Dustin Hoffman Sexual Misconduct Accusers Call Him 'Abusive, 'a Bully'
Three women who accused Dustin Hoffman of sexual misconduct said in a joint TV interview on Monday, December 18, that the Oscar winner was “abusive” and “a bully.”
Anna Graham Hunter, Cori Thomas and Kathryn Rossetter, three of five women who have accused the actor of sexual harassment or assault, sat down with Cynthia McFadden for the interview on NBC Nightly News With Lester Holt.
As previously reported, Hunter was a 17-year-old intern on the TV adaptation of Death of a Salesman, when she claimed that Hoffman sexually harassed her, asking her to massage his feet, then later flirting with her, grabbing her butt and humiliating her in front of the crew when he gave her a sexually explicit breakfast order.
“Everyone burst out laughing and I backed out,” she told McFadden. “I went to the bathroom and cried.”
The actor released a statement last month after Hunter went public with her accusations in a guest column for The Hollywood Reporter on November 1. Hoffman told the outlet, “I have the utmost respect for women and feel terrible that anything I might have done could have put her in an uncomfortable situation. I am sorry. It is not reflective of who I am.”
Rossetter costarred with Hoffman in Death of a Salesman on Broadway.
“People go, ‘How is it to work with Dustin?’ And I tell the half-truth which is, as an actor working with him, I owe him everything,” she told NBC Nightly News, tearing up. “I learned so much and then I would stop and there would always be a knot in my stomach about what the real truth was, which is that he was abusive, and he was a bully.”
She claims that he repeatedly assaulted her backstage, putting his hand on the back of her thigh, and she told McFadden, attempting to penetrate her with his fingers.
“I was told to suck it up. He was the most famous actor in the world,” she said. “I was a nobody, nobody was going to believe me.”
Thomas, a friend of one of Hoffman’s daughters, recalled her encounter when she was 16 and left alone with the Rain Man actor in his hotel room while she waited for her parents.
“As hard as it is I wanted to choose truth over shame,” she told McFadden. “He came out of the bathroom with a towel around him and literally dropped the towel. And I just froze. I had never seen a man naked in my life at this point.”
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She claims Hoffman then got on the bed and asked her to rub his feet. “He was being suggestive. He kept saying, ‘You know I’m naked.'”
NBC reports that Hoffman’s lawyers have called Thomas’ claims “defamatory falsehoods.”
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