Charlize Theron revealed on the “Call Her Daddy” podcast Wednesday that after she went public with sexual harassment allegations against an unnamed director in 2019, the man who harassed her reached out in an attempt to explain away his actions: “Classic, isn’t it?” Theron quipped.
“He heard me tell the story, and he knew it was about him,” the Oscar-winning actress and “The Old Guard 2” star told host Alex Cooper. “He wrote me a pretend letter trying to explain his behavior and how I must have misunderstood it.”
The actress added that “he started panicking” and “got a little nervous for a while there.”
Theron first spoke out about the early-career experience during a 2019 appearance on “The Howard Stern Show,” where explained that the unnamed director called on her to come to his home on a Saturday night for an audition, the first she’d ever participated in for her acting career.
When she arrived, Theron said the director opened the door wearing pajama bottoms and kept interrupting her to hold a conversation during what was supposed to be her audition. At one point, he placed his hand on her knee.
“The little voice inside me definitely said, ‘This isn’t right,’” Theron said of the incident. “But then the other voice in me says, ‘Well, I don’t know. Maybe it is right.’”
On “Call Her Daddy,” Theron also explained her reasons for continuing to not reveal the name of the director she said sexually harassed her at the audition.
Watch the full interview below:
“I’ve never said his name because honestly, I don’t want the story to be about him,” she said. “It’s not because I’m protecting him or anything, but he got nervous for a little bit.”
She said that he was nervous because he knew the incident she was discussing was about him and he knows that she’d be forthright about his identity if she was ever asked about it.
“He was waiting for me,” Theron said. “And I just realized, like, I won’t even f–king say your name because you know you’re the scumbag. You know it’s you and if anybody ever asked me about him, I would be completely honest. And he knows that. And I kind of like that he’s got to be on a hot seat. He doesn’t know when it’s going to come. I kind of like that a little more.”
