Goldie Hawn has opened up about the day she confronted Harvey Weinstein after he destroyed their earlier “deal.”
Weinstein’s production company Miramax was poised to adapt the legendary Broadway musical Chicago for the film in the late 1980s. Hawn was supposed to play Velma Kelly, with Madonna playing Roxie Hart.
While the film was developing, Weinstein commissioned an alternate script that starred a younger Velma, 23. At the time, Hawn was two decades older.
“Harvey sabotaged Madonna and me,” Hawn said in a new interview with Variety. “‘Don’t f*** with me,’ I said. Because I know exactly what you’re up to. We reached an agreement.”
The movie finally fell apart, and Weinstein reworked it with Renée Zellweger as Roxie and Catherine Zeta-Jones as Velma. The following year, the film won the Academy Award for Best Picture.
To Hawn’s delight, the now-disgraced media magnate did end up paying her the sum they had previously agreed on for her work.
“When you stand up to a bully, you occasionally win,” she recounted. “I told him later, ‘You know what the best part about you paying me is? It’s not about the money. You restored my trust in morality and decency.’”
“He’s finally experiencing his karma,” she continued.
Weinstein is serving a decades-long prison sentence in Los Angeles and New York for sexual assault crimes.
“Acting parts were always chosen based on what was best for the movie, aesthetically and financially,” he told the publication from prison.
“We believed we did the best we could on Chicago, and I’m proud of it, and I am so pleased that Goldie’s experience was a positive one and that she has the strength to say so in this climate. “I would simply thank you.”
