Meryl Streep Responds To Rose McGowan’s Claim That She Knew About Harvey Weinstein’s Abuse

After news surfaced of the Golden Globes “silent protest,” former “Charmed” star Rose McGowan, who accused producer Harvey Weinstein of rape, called out all actresses, including Meryl Streep, for their decision to wear black to the awards ceremony in solidarity with the victims of sexual assault and harassment.

“Actresses, like Meryl Streep, who happily worked for The Pig Monster (Harvey Weinstein), are wearing black @goldenglobes in a silent protest,” McGowan wrote in a now-deleted tweet. “YOUR SILENCE is THE problem. You’ll accept a fake award breathlessly & affect no real change. I despise your hypocrisy. Maybe you should all wear Marchesa,” she continued, referencing the fashion line of Weinstein’s estranged wife, Georgina Chapman.

Since then, Streep has responded to McGowan’s claim in a statement to CNN, defending herself saying she was not “deliberately silent,” she just had no idea about Weinstein’s actions.

“It hurt to be attacked by Rose McGowan in banner headlines this weekend, but I want to let her know I did not know about Weinstein’s crimes, not in the 90s when he attacked, or through subsequent decades when he proceeded to attack others,” Streep said. “I wasn’t deliberately silent. I didn’t know.”

“HW [Harvey Weinstein] was not a filmmaker, he was often a producer, primarily a member of films made by other people –some of them great, some not great,” she added. “But not every actor, actress, and director who made films that HW distributed knew he abused women, or that he raped Rose in the 90s, other women before and others after, until they told us.”

Weinstein “needed me much more than I needed him and he made sure I didn’t know,” Streep continued. “Rose assumed and broadcast something untrue about me, and I wanted to let her know the truth. Through friends who know her, I got my home phone number to her the minute I read the headlines. I sat by that phone all day yesterday and this morning, hoping to express both my deep respect for her and others’ bravery in exposing the monsters among us, and my sympathy for the untold, ongoing pain suffers.”