Meryl Streep responds to Rose McGowan's 'hypocrisy' comment

Hollywood veteran Meryl Streep has finally responded to Rose McGowan's tweet, calling out her and other actresses for planning to wear black at the Golden Globes to protest gender inequality. McGowan wrote Saturday in a now-deleted tweet: 'Actresses, like Meryl Streep, who happily worked for The Pig Monster, are wearing black @GoldenGlobes in a silent protest. YOUR SILENCE is THE problem. You'll accept a fake award breathlessly & affect no real change. I despise your hypocrisy. Maybe you should all wear Marchesa.

Meryl Streep

In response to McGowan's tweet, Streep's representative has released a statement from the actress, reports E! Online. The statement read, 'It hurt to be attacked by Rose McGowan in banner headlines this weekend, but I want to let her know I did not know about Weinstein's crimes, not in the 90s when he attacked her, or through subsequent decades when he proceeded to attack others. I wasn't deliberately silent. I didn't know. I don't tacitly approve of rape. I didn't know. I don't like young women being assaulted. I didn't know this was happening.'

Streep expressed that she had never visited Weinstein's home, nor had he ever been to her residence, and she had never been invited to his hotel room. She also noted that 'not every actor, actress, and director who made films that HW distributed knew he abused women, or that he harassed Rose in the 90s, other women before and others after, until they told us.'

The statement continued, 'Rose assumed and broadcast something untrue about me, and I wanted to let her know the truth. Through friends who know her, I got my home phone number to her the minute I read the headlines. I sat by that phone all day yesterday and this morning, hoping to express both my deep respect for her and others' bravery in exposing the monsters among us, and my sympathy for the untold, ongoing pain she suffers.'

The three-time Oscar-winning artist concluded her statement by saying, 'I am truly sorry she sees me as an adversary, because we are both, together with all the women in our business, standing in defiance of the same implacable foe: a status quo that wants so badly to return to the bad old days, the old ways where women were used, abused and refused entry into the decision-making, top levels of the industry. That's where the cover-ups convene. Those rooms must be disinfected, and integrated, before anything even begins to change.'

McGowan's initial tweet came after it was reported that actresses, including nominees and presenters, were planning to wear black to protest gender inequality and to acknowledge the flood of sexual abuse allegations that have rocked Hollywood. Following Streep's statement, McGowan has issued an apology on her official Twitter account.

She tweeted, 'The Marchesa line was beneath me and I'm sorry for that. Seeing that picture of Alyssa Milano with GC [Georgina Chapman] has ignited something in me that I can't quite articulate. There is no map for this road I'm on, I will fuck up. Peace be with you, go with Goddess.'

Weinstein's career in Hollywood was destroyed after reports came forward accusing him of having intimidated, sexually harassed and abused women for decades. In the fallout, the once-acclaimed producer has been ousted from his own production company, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and the Producers Guild of America.

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