Olivia Munn Among Women Accusing Brett Ratner of Sexual Harassment
Update: Brett Ratner is stepping away from all Warner Brothers activities after six women including actress Olivia Munn alleged the director engaged in sexual misconduct to the Los Angeles Times.
“In light of the allegations being made, I am choosing to personally step away from all Warner Bros.- related activities,” Ratner said in an official statement. “I don’t want to have any possible negative impact to the studio until these personal issues are resolved.”
Munn recalled how in 2004, when she was still an aspiring actress in Hollywood, she was visiting the set of Ratner’s After the Sunset when she was asked to deliver a meal to the director’s trailer. According to Munn, she was assured that he would not be there.
It was much to her surprise, then, that Ratner was not only in his trailer, but was also sans pants and eating a shrimp cocktail.
“He walked out … with his belly sticking out, no pants on, shrimp cocktail in one hand and he was furiously masturbating in the other,” Munn said. “And before I literally could even figure out where to escape or where to look, he ejaculated.”
Munn said she was shocked and recalled letting out a “startled scream” before running out of the trailer. When she recounted the experience to the man who had asked her to deliver the food, his reaction was less than reassuring.
“It wasn’t a shock,” she said. “It wasn’t a surprise. It was just, ‘Ugh, sorry about that.'”
The actress immediately told her sister, who told her she should speak with a lawyer. Rather than draw up a case against Ratner, however, Munn said the lawyer told her that it was inadvisable for her to try to go up against such a powerful director.
“That did leave an impact on me,” Munn said. “How broken do women have to be before people listen?”
Munn would go on to recount the incident in her 2010 book, Suck It, Wonder Woman! The Misadventures of a Hollywood Geek – though she opted to leave out names and details. Ratner voluntarily claimed the shrimp-and-masturbation story during a 2011 appearance on Attack of the Show, a TV program Munn previously co-hosted, however.
“This is the truth,” he said when asked whether he was the unnamed director in question. “I used to date Olivia Munn, I will be honest with everybody here. When she was ‘Lisa.’ That was the problem. She wasn’t Asian back then. … I banged her a few times … but I forgot her.”
Rather claimed that Munn had written about the damning incident because she was “bitter” that he didn’t remember her at an audition years later. But a few days after his Attack of the Show appearance, Ratner backtracked on his claims.
“I felt horrible,” he said on the Howard Stern show, admitting that he had never actually slept with Munn. “I said I banged her three times, which wasn’t true.”
Ratner’s attorney, Marty Singer, told the Los Angeles Times that Munn and Ratner had indeed had “an intimate relationship,” which Munn called “a complete lie.”
Another woman who accused Ratner of assault, Natasha Henstridge, alleged that Ratner had once cornered her and forced her to perform oral sex on him at his New York apartment in the 1990s. Actress Jaime Ray Newman claimed that Ratner had once made her extremely uncomfortable by “graphically” described giving her oral sex while they were both on an Air Canada flight.
Singer told Rolling Stone in a statement: “Brett Ratner vehemently denies the outrageous derogatory allegations that have been reported about him, and we are confident that his name will be cleared once the current media frenzy dies down and people can objectively evaluate the nature of these claims. He understands the seriousness of this issue and the importance of addressing the concerns of victims of sexual misconduct both in the entertainment industry and beyond.”