Rose McGowan has claimed that someone close to Harvey Weinstein offered her $1m to remain silent about her sexual assault allegations against the producer.

McGowan, who has accused Weinstein of raping her in a hotel room in 1997, told the New York Times that she had received the offer from an individual close to Weinstein in late September, weeks before multiple sexual abuse allegations against the disgraced mogul came to light. The actor allegedly had previously signed a $100,000 settlement with Weinstein in 1997 over the incident, but says that she discovered this summer that the agreement did not include a confidentiality clause.

The actor says that she initially responded to Weinstein’s offer with her own counter-offer of $6m, partly as a way of raising money towards paying for her career as a multimedia artist and partly as a means of torturing the producer. However, one day after the New York Times published an explosive investigation detailing decades of alleged abuse by Weinstein, she decided to reject the offer outright. “I was like – ew, gross, you’re disgusting, I don’t want your money, that would make me feel disgusting,” she said.(theguardian)…[+]