Kate Beckinsale is detailing a plethora of harrowing experiences she claims she’s had as a working actress over the years.
Inspired by Blake Lively’s sexual harassment and retaliation complaint against her “It Ends With Us” co-star and director, Justin Baldoni, Beckinsale took to Instagram Monday to provide more anecdotal evidence that women in the entertainment industry — and beyond — suffer the consequences of speaking up.
Perhaps the most jarring story she told was that she was once allegedly ordered to do a photo shoot just one day after she had suffered a miscarriage.
“I’ve been forced by a publicist that I was employing to do a photo shoot the day after I’d had a miscarriage,” the UK native, 51, claimed in her selfie-style video.
“And I said, ‘I can’t. I’m bleeding. I don’t want to change my clothes in front of people I don’t know. I’m bleeding. I had a miscarriage.’ And she was like, ‘You have to or you’ll be sued.’”
Beckinsale went on to claim that she was once called a “c–t” and a “bitch” — both via a walkie talkie and to her face — for complaining that her male co-star was showing up to work drunk and therefore delaying production, which robbed her of precious evenings with her daughter.
“The studio’s response was to give me a bike so that I could ride around the studio lot while I was waiting,” she claimed.
The “Underworld” star also claimed that she’s had “groups of people” stand in front of her and ask, “What the f–k are we going to do? How do we make her attractive?”
In fact, she alleged she was put on such strict diet and exercise programs in the past that she stopped menstruating.
“That’s happened twice,” she claimed before broaching the topic of male actors who get “a kind of thrill out of being able to harm a woman during a fight sequence.”
Beckinsale claimed she was once “harmed” during a fight scene and has the MRIs to prove it, but when she told higher-ups about it, she was “gaslit,” “blamed” and “ostracized” by the cast and crew.
When she was 18, the “Van Helsing” star was allegedly “felt up by somebody that [she] really trusted on a crew.”
A “crying” Beckinsale claimed she told two of her female co-stars she’d “just been assaulted,” and both of them responded, “No, you haven’t.”
Though she considers herself one of the “fortunate ones” to not “be shown a body part” by disgraced filmmaker Harvey Weinstein, he still allegedly used his power to punish her — and others.
“If I, you know, you turn down a movie or a production deal, he would get on the phone and talk to every director in town and every magazine editor and say, ‘Don’t use her.’ And it worked,” Beckinsale claimed, stressing that women from all walks of life who voice their “legitimate complaints” are “f–ked.”
The mother of one concluded, “I’m grateful to Blake Lively for highlighting the fact that this is not an archaic problem that no one’s facing. This is continuing. And then when it does happen, a machine goes into place to absolutely destroy you. And I’m sure that’s the case in other industries as well. And it’s just got to stop.”
Lively, 37, recently filed a legal complaint against Baldoni, 40, claiming he sexually harassed her on the set of their August film, “It Ends With Us,” and that after they held a meeting to address his alleged behavior, he hired a crisis management team to destroy her reputation.
However, he has denied the “completely false, outrageous and intentionally salacious” allegations and is reportedly planning to file an “explosive” counter-complaint.
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