Actress Amber Tamblyn has detailed her experience with sexual harrassment as a 21-year-old, shedding light on how her accusations, at the time, were received.
In an impassioned piece for the New York Times, Tamblyn shared how, on the set of a television show that was “very successful and beloved”, she made her way to the office of her producer “to discuss a big problem”.
She writes:
“A crew member had kept showing up to my apartment after work unannounced, going into my trailer while I wasn’t in it, and staring daggers at me from across the set. I liked him at first. He was very sweet and kind in the beginning. We flirted a bit on set. But I was in a relationship. And liking someone certainly didn’t merit the kind of behavior he was exhibiting, which was making me feel unsafe.”
Her hands, she describes, were freezing. She balled up her wardrobe skirt after her fists as she began to speak. Her words, like important but difficult ones almost always do, got caught in the back of her throat. She was embarrassed, she writes, “that it had gotten to this point”.
She goes on:
“The producer listened. Then he said, ‘Well, there are two sides to every story.'”
Tamblyn’s piece comes in the same month she accused now-70-year-old actor James Woods on Twitter of trying to “pick [her] up” at the age of just 16.
The tweets came after Woods criticised Armie Hammer’s upcoming film, in which he plays a 24-year-old dating a 17-year-old.
"James Woods tried to pick me and my friend up at a restaurant once. He wanted to take us to Vegas. 'I'm 16' I said. 'Even better' he said," Tamblyn tweeted earlier this month.
In her op-ed for the New York Times, Tamblyn says for a long time, she worried about speaking out "or asking things of men in positions of power".
After all, one of the first times she did speak up, she was told his side was as worthy of being heard as hers.
"What I have experienced as an actress working in a business whose business is to objectify women is frightening," she says.
And so now, matters are in her own hands, as she speaks loudly, clearly and passionately for all the women who cannot speak for themselves.
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