Some time during his bruising cross-examination of Eryn Jean Norvill, Geoffrey Rush’s barrister paused to ask the actor what she thought of the character Cordelia in Shakespeare’s King Lear.
Norvill played Cordelia alongside the Oscar winner in the Sydney Theatre Company’s troubled 2015 production.
The play, and Norvill’s role in it, is at the centre of a high-profile defamation trial that could have profound implications both for the reporting of alleged sexual misconduct in Australia in the age of #MeToo, and the limits of the movement in the face of the justice system.
“I was in two minds about it, if I’m honest with you,” she told the court this week as she described her stage role. “I mean, her journey is to be the moral turning point … her sacrifice, her death, means that the man has an awakening [but] she doesn’t get a lot to say or a lot to do.”
Like the character she played, Norvill has, until this week, been marked by her lack of power.
Rush is suing the Sydney tabloid newspaper the Daily Telegraph – which is owned by Rupert Murdoch and not linked to the British broadsheet – over a series of articles published at the end of November and beginning of December 2017 alleging he behaved inappropriately during the production.
One front-page story was headlined “King Leer”, and featured a portrait of Rush in character from the play’s promotional material.
Despite being at the centre of the Telegraph’s articles, Norvill has never previously spoken publicly about Rush’s alleged behaviour towards her. After she complained to the theatre company, Norvill said she didn’t want to take the issue further, and did not want Rush to be informed of her complaint. She was not named in the Telegraph’s stories, and did not cooperate in their publication.
Although an up-and-coming theatre actor in her own right, Norvill remained little more than a name caught up in the storm surrounding Rush – until she became the Telegraph’s star witness in the case.
Over two days, Norvill took the stand in Australia’s federal court to allege that Rush – one of Australia’s best-known actors – engaged “daily” in a pattern of “sexual harassment” including “sexual innuendo” and groping gestures that made her feel “belittled”, “frightened” and “trapped”.
Much of the case has turned on Rush’s alleged behaviour in the play’s final scene, when a distraught Lear carries Cordelia’s dead body on to the stage.
Norvill told the court this week that on one occasion during the scene Rush “deliberately” ran his hand across her breast while his character was mourning over her body in front of an audience during a preview performance of the play.
On another, she alleged, he put his hand underneath her shirt “up to the line of her jeans”, and “very softly and lightly” traced the skin above the waistband while they stood next to each other waiting to go on stage.
“I felt threatened. My panic levels shot up. I felt unsafe and probably sad,” she told the court.
The trial, which is slated to run into next week, has included a roll-call of prominent members of Australia’s film, television and theatre community giving testimony on behalf of Rush.
The Oscar nominee Judy Davis and US agent Fred Specktor have both taken the stand to give evidence for the actor.
Lear’s director, Neil Armfield, and two actors, Robyn Nevin and Helen Buday, told the court they did not witness any inappropriate behaviour from Rush during the production.
During her evidence, Norvill alleged that, during the preview run, Armfield – Australia’s pre-eminent theatre director – had given an oral “note” to Rush that he should be more “paternal”, and that the scene was becoming “creepy” and “unclear”.
Armfield denied in his evidence that he had given that note. Buday – who repeatedly sang the lyrics from the song Truly Scrumptious from the film Chitty Chitty Bang Bang while giving evidence, briefly refused to leave the stand, and broke into tears outside of the courtroom – also denied she had seen Rush behave inappropriately during the play.
Nevin gave evidence that she had had a “tearful” conversation with Norvill following the production in which she is said to have referred to her “trouble” with Rush, but insisted she did not mention “anything sexual” during the conversation.
She denied Norvill’s claim that during the conversation she’d responded: “I thought Geoffrey had stopped doing that. Poor Jane [Menelaus, Rush’s wife].”
Rush has denied all of the allegations made against him, telling the court he believed he had a “whimsical” relationship with Norvill.
“I had no inkling,” he said. “My antenna is pretty good … I lived Lear on a daily basis but I’m pretty aware of moodscapes within a group of people and I never detected that I was making her, as I hear I was, making her feel uncomfortable or I was ruffling feathers.”
Under cross-examination from Rush’s barrister, Bruce McClintock SC, Norvill was repeatedly accused of being a liar.
Bullish and wry, McClintock is one of Sydney’s top defamation lawyers, having won cases for the cricketer Chris Gayle and Australia’s former treasurer Joe Hockey. He relentlessly drilled Norvill on the fine details of her evidence, on the fact that she had not complained about his behaviour during the production, and on the text messages and emails she’d exchanged with Rush before and after the play.
The texts included puns on Rush’s name such as “Jet Lee Thrust” and “God of Generic Lust” which he described as “sexually flirtatious”.
“What do you think a man would take from [the texts]?” he asked at one point.
Norvill, McClintock asserted, had invented “a whole pack of disgusting lies” about Rush in an attempt to “blacken and smear” his reputation.
Norvill remained composed through most of the cross-examination, often closing her eyes and taking deep breaths during the grilling. On one occasion when McClintock again accused her of lying, she locked eyes with the judge, Justice Michael Wigney, and replied: “I am not lying, your honour.”
She told the court she felt unable to speak up about Rush’s behaviour because of his power within the production. “I was at the bottom of the rung in terms of hierarchy and Geoffrey was definitely at the top,” she said. “That was at play – I have to be honest and say his power was intimidating and this person, I wanted to be a part of his world.
“We were also playing father and daughter [and] I felt that if I was to speak [it] might jeopardise that relationship, the tenderness, the closeness [that] is needed in those two roles.
“Everyone else didn’t seem to have a problem about it … I was looking at a room that was complicit, my director didn’t seem to have a problem with it so I felt quashed in terms terms of my ability to find allies.”
She claimed actors such as Nevin had helped “enable” Rush’s alleged behaviour. “Ms Nevin has always been kind to me … Whether she enabled Geoffrey’s behaviour is a different matter,” Norvill said. “We’re from different generations; maybe we have different ideas about what is culturally appropriate in the workplace.
“She enabled that behaviour, as did everyone in that room. There was a culture of bullying and harassment in that room and in my industry. Sexual harassment happens often and it happened in that room to me and I believe people knew about it but didn’t know what to say [or] didn’t know what to do. They were frightened.”
Rush has vigorously denied the claims made against him, and is seeking aggravated damages from the Telegraph. Asked last week whether he had ever intentionally touched Norvill on the breast, Rush replied “no”. He also denied touching her on her lower back, or aiming inappropriate gestures towards her.
Last week the court heard the Telegraph articles made him feel “sick to my stomach”. The court heard evidence that he broke into tears when he saw the Telegraph’s “King Leer” headline, and had told his wife that he no longer wanted to act.
“It’s been the worst 11 months of my life,” he said. “These [articles] are the starting point [and] it only got worse. It kind of concurs with the 47th anniversary of my starting life as a professional actor, and suddenly [it] was dismantling how I felt as a person.”
The trial continues.
