Some big news coming out of Hollywood over the weekend. Following a story run by the New York Times on Thursday, outlining separate allegations of sexual harassment by Hollywood movie producer Harvey Weinstein. An announcement from The Weinstein Company reveals that they have in fact fired Mr Weinstein following the recent exposé.

“In light of new information about misconduct by Harvey Weinstein that has emerged in the past few days, the directors of The Weinstein Company – Robert Weinstein, Lance Maerov, Richard Koenigsberg, and Tarak Ben Ammar – have determined, and have informed Harvey Weinstein, that his employment with The Weinstein Company is terminated, effective immediately,”

According to reports in the NY Times, Weinstein’s misconduct began in the early 90s, with 3 separate incidents coming to light recently that allegedly occurred before 1993. One unnamed victim who left her post at Miramax after a run-in with Weinstein,   and  received a settlement thereafter. Two instances from 1991 came to light during the reports from two actresses. Jessica Hynes and Lauren Madden have both said that Harvey Weinstein had harassed them, and in Jessica Hynes case, Weinstein had refused her a role for not doing a screentest in a bikini, Hynes has since deleted the tweet that revealed this allegation, but it’s certainly another one to add to a very long list of accusations against the studio mogul. Since these instances in the 90s another 7 separate accounts of sexual harassment and predatory behaviour by Harvey Weinstein have come to light. These are just the ones that we know about!

Harvey Weinstein has been in the game a very long time, firstly with Miramax, founded in 1979 with his brother Bob. Then with The Weinstein Company, the production house set up also with his brother in 2005. That’s a career of nearly 40 years in the glittery limelight of Tinsel town. There is no doubt in my mind that the longer this goes on, the more reports you will find that Weinstein has been doing this far more often than first thought. His own statement admits that he saw this as the norm.

“I came of age in the 60’s and 70s, when all the rules about behaviour and workplaces were different. That was the culture then.”

I’m sure Weinstein believes that this statement helps his case, I can assure you it doesn’t. This ‘Everyone was doing it” complex he seems to have adopted does nothing to dampen the severity of the allegations made against him. It also raises another, more horrifying question. “Who else was doing it?”

IF what Weinstein is true, then he will be one of many individuals in a position of power in Hollywood that have abused said power at the expense of actresses looking for their next step in their career. Although this sort of thing was swept under the carpet in the 80s and 90s, we now live in a time where everything is out in the open, there is no hiding. Of course behaviour similar to Harvey’s occurs to this day in the industry but the sooner we can expose the predators taking advantage of the ambition of these actresses, the sooner Hollywood will lose it’s reputation of being a soul stealing, spirit sapping cauldron of lies and empty promises that it holds at the moment. From the outside Hollywood is all glitz and glamour, but it’s for show. Hollywood is grimey, and there are people like Harvey Weinstein at the centre of it all.

Of course this is my opinion and only my own opinion, but remember this. Harvey Weinstein was not fired by the Weinstein Co. for being a sexual predator, he was fired because we found out about it.

Charlie Watts