John Oliver Spars with Dustin Hoffman Over Sexual Harassment Claims
by EG
Dustin Hoffman has tried to brush off claims that he has sexually harassed women on his movie sets, claiming that he doesn't remember the incidents. John Oliver, host of Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, was having none of Hoffman's dismissals during a recent panel discussion, however.
John Oliver got into a testy argument with Dustin Hoffman over sexual harassment allegations against the Oscar-winning actor at a film panel in New York on Monday night.
At a 20th-anniversary panel and screening of the political film Wag the Dog, Oliver asked Hoffman about recent sexual harassment allegations made against him by Anna Graham Hunter, going back to when she was a 17-year-old production assistant on the 1985 TV film Death of a Salesman. According to The Washington Post's Steve Zeitchik, who tweeted about the back-and-forth as it happened and later posted a full story and video of what transpired, Hoffman "grew visibly uncomfortable."
The Last Week Tonight host broached the subject approximately halfway through the hourlong pre-screening discussion, according to Zeitchik's story.
“This is something we’re going to have to talk about because…it’s hanging in the air,” Oliver said to Hoffman at the discussion, according to the Post.
“It’s hanging in the air?” Hoffman said. “From a few things you’ve read you’ve made an incredible assumption about me,” he noted, adding sarcastically, “You’ve made the case better than anyone else can. I’m guilty.”
Oliver, in particular, seized on Hoffman's apology after The Hollywood Reporter revealed the allegations against the actor.
When contacted by THR, Hoffman said, "I have the utmost respect for women and feel terrible that anything I might have done could have put her in an uncomfortable situation. I am sorry. It is not reflective of who I am."
“It’s ‘not reflective of who I am’ — it’s that kind of response to this stuff that pisses me off,” Oliver said during the panel discussion, according to the Post. “It is reflective of who you were. If you’ve given no evidence to show it didn’t [happen] then there was a period of time for a while when you were a creeper around women. It feels like a cop-out to say ‘it wasn’t me.’ Do you understand how that feels like a dismissal?”
The rest of the discussion was dominated by Oliver, Hoffman and the subject of sexual harassment, with other panel participants and audience members trying to change the subject, the Post reports, claiming that Oliver himself even tried to move on and talk about the film but Hoffman returned to the harassment claims.
Get the rest of the story at The Hollywood Reporter.
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