The fall of film mogul Harvey Weinstein, following dozens of harrowing sexual assault and harassment allegations, has had an incredible domino effect on the entertainment industry.
On Sunday, the Los Angeles Times released an investigation into James Toback, the Black and White and Two Girls and a Guy director, which included sexual harassment and assault allegations from 38 different women.
Most of whom had stories that started the same way: Toback would approach them at random – sometimes in a park, sometimes on the street, in a pharmacy – dropping the movies he’d directed, the famous names he knew, his Oscar-nomination. He would then say he could make them famous and ask them to have a meeting with him, which would quickly turn sexual.
Following on from the report, released just three days ago, a further 200 women have come forward with allegations against Toback, including marie claire cover star Julianne Moore and now Rachel McAdams and Selma Blair, who reveals she was part of the original LA Times story.
McAdams recounted her experience to Vanity Fair, saying she had met Toback when she was 21 in an audition for a role in one of his films. He called her later that night and insisted she come over immediately to workshop the role. “This was a big audition. I was pretty fresh and new to all of this,” she said.
Minutes after she arrived, the conversation turned sexual with Toback saying: “You know, I just have to tell you. I have masturbated countless times today thinking about you since we met at your audition.”
“Then he asked me to read passages out loud from different reviews of his films and different critics talking about his work. It was all so confusing,” she said. “I kept thinking, ‘When are we getting to the rehearsal part?'”
McAdams says Toback then went to the bathroom. “When he came back he said, ‘I just jerked off in the bathroom thinking about you. Will you show me your pubic hair?'”
She refused him and eventually made an excuse to leave the room. “This has been such a source of shame for me – that I didn’t have the wherewithal to get up and leave [sooner].”
“I really was frozen. My brain was not catching up,” she recalled. McAdams says she called her agent early the next morning and told her what had happened.
“That is when I got mad,” she said, revealing her agent said he had done the same thing last time he was in town to another of her actresses.
“I felt like I was kind of thrown into the lion’s den and given no warning that he was a predator. “
Selma Blair had a similar incident, except in the hotel room she was lured into, Toback pushed himself against her leg while forcing her to look at him as he masturbated. She said he threatened that he would kill her if anyone found out about what had happened.
“There is a girl who went against me. She was going to talk about something I did,” Toback told Blair. “I am going to tell you, and this is a promise, if she ever tells anybody, no matter how much time she thinks went by, I have people who will pull up in a car, kidnap her, and throw her in the Hudson River with cement blocks on her feet. You understand what I’m talking about, right?”
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