This month at the Oscars, Annabella Sciorra stood on stage, arms stiff at her sides, and exhaled. “It’s nice to see you all again – it’s been a while,” she said, the words tumbling out in a rush. The last part was an understatement. The Academy Awards were Sciorra’s first major Hollywood appearance since alleging that Harvey Weinstein raped her in the early 1990s. But really, she’d been out of the spotlight for decades, the bright star of Jungle Fever and The Hand That Rocks the Cradle mysteriously snuffed out.
Not so mysterious any more. After the attack, she said she didn’t work for three years. When she returned to movies, Weinstein reappeared, too, reportedly pounding on her hotel door on several nights over the next several years, once in his underwear clutching a bottle of baby oil. Sciorra knew he was destroying her career. Two decades later, everyone in the Dolby Theater also knew, along with the millions more watching the Oscars at home.
A woman in the audience yelled, “We love you!” Sciorra finally smiled. The curse was broken. For real. Ten days after the awards, Netflix announced they’d picked Sciorra for a plum role as the lead villain in the second season of Marvel’s Luke Cage.
For the last six months, we’ve watched Hollywood fall apart. Or rather, we’ve finally seen the cracks that allowed men like Weinstein to sweep away women’s careers. Now, we’re gauging how it puts itself back together – and it won’t be stable until the women he attempted to destroy are put back in place (Weinstein’s spokesman says he has “unequivocally denied … any allegations of nonconsensual sex”).
It’s a long list of names. But restoration is already under way. In December, Peter Jackson admitted Weinstein had sabotaged his plans to hire Mira Sorvino and Ashley Judd for The Lord of the Rings. Sorvino, who claims Weinstein assaulted her in 1995 while promoting Mighty Aphrodite, a Miramax role that would win her an Oscar, saw the news and burst into tears.
“I have to say, the general atmosphere since those allegations came out, those revelations, there seems to be a lot of goodwill toward me in the entertainment business,” said Mira Sorvino at the TCAs in January. Since Weinstein no longer has the clout to hang up on directors who mention her name, Sorvino is in perpetual motion. This year, she’s got major roles in nine movies, a guest spot on the hit sitcom Modern Family, and, fingers crossed, a star network gig as a top-ranked marine lawyer in the CBS pilot The Code.
However, acting gigs are only part of the solution. Off screen, Sorvino has introduced four California bills to combat sexual harassment, including one that bars confidentiality agreements like the clause that silenced Rose McGowan. Sorvino and Judd walked the Oscars red carpet together, and when a reporter handed her the mic, she spoke with confidence: “I want people to know that this movement isn’t stopping.”
Several of Weinstein’s accusers are channeling their energy into making their own films. That side of the lens is where the power is, recognized film-maker Brit Marling, who credits her behind-the-scenes background for rescuing her unscathed from Weinstein’s attempted massage. “Of those dual personas in me – actor and writer – it was the writer who stood up and walked out,” said Marling in the Atlantic. “Because the writer knew that even if this very powerful man never gave her a job in any of his films, even if he blacklisted her from other films, she could make her own work on her own terms and thus keep a roof over her head.” Currently, Marling is shooting the second season of her supernatural Netflix series The OA, which she created and wrote.
Darryl Hannah also took charge. When Hannah was in Rome for Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill: Volume 2’s Italian premiere, Weinstein allegedly burst into her hotel room and insisted he squeeze her breasts to prove they were real. When she refused, Weinstein retaliated by cutting her out of the Cannes segment of the tour. “After Kill Bill, I never got another movie meeting. Not even a meeting or an offer,” said Hannah to the New Yorker, adding, “Some of that had to do with Harvey and his bad mouthing.”
So Hannah has begun to direct her own films. At this month’s SXSW, she premiered her feature directorial debut Paradox, an experimental western musical starring Neil Young and Willie Nelson. Paradox, which Netflix is releasing this weekend, is two-steps between arthouse concert film and a comedy about treasure hunting. The reviews haven’t been great, but Hannah is more concerned with the direction of her career than how the film is received. As she said in Austin: “It is a patriarchal system that is beginning to feel a little bit that its foundation is being chipped away.”
Heather Graham went after the patriarchy with a sandblaster. Three months after sharing her story about an alleged Weinstein encounter where he heavily hinted he wanted her to trade sex for a film role, Graham released her own directing debut, Half Magic, a Wiccan romantic comedy with a furious subplot about a misogynistic film executive. The creep might liken himself to Napoleon and Jesus, but Graham makes the audience see he’s a blustering, overcompensating bully, and a hypocrite to boot, the kind of narrow-minded, self-congratulating guru who says things like, “I’m not saying I’m against women’s rights, I’m just saying there’s no market for their films.”
“Your directing career hasn’t gotten off the ground yet because you look like a big booby dummy,” he sneers to her character, a would-be filmmaker, when she suggests a more feminist angle on a film he’s dubbed, Kill the Sluts. It’s a clunky line, yet it bruises like the truth. And while Half Magic isn’t a great film, Graham clearly has a lot more she wants to say.
Still, for every step forward, there’s an actor still pacing for her comeback, or wondering what her trajectory might have been if Weinstein hadn’t gotten his paws on it. Asia Argento, Paz de la Huerta, Minka Kelly, Connie Neilson and Natasha Henstridge continue to hustle for roles. Many others appear to have simply stopped. Sean Young was recently seen in Blade Runner 2049 … as a computerized imitation. Eva Green, whose mother told reporters that Weinstein “threatened to destroy her professionally”, might finally have gotten her major all-ages blockbuster break in Tim Burton’s upcoming live action remake of Dumbo. And Salma Hayek has openly questioned why after her Miramax film Frida won her a best actress nomination, she couldn’t get a starring role for over decade.
“I’m so full of emotion, I’m a little bit shaky,” said Hayek on stage next to Sciorra and Judd at the Oscars. The three women are no longer united just by the worst working experience of their lives – together, they’re trying to blaze the way forward. Despite their nerves, they seemed to draw strength from each other, just like people watching might draw strength from them. “This year many spoke their truth,” concluded Sciorra. “The journey ahead is long. But slowly, a new path has emerged.”
