Author Ian McEwan says he will ‘withhold judgment’ on Weinstein claims until court
Written by News on 30/05/2018
Award-winning author Ian McEwan has said he will “withhold judgment” on disgraced movie mogul Harvey Weinstein until he has heard them set out in court.
McEwan said he will maintain a “degree of scepticism” about the allegations, but admitted the film producer seems like “a moral monster”.
Weinstein has been charged with two counts of rape and one count of a criminal sexual act following a string of accusations last year, sparking the international MeToo and Time’s Up movements.
Weinstein has repeatedly denied any allegations of non-consensual sex and intends to plead not guilty after handing himself in to police last Friday.
McEwan, whose On Chesil Beach novella has been adapted and is currently in cinemas, angered LGBT campaigners in 2016 when he said: “Call me old-fashioned, but I tend to think of people with penises as men.”
The Booker Prize winner told theToday programme that there was a “circus” around the Weinstein allegations.
He said: “It seems a kind of circus to me.
“There is the media stuff, which we have to penetrate.
“We don’t know what actually happened; it seems he is a moral monster who has had his comeuppance, but I always like to encourage in myself just a degree of scepticism once the whole mob is in full cry, so I am going to withhold judgments until I have heard the arguments in court.”
Weinstein posted a £751,060 cash bail and will wear an electronic monitor which tracks his movements 24 hours a day.
The 66-year-old also surrendered his passport and agreed to stay within the states of New York and Connecticut.
McEwan compared his own experiences in Hollywood to visiting the court of the notorious Borgia family.
He said: “It was like visiting the court, the mansion, of Cesare Borgia. You come away realising that whatever little fits and starts and upsets we have in the literary world, nothing is as grand and calculating on a huge scale as Hollywood.”
(c) Sky News 2018: Author Ian McEwan says he will ‘withhold judgment’ on Weinstein claims until court
