In a statement from London Thursday, Jennifer Lawrence criticized disgraced studio head Harvey Weinstein for dredging up old compliments she’d paid him prior to learning about his history of sexual misconduct.
Weinstein quoted Lawrence and fellow Oscar-winner Meryl Streep in court documents filed this week, attempting to dismiss a class-action lawsuit that was filed on behalf of all the women who have worked with him. Weinstein’s defense claimed such a broad group of people would unfairly include former collaborators like Streep, “who has always been respectful” toward Weinstein, and Lawrence, who the filing quoted as saying Weinstein “had only ever been nice to me.”
Lawrence wanted to make it clear that she did not support Weinstein’s defense, and that her opinion of the former Miramax head has evolved significantly over the years.
“Harvey Weinstein and his company are continuing to do what they have always done which is to take things out of context and use them for their own benefit,” Lawrence said in a statement from London, where her movie Red Sparrow is opening this weekend. “This is what predators do, and it must stop.”
“For the record,” she continued. “While I was not victimized personally by Harvey Weinstein, I stand behind the women who have survived his terrible abuse and I applaud them in using all means necessary to bring him to justice whether through criminal or civil actions. Time’s up.”
Streep fired back at Weinstein too, via a statement to Deadline earlier this week. “Harvey Weinstein’s attorneys use of my (true) statement—that he was not sexually transgressive or physically abusive in our business relationship—as evidence that he was not abusive with many OTHER women is pathetic and exploitive,” she wrote. “The criminal actions he is accused of conducting on the bodies of these women are his responsibility, and if there is any justice left in the system he will pay for them— regardless of how many good movies, made by many good people, Harvey was lucky enough to have acquired or financed.”