“It’s the first time I’m talking about Cohen,” she said. “He abused me, making me drink GHB, he had a bottle of it.” GHB is a depressant used in incidents of date rape. “At the time, I really didn’t know what it was. I woke up in the morning naked in his bed,” Argento said. According to the star, the incident occurred in 2002 while filming “xXx” opposite Vin Diesel and Samuel L. Jackson. “I confirm what [was] reported by Corriere,” Argento said to Variety in a text message. “I talk about it in my autobiography.” Her upcoming memoir is titled “Anatomy of a Wild Heart,” and it’s set for publication in Italy this coming week on January 26.
On the talk show “Verissimo” on Saturday promoting the book, Argento revealed that there were reasons she didn’t come out about the accusations sooner, and that she only understood later what had happened to her. “I discovered later, speaking with a friend who opened my eyes about that substance [GHB],” she said. The director added that she was compelled to speak out in the wake of other sexual assault allegations against Cohen. Cohen, whose transgender 32-year-old daughter Valkyrie Weather in 2019 said the director molested her when she was two years old, allegedly assaulted an actress after they met in New York to discuss a pilot that never came to be. The alleged victim, identified under the alias “Jane” in a Huffington Post report, described a similar scenario of drugging following a business meeting. “The next thing she remembers is waking up naked… She remembers Cohen’s face in her crotch and his fingers inside her. She had not consented to any of this.” According to the piece, she vomited in the bathroom and then returned to bed, where Cohen tried to initiate intercourse but stopped when she asked him to. Cohen’s reps denied the allegations. While Argento became a figurehead of the #MeToo movement with accusations against Harvey Weinstein in Ronan Farrow’s 2017 New Yorker article, she incurred sexual assault allegations of her own from actor Jimmy Bennett, co-star on the film “The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things.” Argento’s attorney admitted to a sexual encounter, but denied the assault. Sign Up: Stay on top of the latest breaking film and TV news! Sign up for our Email Newsletters here.
