Former American actress Jessica Mann testified on Tuesday about her first meetings with Harvey Weinstein, during the new rape trial of the former Hollywood mogul in New York, whose fall caused the #MeToo movement.
Already incarcerated in connection with other legal proceedings, Harvey Weinstein appears again for the rape charge brought by Jessica Mann, who claims to have been attacked in a hotel room in Manhattan. This hearing follows the annulment of a first conviction handed down in 2020 and the failure of the jury to return a verdict in 2025 on this charge.
The aspiring actress recounted the compliments and flattery that the founder of Miramax Studios, now 74 years old, addressed to her in the weeks preceding the facts studied by the court.
“I had the feeling that he was a good person, that he was offering to be a mentor for me,” she told the hearing in a New York court, beige jacket on her shoulders.
When they met at a party in early 2013, she was a 27-year-old aspiring actress, one of the big heavyweights of American cinema.
“He told me I was prettier than Natalie Portman,” Jessica Mann said Monday. She remembered thinking about the “miracle” that happened to her then, being supported by such a powerful figure in the world of Hollywood.
Her voice breaking, she paused several times on the stand to resume her testimony, similar to those delivered during the previous trials of 2020 and 2025.
According to her account, the American producer invited her to his hotel room in March 2013, where she believes the rape occurred.
Harvey Weinstein, sitting in a wheelchair due to health problems, shook his head several times during Jessica Mann’s speaking engagement, which is scheduled to continue Tuesday.
The defense assures for its part that the relationship was consensual.
During his previous trial, in June 2025 in Manhattan, Harvey Weinstein was found guilty of sexual assault on former production assistant Miriam Haley, forced to undergo cunnilingus in 2006, and acquitted of a similar sexual assault alleged the same year on Polish model Kaja Sokola.
But tensions that emerged during the jury’s deliberations led the judge to declare the proceedings concerning Jessica Mann void, opening the way to a new trial.
The producer of “Pulp Fiction” and “Shakespeare in Love” has also appealed his sentence in 2023 in California to 16 years in prison for the rape of a European actress, which occurred more than ten years previously.
More than 80 women have accused him of sexual violence since 2017.
