An aspiring actress says Harvey Weinstein used Oprah Winfrey and Naomi Campbell to dupe her into thinking he would help her with her career — only to use her for sex.
British actress Kadian Noble said Tuesday she was head-over-heels impressed when she first met Weinstein at an event in London because he was hanging out with model Campbell and had megastar Oprah “swinging off his arm.”
“I thought, obviously, this man has something amazing in store for me,” she said during a teary-eyed press conference in Manhattan to discuss the sex trafficking lawsuit she filed a day earlier against Weinstein in Manhattan federal court.
Instead, Weinstein used promises of career advancement to lure the actress to his hotel room in Cannes, France, where he forced himself on her, she said.
“I felt completely played,” she said.
Noble is the latest in a long line of actresses and models who claim Weinstein either forced himself on them or coerced them into sex with promises of career advancement.
“Mr. Weinstein denies allegations of non-consensual sex,” his spokeswoman said. “Mr. Weinstein has further confirmed that there were never any acts of retaliation against any women for refusing his advances.”
After meeting Weinstein in London, Noble said she thought nothing of bringing her “show reel” to his hotel room when she saw him again in Cannes in February 2014.
Once inside the hotel room, however, “he didn’t seem that interested in my show reel,” Noble said.
Instead, he began touching her while discussing hooking her up with a modeling agency in London.
“He said, ‘I need to know you really like me,’” Nobel said. “’I have all the information we need. I just need to know you really like me.’”
The incident ended in the bathroom, where he “forced” Noble to perform sex acts in front of the bathroom mirror, she said.
Afterward, Weinstein failed to help her with her career as promised, she said. She blames him for destroying her acting dreams and said she has since reported her case to the NYPD.
Noble’s lawsuit claims that Weinstein’s practice of luring aspiring actresses to his casting couch with promises of career advancement makes him no better than a seedy sex trafficker.
Her lawyer, Jeff Herman, said he is hoping for “millions of dollars” in damages. “The jury will decide what they think her damages call for,” Herman said at the same press conference. But it will be “significant,” he said. “It will go into the millions of dollars.”