Marilyn Manson Denies Raping Evan Rachel Wood on the Set of “Heart-Shaped Glasses”
Marilyn Manson has denied a new allegation from his ex-girlfriend, Evan Rachel Wood, that he raped her while they were filming the music video for his 2007 song “Heart-Shaped Glasses.”
Wood makes the accusation in Phoenix Rising, the forthcoming two-part documentary about the Westworld star and her work as an advocate for survivors of domestic abuse.
After alleging that Manson (né Brian Warner) plied her with absinthe while making the video and then, when she was barely conscious, “essentially raped [me] on camera”:
“We had discussed a simulated sex scene, but once the cameras were rolling, he started penetrating me for real. I had never agreed to that. I’m a professional actress, I have been doing this my whole life, I’d never been on a set that unprofessional in my life up until this day. It was complete chaos, and I did not feel safe. No one was looking after me.”
In response to the allegations, Manson’s attorney, Howard King, has released the following statement:
“Of all the false claims that Evan Rachel Wood has made about Brian Warner, her imaginative retelling of the making of the Heart-Shaped Glasses music video 15 years ago is the most brazen and easiest to disprove, because there were multiple witnesses.
“Evan was not only fully coherent and engaged during the three-day shoot but also heavily involved in weeks of pre-production planning and days of post-production editing of the final cut. The simulated sex scene took several hours to shoot with multiple takes using different angles and several long breaks in between camera setups.
“Brian did not have sex with Evan on that set, and she knows that is the truth.”
Phoenix Rising made its debut at the Sundance Film Festival this week, and will air on HBO later this year. The film was directed by Amy Berg, whose previous work includes Deliver Us from Evil (2006), about the Catholic church’s attempt to cover up dozens of abuse allegations against an American priest, and West of Memphis (2012), about the West Memphis Three. The former film received an Academy Award nomination for Best Documentary Feature.
Berg and Wood began work on the film in 2019, when Wood testified in front of the California Senate Public Safety committee on behalf of the Phoenix Act. That bill seeks to create exceptions to the statute of limitations for domestic violence crimes in the state of California.
Although Wood alluded to Manson during that testimony, she did not explicitly accuse him by name until February of 2021.
Her
initial allegations commenced an avalanche of similar accusations from other women, including Game of Thrones actress Esmé Bianco, model/actress Ashley Morgan Smithline and a Jane Doe, all of whom sued Manson. Manson called the accusations against him “horrible distortions of reality,” but the singer was dropped by his label, Loma Vista, his agency, CAA, and his manager of 25 years, Tony Ciulla. He was also fired from television roles on the programs American Gods and Creepshow.
In July, Manson’s attorney continued to deny the claims, asserting that Bianco and others were co-conspirators “trying to conflate the imagery and artistry of Warner’s ‘shock rock’ stage persona … with fabricated accounts of abuse.” Since then, that same attorney has said that the vocalist is open to a “global mediation” (i.e., a mass settlement with all of his alleged victims).
In August, Manson made his first public appearance since his the deluge of allegations against him began, joining Kanye West on stage at an event promoting the rapper’s new album, Donda. Manson also lent his voice to that record and is now ostensibly pursuing a conversion to Christianity with Kanye’s lead.
As a result of Manson’s contributions to Donda, he scored two Grammy nominations last month, in the Album of the Year category and in the Best Rap Song category (for the Donda cut “Jail”). At the time, Harvey Mason Jr., CEO of The Recording Academy (a.k.a. “The People Who Give Out the Grammys”), defended Manson’s nominations, declaring that “We won’t restrict the people who can submit their material for consideration. We won’t look back at people’s history, we won’t look at their criminal record.” But Manson’s Best Rap Song nomination has since been rescinded, supposedly due the singer being improperly credited as one of the songwriters of “Jail” (he remains credited on the near-identical “Jail, Pt. 2”).
Amidst all the Grammy controversy, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s department raided Manson’s West Hollywood home, where they reportedly “seized media storage units, including hard drives, which will be reviewed before the case is submitted to the Los Angeles County District Attorney.” Manson is said not to have been home at the time of the raid.
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