Evan Rachel Wood says that the first time musician Marilyn Manson abused her was on camera.
The “Westworld” star speaks about her former relationship with Manson, whose real name is Brian Warner, in the two-part documentary “Phoenix Rising” — the first half of which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival on Sunday. In the film, Wood, 34, says Manson, 53, “essentially raped” her while filming a music video for his song “Heart-Shaped Glasses” in 2007, according to an account of the film in People.
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“We’re doing things that were not what was pitched to me,” Evans says in the documentary, according to the magazine. “We had discussed a simulated sex scene, but once the cameras were rolling, he started penetrating me for real.”
Wood called the experience “complete chaos.”
“I had never agreed to that,” Wood reportedly says in the film. “I’m a professional actress, I’ve been doing this my whole life; I’ve never been on a set that unprofessional in my life up until this day.”
Howard King, Manson’s attorney, responded to Wood’s latest accusation in a statement to People, saying that the actor was concocting a “brazen and [easy] to disprove” lie. Howard said that Manson “did not have sex with Evan on that set, and she knows that is the truth.”
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Wood and Manson dated on and off from 2006 to 2011 and were often the subject of Hollywood gossip over their 18-year age difference. Wood was 18 when she met Manson, and he was 36. In February 2021, Wood became one of more than a dozen women who have publicly accused Manson of sexual and/or psychological abuse. Wood said that the musician began “grooming” her for a cycle of violence when she was a teenager.
In “Phoenix Rising,” Wood notes that, because of her young age and the culture of the film industry at the time, she didn’t know how to “advocate” for herself on the “Heart-Shaped Glasses” set, explaining that she “had been conditioned and trained to never talk back, to just soldier through.”
“I did not feel safe,” Wood says of the “traumatizing” experience, according to the People article. “No one was looking after me.”
Wood says in the documentary that the incident on the video set left her feeling “disgusting and that I had done something shameful, and I could tell that the crew was very uncomfortable and nobody knew what to do.”
“I was coerced into a commercial sex act under false pretenses,” Wood says. “That’s when the first crime was committed against me. I was essentially raped on camera.”
Need help? In the U.S., call 1-866-331-9474 or text “loveis” to 22522 for the National Dating Abuse Helpline.
