Quentin Tarantino wishes he would’ve talked to his former colleague, convicted sex offender Harvey Weinstein, “man-to-man” about his criminal behavior.
The pair made nine movies together until they went their separate ways in 2017 when Weinstein faced several allegations of sexual harassment and assault.
Continuing his press tour for his new book, “Cinema Speculation,” Tarantino appeared on HBO Max’s “Who’s Talking to Chris Wallace” and doubled down on his former claim that he knew some about Weinstein’s inappropriate behavior, but didn’t know about the sexual wrongdoings.
“I’d never heard the stories that later came out at all,” Tarantino told Wallace. “I heard the same stories that everybody had heard. What I wish I had done was talk to Harvey about it and say, ‘Harvey, you can’t do this.’ To tell you the truth, I chalked it up to a ‘Mad Men’-era version of the boss chasing the secretary around the desk. I’m not saying that’s ok. That’s how I heard it … in that category. There was never any talk of rape or anything like that.
“The reason I didn’t [say something to Weinstein] was because that’s a real hard conversation to have,” Tarantino admitted. “I felt it was pathetic. I felt what he was doing was pathetic and I didn’t want to deal with his pathetic-ness.”
“I didn’t think it was, ‘Ok, you do this for me or you’re not going to get this movie.’ I never heard any actresses say anything like that,” Tarantino added. “It was just you know, ‘Don’t get in the back of a limo with him.’ It was easy to compartmentalize that to some degree. Anyway, I feel bad about … what I feel bad about is I feel bad that I did not have a man-to-man talk with him about it.”
The Golden Globe-winning director has made multiple headlines throughout his press tour, including when he named “Once Upon a Time In Hollywood” his best movie and debunked Kanye West’s claim that the “Gold Digger” rapper came up with the concept of “Django.”
Testifying at Weinstein’s sexual assault trial earlier this week, Norwegian model-turned-actress Natassia Malthe claimed that the producer demanded that she join him in a threesome two months after he allegedly raped her.
Weinstein — who is already serving a 23-year sentence for rape and sexual assault in New York — is facing charges for allegedly sexually assaulting four women in Los Angeles between 2004 and 2013.
If convicted on all counts, he faces a maximum sentence of 65 years to life in prison.
The movie “She Said,” which portrays the two New York Times reporters who broke the Harvey Weinstein sexual misconduct story, dropped in theaters on Friday,