Evan Rachel Woodis letting other survivors know they’re not alone.
The 34-year-oldWestworldactress talks about the emotional “feeling of being believed” in the trailer for HBO’sPhoenix Rising, a two-part documentary that details Wood’s activism and sexual assault allegations against musicianMarilyn Manson.
Wood co-authored and successfully lobbied for thepassage of The Phoenix Act, which is legislation that extends the statute of limitations for domestic violence cases in California. She testified about her own experiences to bring attention and visibility to the issue.
“I became an activist, fighting for victims and survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault,” Wood says in the trailer, adding, “Not only did people hear our stories but they said, ‘Yeah, we hear you, and something does need to change.’ "
She later says, “We need to make sure this doesn’t happen to anybody else. … I realized that this is the first time I haven’t been doubted or questioned or shamed; this is the first time that someone was really listening. I was like, ‘What is this feeling?’ And it’s this feeling of being believed.”
Phoenix Rising: Don’t Fall, part 1 of the documentary, premiered at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival last month, and in it, Wood recounted being groomed into atumultuous relationship with Manson(born Brian Warner), from mid 2006 until early 2011. She likened it to being under the influence of his “cult.”
Wood said thatManson’s “first crime” against hertook place while filming the now-53-year-old rocker’s 2007 “Heart-Shaped Glasses” music video when she was 19.
“It’s nothing like I thought it was going to be,” Wood said about the music video. “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.”
HBO
“It was complete chaos,” she continued. “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.”
Manson’s attorney Howard Kingdenied Wood’s allegationsin a statement last month, claiming that Manson “did not have sex with Evan on that set, and she knows that is the truth.”
Wood said in the documentary that after filming the music video 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.”
The actress explained that shewas “scared” to speak out about the incidentat 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.
Evan Rachel Wood (L); Marilyn Manson.Steve Granitz/WireImage; Kevin Winter/Getty Images
Wood is among at least 15 other women who have accused the rocker of sexual assault. Three of his accusers, including ex-girlfriendAshley Morgan SmithlineandGame of ThronesactressEsmé Bianco, have filed lawsuits. Manson has denied all allegations, which he has called “horrible distortions of reality.”
“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,” King’s statement read. “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.”
According to a press release,Phoenix Risinguses “archival footage, intimate home videos and candid testimony from Wood and other survivors” and “charts Wood’s journey from silent victim to vocal survivor and her rise to a domestic violence advocate.”
Part 1,Phoenix Rising: Don’t Fall, debuts Tuesday, March 15 at 9 p.m. ET, and Part 2,Phoenix Rising: Stand Up, debuts the following night, Wednesday, March 16 at 9 p.m. ET. Both episodes will be available to stream on HBO Max beginning Tuesday, March 15.
If you or someone you know has been sexually assaulted, please contact the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673) or go torainn.org.
source: people.com
