After Evan Rachel Wood alluded to having experienced sexual abuse in an interview with Rolling Stone, the Westworld star has taken to Twitter to talk more explicitly about being raped, once by a significant other and a second time by the owner of a bar. “I don’t believe we live in a time where people can stay silent any longer. I certainly can’t,” she wrote.
In the original interview, conducted by Alex Morris, Wood spoke at length about her struggles with her own bisexuality and briefly mentions having attempted suicide in her earlier 20s:
These are all things, she says, that she has experienced since she realized at age four or five she was attracted to women. Her suicide attempt at 22 “was, weirdly, the best-worst thing that ever happened to me. ‘Cause it did not work.” She’s more circumspect about the abuse, but admits it was “physical, psychological, sexual.”
The profile somewhat bizarrely focuses on Wood’s past trauma—from her parents’ painful divorce to her coupling with Marilyn Manson to her mental health and, yes, her rape. (Hard to imagine an interview with James Marsden and Ed Harris going the same way, which says something about how we as a culture like to receive our female celebrities raw and vulnerable.)
The interview was conducted prior to the election of Donald Trump and, before it went to press, Wood sent Morris a letter—the same one that she posted to Twitter today—speaking frankly about her sexual assault.
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“I am still standing. I am alive. I am happy. I am strong. But I’m still not ok,” the letter reads. “...So to answer your question bluntly: Yes. I have been raped.”
In the Rolling Stone interview, Wood also speaks on her Westworld character Dolores, a sentient robot who has been repeatedly violated in a variety of sickening ways:
“I mean, your demons never fully leave,” Wood says. “But when you’re using them to create something else, it almost gives them a purpose and feels like none of it was in vain. I think that’s how I make peace with it. Westworld? Good God. I left so much in that first season and never looked back.”