Acclaimed playwright Jez Butterworth once punched Harvey Weinstein on set

Playwright and director Jez Butterworth has explained an incident in the past where he punched disgraced film producer Harvey Weinstein.

Speaking recently with The Guardian, Butterworth shared details about the time he entered into a disagreement with Weinstein.

According to Butterworth, while on the set of the 2001 erotic comedy thriller starring Nicole Kidman, Birthday Girl, Weinstein took issue with a producer, who he wanted to have fired.

Weinstein reportedly punched the unnamed producer, prompting Butterworth, who wanted the producer to remain on the film, to retaliate.

Butterworth, who is also known for his work on Spectre, Edge Of Tomorrow and Ford V Ferrari, reportedly did some boxing while studying at the University of Cambridge, making him equipped for his response.

“If Harvey wants to start throwing punches,” he said, “he should know that I know what to do.”

Elsewhere in the interview, Butterworth shared his experience of learning about the pattern of sexual abuse taking place in Hollywood. When directing Birthday Girl, he said: “I was sent to Hollywood to audition actors in the Peninsula Hotel. And most of those were the actors who later came out and said what they said [about Weinstein].”

He continued: “I didn’t know what was going on. I didn’t know then that he was somebody up to his neck in smashed dreams, in lives he had ruined. I was a man. No one was trying to fuck me or assault me. But that was my first experience of that world.”

Butterworth has previously been vocal in his criticism of Weinstein, who was found guilty of charges relating to sexual assault allegations in both New York and Los Angeles. In 2017, Butterworth read out a letter on BBC Newsnight, addressing Weinstein and the allegations against him: “Harvey. My daughter is 11 years old and all her life has dreamed of being a performer. She attends a local drama group and loves to sing, dance and act.”

He continued: “Were she one day able to realise those dreams, and had Ashley Judd and others not been brave enough to come forward, there’s every chance in a few years’ time she would have been taken to a hotel, duped by your staff, ended up alone with you, and chased round the suite by you, naked, masturbating, threatening her, terrifying her, for your own enjoyment.”

In other news, last October, actor Julia Ormond sued Weinstein and Disney claiming the producer sexually assaulted her in 1995.

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