Harvey Weinstein Tried to Ruin Game of Thrones Star Lena Headey’s Career After She Turned Him Down Twice That Bruised His Gargantuan Ego
TRIGGER WARNING: S**ual Harassment!
On the critically acclaimed HBO series Game of Thrones, which is based on George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series of novels, actress Lena Headey is most known for playing Cersei Lannister. Her co-star and friend Peter Dinklage recommended her to the casting executives of the show, and she was chosen to play Cersei Lannister. Her role on the show was one of the most talked-about things since she was a vicious queen.
The actress’s roles in several films, such as Twist, The Purge, 300: Rise of an Empire, Fighting with My Family, and DC League of Super-Pets, demonstrate her accomplishment in the business. Nevertheless, Lena Headey back in 2017 voiced her opinion against Harvey Weinstein, noting that she could have lost it all. Let’s find out more.
Also read: Despite $500K Per Episode Salary, Lena Headey Says Game of Thrones “Also Made Things Feel Harder”
Lena Headey details the encounters with Harvey Weinstein
Actress Lena Headey back in 2017 came forward with her own experience of being s**ually harassed by Harvey Weinstein when they were at The Venice Film Festival back in 2005 when she was promoting The Brother Grimm, which she said could have ended her career. She said on Twitter at the time,
“At one point, Harvey asked me to take a walk down to the water. I walked down with him and he stopped and made some suggestive comment, a gesture. I just laughed it off. I was genuinely shocked. I remember thinking, it’s got to be a joke. I said something like.. ‘Oh come on mate?!?? It’d be like kissing my dad!! Let’s go get a drink, get back to the others.’ I was never in any other Miramax film.”
The actress went ahead to share another incident that took place with her in Los Angeles a couple of years later involving disgraced producer Harvey Weinstein. She said, “I had always carried the thought that he’d never try anything with me again, not after I’d laughed and said never in a million years. I believed that he respected my boundaries.”
Headey quoted, “He asked me a few questions about the state of my love life. I shifted the conversation back to something less personal. Then he went to the loo. He came back and said, ‘Let’s go up to the room, I want to give you a script.’ We walked to the lift and the energy shifted, my whole body went on high alert.”
The actress continued to write,
“The lift was going up and I said to Harvey, ‘I’m not interested in anything other than work, please don’t think I got in here with you for any other reason, nothing is going to happen.’ I don’t know what possessed me to speak out at that moment, only that I had such a strong sense of don’t come near me.”
The actress said the producer was furious with her for turning him down twice and decided to march her out of the hotel, asking her to keep the conversation between them. Lena said she felt powerless and got into her car and cried.
Lena Headey on how her turning Harvey Weinstein down impacted her career
The actress, in speaking with the Sunday Times back in 2019 noted that she believed that her not giving in to the demands of the producer had made an impact on her career. She said,
“After he was discovered to be a slime ball, on a grander scale than me just knowing it, I did start thinking, ‘F—, maybe because I didn’t shag him, that’s impacted a decade of my working life’. Because I did two jobs for [Weinstein’s production company] Miramax before those incidents, and after that there was nothing.”
Lena Headey, after her encounters with Harvey Weinstein, was left with little to no work, but then she landed the role of her life as Cersei Lannister on Game of Thrones, and even though the show ended back in 2019, the popularity and the craze of the show remains intact in the minds of people, which explains what impact did the show make on people.
Harvey Weinstein denied the claims made by Lena Headey
After Lena Headey came forward with her claims against the producer in a lengthy statement posted on Twitter at the time, a spokesperson for Weinstein denied the claims by stating via USA Today,
“Lena Headey is a terrific actor with smart and resourceful agents, as her role for the past eight years on ‘Game of Thrones’ confirms. There was never anything other than a professional and respectful relationship between Ms. Headey and Mr. Weinstein, and any other assertion is absolutely untrue.”
Lena Headey wasn’t the only actress who had come forward with her claims against the disgraced producer, as she joined Angelina Jolie, Lupita Nyong’o, Gwyneth Paltrow, Ashley Judd, and more than 100 women who had decided to step forward with their respective allegations against the producer in 2017.
Harvey Weinstein had been accused of multiple first and third-degree r*pe charges in New York City and was fired from his own company and expelled by the Television Academy after the trial, he was found guilty in 2020 and was sentenced to 23 years in prison with an additional 16 years, which was announced in February in 2023 after he was found guilty in another trial held in 2022.
