thunderbolt and if all of our emotions in our arsenal are like paintbrushes, who are you to say as woman that I can’t have anger?”