Anthony Bourdain didn’t mince words when speaking about how Quentin Tarantino kept silent despite knowing about Harvey Weinstein’s alleged sexual harassment and assault of women.
Bourdain was discussing turning down a lucrative business deal because he felt the person making the offer was “clearly a monster.”
“It would’ve been a lethal compromise,” Bourdain said. “It would’ve been a slow-acting poison that would eventually nibble away at our souls until we ended up like Quentin Tarantino, looking back on a life of complicity and shame and compromise.”
Bourdain is dating actress and director Asia Argento, one of several women who have come forward to accuse Harvey Weinstein of sexual assault. Tarantino admitted in an interview with the New York Times that he had known about Weinstein’s behavior before investigations by the Times and the New Yorker were published, detailing decades worth of allegations of sexual assault and harassment.
“There was more to it than just the normal rumors, the normal gossip. It wasn’t secondhand. I knew he did a couple of these things,” Tarantino told the Times last Wednesday. “I wish I had taken responsibility for what I heard.”
Following Bourdain’s comments, which took place at the Producers Guild of America’s Produced By conference on Saturday, Argento took to Twitter to say, “One might think we all need to slam Tarantino’s complicity with Harvey Weinstein.”