Actress Jane Seymour has accused her old agent of leading her “like a lamb to the slaughter” by connecting her with a filmmaker who was known as a sexual predator during her youth.
The former Bond girl recently opened up about her experience of sexual harassment at the hands of an unnamed producer, who had invited her to his home to screen test for a movie at the start of her Hollywood career.
Seymour recalled the uncomfortable encounter on Monday (04Dec17) during an interview on U.S. breakfast show Megyn Kelly Today, explaining how the “powerful” executive had threatened to blacklist her after she refused his advances and demanded a cab to take her home.
“He basically got furious,” she shared. “He called the cab, and he turned to me and looked me in the eye and said, ‘If you ever tell anyone that you were ever here, let alone what happened, you will never work again, anywhere, anywhere in the world!’ I was shaking and I said, ‘But my agent, everyone knows I was here,’ and he said, ‘Well, you have to lie, you have to tell them you weren’t here. You didn’t come…'”
Seymour took the advice and lied to her agent and another producer who had helped to set up the meeting, but revealed she is still disgusted by how they reacted to the news – because they made it clear the man’s bad behavior was already an “open secret”.
She continued, “The next day, my agent called and said, ‘How did it go…?’ I said, ‘Um, I didn’t go,’ and he went, ‘Oh, I’m really glad.’ I said, ‘Why?’, and he said, ‘Oh, I don’t know… If you had gone, it could have been a little difficult for you.’
“It was an open secret, everyone knew! And then the producer called me 10-15 minutes later and said, ‘How did it go last night?’ and I said, ‘Well, at the last minute I didn’t go.’ He said, ‘Oh. You know, I was talking to my wife and I was just thinking maybe I should tell her (Seymour) that maybe she shouldn’t go.’
“So basically, people who were (supposed to be) protecting me knew what I was gonna have to do… (they) led me in like a lamb to the slaughter, and I guess the understanding is if you are that desperate for the job when you’re a young actress, maybe you make a choice. I made the opposite choice.”
Seymour, now 66, told broadcaster Megyn Kelly she still refuses to identify the predatory producer because he has since passed, but the incident made her quit acting for a year.
She saw the Hollywood bigwig two years later when she attended an event at his home, but he didn’t remember her, and subsequently helped cast Seymour in her 1980 movie Somewhere In Time, opposite late actor Christopher Reeve.
Seymour’s latest remarks about her brush with sexual misconduct emerge as more and more victims continue to speak out against their perpetrators, with the likes of movie mogul Harvey Weinstein, Kevin Spacey, Brett Ratner, James Toback, and Jeremy Piven all facing accusations of inappropriate behavior of late.
