The Oscar-nominated composer Danny Elfman is being sued after reportedly failing to pay $830,000 to an alleged victim of sexual harassment.
According to Rolling Stone, the 70-year-old, whose scores include Batman, Spider-Man and Good Will Hunting, was accused in 2017 by 35-year-old composer Nomi Abadi of exposing himself and masturbating in front of her without consent on two occasions.
The pair agreed to a settlement which consisted of payments spread out over five years but Elfman allegedly failed to make two of them, totalling $85,000. Abadi is now suing him for breach of contract, with the complaint also stating that the payments were being directed to an unspecified charitable foundation.
Elfman has defined the relationship as platonic and called Abadi’s allegations “vicious and wholly false” in a statement, blaming a longstanding crush from her side. “I have done nothing indecent or wrong, and my lawyers stand ready to prove with voluminous evidence that these accusations are false,” he said. “This is the last I will say on this subject.” A spokesperson also told Variety the accusations were “baseless”.
His representative claims that after being faced with threats at the height of the #MeToo movement, Elfman was forced into making an “impossible choice between settling and continuing his career and earning a living for his family or deciding to fight what at the time was an unwinnable battle to tell the truth”.
Abadi’s lawyer has called his comments “directly contrary to the position he maintained in the underlying dispute and to the evidentiary record”.
Elfman is also accused of coercing her into a nude photoshoot. The report in Rolling Stone claims that he “framed nudity as an important aspect of his creative process”.
The composer, who is married to the actor Bridget Fonda, has been nominated for four Oscars and 14 Grammys. He’s a longtime collaborator of the director Tim Burton, working on scores including Edward Scissorhands, Sleepy Hollow and Corpse Bride. They recently worked together on the hit Netflix show Wednesday.
Abadi founded the Female Composer Safety League, an organisation aimed at protecting female musicians in the business. This year she spoke at a press conference alongside female sexual misconduct survivors. “There is a clear and urgent need to center the experiences of survivors of sexual assault in the music industry, who have lost their careers because they were abused and silenced,” she said.
