Two more actresses have come forward to accuse actor Steven Seagal of sexual misconduct during auditions.
Jenny McCarthy and Eva LaRue have said the action-movie star acted inappropriately toward them, joining actresses Portia de Rossi and Juliana Margulies, who have made similar claims. Inside Edition’s Lisa Guerrero also named Seagal in a claim of her own.
McCarthy first spoke of sexual harassment claims against Seagal in an interview with “Movieline” in 1998, according to Entertainment Weekly.
McCarthy said she was auditioning for Under Siege 2 and was “totally starstruck” to meet Seagal, giving him a “firm,” “serious actress” handshake.
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“Then I notice that there was no one else in the room,” she continued. She reasoned, “He’s a celebrity, so maybe it’s normal.”
“So I stand across from him and he plops onto a sofa that’s near a fireplace — of course it is — and taps the sofa cushion next to him saying, ‘Take a seat. Relax,’” she continued. “I said, ‘No thank you! I’m just really excited to read for this part, and I have so much energy I need to stand.’”
After “bragging about himself,” McCarthy recalled him saying, “You know, this part has nudity in it and I can’t really tell what your body looks like in that dress that you’re wearing.”
“In my head, I’m like, ‘Okay, here we go. Sound the alarms. This is not a test, this is the real thing. Activate all defense systems,’” she said. “But I so wanted to legitimately read for this part that I wasn’t gonna give up yet. So I told him, I said, ‘Listen. My agent says there’s no nudity. I specifically asked her and she said no.’ And you know what he says to me? ‘Well, there is off-camera nudity.’”
McCarthy beat a hasty retreat, but not before telling Seagal that if he wanted to see her naked, to shell out $19.99 for her Playboy video.
“Don’t tell anybody or else,” he warned, according to the actress.
A spokesperson for Seagal denied McCarthy’s claims, telling The Daily Beast last year that she never auditioned for a role in the film “Under Siege 2”.
Guerrero’s account of a “private audition” where Seagal was wearing only a bathrobe was eerily similar to LaRue’s story.
Actress Julianna Margulies said she saw one thing and ran screaming from Steven Seagal’s hotel room https://t.co/GuqxulOLJh pic.twitter.com/Zrg0wnSSqy
— Conservative News (@BIZPACReview) November 6, 2017
LaRue, who starred on “CSI: Miami” for eight seasons, told Deadline she was 22 when her agent called and said he set up an audition for her at Seagal’s house.
“Even at 22, I knew better than to go to an audition at somebody’s house,” she said. “But my agent assured me that the reason it was at his house was because they hadn’t secured their studio offices yet.”
The actress said her agent assured her “it’s totally on the up and up,” saying there will be two producers and a casting director on hand.
More from Deadline:
“So I went, against my better judgment,” she recalled, “and sure enough, there were two other guys and some woman who was supposed to be the casting director. And there we were, sitting in his living room, talking about the character I was going to play and the story plot and what they’re looking for – the usual audition chitchat. But I didn’t have the sides. It was a meeting but not a reading. And then the casting director said, ‘I think she’s perfect for the role.’”
Now, all these years later, LaRue said that she doesn’t think there was a role, or even a movie – that it was all just a setup.
Seagal, dressed in a kimono, got up and told her to follow him to get the script. “I don’t know why we don’t have the script in the living room where we were meeting,” she said, “but I said, ‘OK,’ and I follow him, thinking we’re going to his office. We go down the hallway to this room, which is like an office and guest room kind of thing. And he says, ‘Have a seat on the couch.’ It was like a literal casting couch. And as I was walking towards the couch, with my back towards the door, he’s busy closing and locking the doors behind my back. I go to sit on the couch, and he comes towards me and he’s opening his weirdo kimono. There’s no script or anything. Just him standing there with his kimono open. He had underwear on, thank God, and he was bare everywhere else. And it was clear he was not just getting cozy.”
LaRue too beat a hasty retreat, saying she had another meeting to attend, all the while as Seagal insisted that she stay.
She told Deadline that she called her agent afterwards and told him what happened.
“All these agents back then knew what was going on for ages,” LaRue said. “Thanks for not telling us. Everybody knew but us actors. But nobody followed up or anything.”
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The longest-tenured writer at BizPac Review, Tom grew up in Maryland before moving to Central Florida as a young teen. It is in the Sunshine State that he honed both his passion for politics and his writing skills.
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