Meryl Streep blasts Weinstein's lawyers for using her name in lawsuit
— -- Meryl Streep isn't happy with Harvey Weinstein's use of her name -- as well as Jennifer Lawrence's -- in a motion to get a sexual misconduct class-action lawsuit against him tossed.
"Harvey Weinstein's attorneys' use of my (true) statement -- that he was not sexually transgressive or physically abusive in our business relationship -- as evidence that he was not abusive with many OTHER women is pathetic and exploitive," Streep wrote in a statement Tuesday.
"The criminal actions he is accused of conducting on the bodies of these women are his responsibility, and if there is any justice left in the system he will pay for them -- regardless of how many good movies, made by many good people, Harvey was lucky enough to have acquired or financed," she added.
Weinstein's lawyers name-dropped Streep and Lawrence in a memorandum of law accompanying his motion of dismissal Tuesday.
"These proposed class definitions are fatally overbroad as to be not ascertainable," the memo, which has been obtained by ABC News, states. "As drafted, they would include all women who ever met with Weinstein, regardless of whether they claimed to have suffered any identifiable harm as a result of that meeting. Such women would include, presumably, Jennifer Lawrence, who told Oprah Winfrey she had known Weinstein since she was 20 years old and said ‘he had only ever been nice to me,’ and Meryl Streep, who stated publicly that Weinstein had always been respectful to her in their working relationship."
In a statement to ABC News, a spokesperson for Weinstein said, "Mr. Weinstein has been informed that his civil counsel responded in court to a class action lawsuit which improperly sought to include all actresses who had previously worked with Mr. Weinstein, even where those actresses have made no claim of wrongdoing. Even though Mr. Weinstein has worked with hundreds of actresses and actors who had only professional and mutually respectful experiences with him, Mr. Weinstein has directed in the future that no specific names be used by his counsel, even where those actors have made previous public statements about him."
The statement continues, "Mr. Weinstein acknowledges the valuable input both Meryl Streep and Jennifer Lawrence have contributed to this conversation and apologizes. Once again, moving forward, Mr. Weinstein has advised his counsel to not include specific names of former associates; and to avoid whenever possible, even if they are in the public record."
Streep, 68, was nominated for an Academy Award for her role in 2013’s "August: Osage County," which Weinstein executive-produced, and took home the Oscar for 2012's Weinstein Company release, "The Iron Lady."
Lawrence, 27, won an Oscar for the Weinstein-produced "Silver Linings Playbook."
Weinstein, 65, has been accused of sexual misconduct by dozens of women, several of whom accused him of rape. He has denied all allegations of non-consensual sex.
After the first allegations against the producer became public in October, Streep spoke out against him, saying that she was "appalled" by the "disgraceful news," and added that he was "exasperating but respectful" toward her professionally.
"In terms of Harvey, I really didn’t know. I did think he was having girlfriends. But when I heard rumors about actresses, I thought that that was a way of denigrating the actress and her ability to get the job," she later told The New York Times. "You think you know everything about everybody. So much gossip. You don’t know anything. People are so inscrutable on a certain level. And it's a shock."
