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Like Rachel McAdams, Selma Blair has today added her name to the growing list of 38 women who were allegedly sexually assaulted by writer-director James Toback. While The New York Times continues its explosive investigative stories on Harvey Weinstein, The LA Times has zeroed in on Toback. Initially, Blair shared her experience with the latter publication under the condition of anonymity. But, as she told Vanity Fair, she was motivated by the other women who had told their stories to publicly attach her name to hers. “I want Toback to be held accountable,” she said.

 

While casting for his film Harvard Man, Toback met with Blair. Like Weinstein’s classic move, the meeting was to be held in a hotel restaurant but the young actress was told Toback couldn’t make it downstairs and she was re-directed to his hotel room. When she got there, he asked her to take her clothes off and resight her monologue naked. She was reading for a role as a (clothed) lawyer in a courtroom. Toback began rubbing his privates. She refused his advances and he refused to let her leave. The exchanges between the pair are so uncomfortable/hard to read:

“He said, ‘You have to do this for me. You cannot leave until I have release,” recalls Blair. “[He said] ‘You have to run up against my leg, you have to pinch my nipples and you have to look into my eyes’. I thought ‘Well, if I can get out of here without being raped…”.

“He walked me back to the bed. He sat me down. He got on his knees. And he continued to press so hard against my leg,” she continued. “He was greasy and I had to look into those big brown eyes. I tried to look away, but he would hold my face. So I was forced to look into his eyes. And I felt disgust and shame, and like nobody would ever think of me as being clean again after being this close to the devil. His energy was so sinister.”

Afterwards, Toback told a frightened Blair a story of a woman who told someone about an encounter he had with her. Blair recalls Toback saying “I have people who will pull up in a car, kidnap her, and throw her in the Hudson River with cement blocks on her feet.”

While Toback denies the allegations, he’s got everything coming at him now. Selma, thank you for being so brave.