Morton recalled her tumultuous history with Weinstein on 'The Louis Theroux Podcast.'
Samantha Morton is opening up about her relationship with Harvey Weinstein. In a new interview on The Louis Theroux Podcast, Morton claims that the disgraced Hollywood producer tried to destroy her acting career.
The Minority Report actress claims Weinstein blackballed her on his films after she turned down his 2000 romantic comedy About Adam, starring Kate Hudson, Stuart Townsend and Frances O'Connor.
According to Morton, Weinstein was impressed with her performance in 1997's Under the Skin and wanted her to star in About Adam, but she wasn't into the project.
"I said, 'I don't like it,'" Morton recalled of turning down the offer. "'I think the film is really misogynistic and I don't want to be part of it.'"
Morton alleges that the casting director responded by telling her, "'You don’t say no to Harvey.'"
While the actress turned down the role, she said it wasn't a no to him and rather to the film, telling Theroux that the project just wasn't interesting to her.
"I had just worked with Stuart Townsend on Under the Skin. It was just not interesting to me. I was uber-polite," she added.
Morton continued, "I [then] had a phone call saying, 'You can't say no.' The 'no' wasn’t being listened to. So they kept coming back with this role and I was told unequivocally, 'You’re not going to work again unless you do this role. I’m going to make your life hell. You will not work again.'"
Morton said that she stood her ground and continuously turned down the role, but felt that it cost her future roles on some of Weinstein's other projects, including 2005's The Brothers Grimm.
According to Morton, Weinstein, 71, said he didn’t want her for the Matt Damon and Heath Ledger-led fantasy film because she was "unf**kable." Lena Headey was instead cast in the role.
"It made me question why he was anti-me?" Morton said of Weinstein, who is currently behind bars after being convicted of rape. It was then that she realized it all boiled down to her saying no to About Adam.
"I forgot about it because it was years earlier. And then all these years later, I realized that [when] I get an offer, get a letter from a director, if Miramax or then the Weinstein Company had anything to do with it, it was just awful for me," she added. "He had a reason, a deep-seated reason, to just try and destroy my career… He categorically couldn't, because I kept working, doing independent cinema all over the world."
Despite what Morton called an attempt to "destroy" her career, she has continued working and starring in major projects, such as Steven Spielberg’s Minority Report, The Walking Dead and Oscar winner, The Whale.
She also participated in the #MeToo drama, She Said, which tells the story of The New York Times investigation into Weinstein’s sexual assault.
Weinstein, meanwhile, is serving consecutive sentences -- first a 23-year term that he is serving from his sexual assault conviction in New York in 2020, and another 16-year sentence for committing sex crimes in Los Angeles County.
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