The sexual harassment allegations that Michael Douglas tried to pre-empt have now come out
[Warning: This article includes descriptions of sexual misconduct.]
A little more than a week ago, Deadline posted a piece about actor Michael Douglas, who was attempting to get out ahead of accusations of sexual harassment that he was expecting to see emerge into the public space. Now, those allegations have indeed arrived, with author and journalist Susan Braudy providing a great deal more context and information about the charges of harassment that she’s making against her former boss.
Braudy was employed in the late ’80s to run the New York office of Douglas’ Stonebridge Production company, with her most consistent day-to-day duty apparently being “to babysit Michael in his apartment.” She says she worked out of his home for several years, working on film projects, and intentionally wearing drab clothing in order to avoid drawing Douglas’ sexual attentions. In a piece run in The Hollywood Reporter today, she nevertheless recounts a number of moments of inappropriate innuendo and sexual commentary from her boss over the years, including at least one incident that caused her to ask him not to speak inappropriately about her, which “made him laugh until he got pink splotches on his cheeks.”
As anticipated by Douglas’ earlier statement, Braudy also spoke about an incident in which the actor allegedly masturbated in front of her. The two were apparently meeting to hash out the details of a film Braudy describes as a pretty blatant E.T. rip-off, when:
Still complimenting my additions to our E.T. imitation, his voice lowered at least half an octave. I peered at him and saw he’d inserted both hands into his unzipped pants. I realized to my horror that he was rubbing his private parts. Within seconds his voice cracked and it appeared to me he’d had an orgasm.
Braudy says that she fled his apartment, and later vowed to never be alone with her employer again. Her description of the incident was corroborated by three people—including recent Donald Trump author and THR columnist Michael Wolff—who all remembered that she’d told them about it at the time.