Content Warning: This article includes discussion of sexual assault.
Earlier this week, we reported on rape allegations made in the new Evan Rachel Wood documentary, Phoenix Rising, which premiered at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival.
Wood has accused her ex-partner Marilyn Manson of multiple instances of sexual and emotional abuse over the past couple of years. In the film, Wood claims she was raped while filming the music video for Manson’s 2007 single ‘Heart-Shaped Glasses.’
“We had discussed a simulated sex scene, but once the cameras were rolling, he started penetrating me for real,” Wood says in Phoenix Rising (via Pitchfork). “I had never agreed to that. I’m a professional actress, I have been doing this my whole life, I’d never been on a set that unprofessional in my life up until this day.”
Manson, whose legal name is Brian Warner, has responded to the allegations via his lawyer, Howard King, in a statement shared with Newsweek.
“Of all the false claims that Evan Rachel Wood has made about Brian Warner, her imaginative retelling of the making of the ‘Heart-Shaped Glasses’ music video 15 years ago is the most brazen and easiest to disprove, because there were multiple witnesses,” said King’s statement.
“Evan was not only fully coherent and engaged during the three-day shoot but also heavily involved in weeks of pre-production planning and days of post-production editing of the final cut.
“The simulated sex scene took several hours to shoot with multiple takes using different angles and several long breaks in between camera setups.
“Brian did not have sex with Evan on that set, and she knows that is the truth.”
