Evan Rachel Wood is getting more specific in her sexual abuse allegations against ex-fiance Marilyn Manson. In a new documentary, she says the singer “essentially raped” her during the filming of Manson’s 2007 “Heart-Shaped Glasses” music video.
“We had discussed a simulated sex scene, but once the cameras were rolling, he started penetrating me for real,” Wood says in part one of director Amy Berg’s “Phoenix Rising,” which premiered Sunday at the virtual Sundance Film Festival. “I had never agreed to that.”
The 34-year-old Wood, who has been acting since before she was 10, said she had never been on a set that unprofessional or chaotic in her life and didn’t feel safe. She said she didn’t know how to advocate for herself or how to say no, because she had been “conditioned and trained to never talk back — to just soldier through."
After filming the alleged sexual act, Wood said she felt “disgusting” and like she’d done something “shameful.” The crew was uncomfortable and didn’t know what to do, she said.
“I was coerced into a commercial sex act under false pretenses,” Wood said. “That’s when the first crime was committed against me and I was essentially raped on camera.”
The “Westworld” actor was in a relationship with the singer, real name Brian Warner, that went public in January 2007. She was 19 when they began dating and he was 37. They were briefly engaged in 2010 before splitting up that August.
In February 2021, Wood identified Warner as the alleged abuser she’d referenced anonymously in the past.
“He started grooming me when I was a teenager and horrifically abused me for years. I was brainwashed and manipulated into submission. I am done living in fear of retaliation, slander, or blackmail,” she wrote on Instagram.
She continued, “I am here to expose this dangerous man and call out the many industries that have enabled him, before he ruins any more lives. I stand with the many victims who will no longer be silent.”
Attorneys for Warner, 53, did not reply immediately to a request for comment on Wood’s remarks in the documentary. However, a statement was issued to the “Phoenix Rising” filmmakers by an attorney for Warner saying that the performer “vehemently denies any and all claims of sexual assault or abuse of anyone.”
The statement continued: “These lurid claims against [Warner] have three things in common — they are all false, alleged to have taken place more than a decade ago and part of a coordinated attack by former partners and associates of Mr. Warner who have weaponized the otherwise mundane details of his personal life and their consensual relationships into fabricated horror stories.”
In February 2021, when the allegations first picked up steam, Warner posted a denial of his own on Instagram.
“Obviously, my art and my life have long been magnets for controversy, but these recent claims about me are horrible distortions of reality,” he wrote. “My intimate relationships have always been entirely consensual with like-minded partners. Regardless of how — and why — others are now choosing to misrepresent the past, that is the truth.”
In May 2021, Warner was hit with two lawsuits from women alleging sexual misconduct.
While the Sundance screening was a work in progress of the first part of the two-part “Phoenix Rising” film, the complete work will be released in March on HBO and HBO Max.
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