Rose McGowan has opened up about her " target="_blank">heated confrontation with a transgender woman at her Brave book signing at a Manhattan Barnes & Noble.
At the January reading, the audience member, Andi Dier, criticized McGowan for doing "nothing" for trans people, saying, "Trans women are in men's prison's, and what have you done for them?" McGowan shot back, "What have you done for women?" The audience member was eventually escorted by Barnes & Noble security personnel as she chanted "White cis feminism."
McGowan then "launched into a passionate tirade," as Variety put it. "Don't label me, sister," she said. "Don't put your labels on me. ... I'm mad that you put shit on me because I have a fucking vagina and I'm white or I'm black or I'm yellow or I'm purple."
In a new interview with Revry's Shook with Ashlee Marie Preston, the actress and #MeToo activist maintained that the woman is a "paid plant" -- a claim she had made previously during a speaking engagement with Ronan Farrow at the 92nd Street Y.
"That was a paid plant," explained McGowan, in an exclusive clip released in advance of the interview's Friday release to The Advocate. "And what a paid plant is, is someone who was paid off to terrorize me and assault me verbally."
McGowan pointed out that Dier has been accused of sexual assault from multiple women, who claimed they were abused between the ages of 12 and 15. But McGowan also said she was pained by the accusations of transphobia that came from the public after a clip of the exchange went viral.
"To be terrorized like that, and to have people flip out over word choices that I made when I was under assault is assaultive to me," she said.
The experience, she said, had a profound impact on her book tour.
"I had to cancel all public appearances, because I thought that person could have had a gun. That person could have killed me. That person is a bad person. And that person is wrong," she said.
McGowan said she believes Harvey Weinstein is behind the plant. She accused the disgraced producer of raping her in 1997. And to Preston, McGowan said she has endured trauma "over and over and over again by this man." Weinstein previously denied he hired any hecklers in a statement through a representative, who called the allegation "a bold lie."
In the clip, McGowan also revealed a unique aspect of her upbringing.
"People don't know this about me. I grew up without mirrors -- largely, for the first 10 years of my life. I was not raised as a sex, or as a gender, or as a race. We were experiments. We were supposed to be just minds," she said.
Watch the clip below. The full hour-long interview with McGowan will be available today on Revry, a queer streaming service.