♪ ♪ ♪ welcome to "amanpour" on pbs. she was one of the first women to speak up about harvey weinstein. tonight the actress rose mcgowan on her unwanted encounter with the movie mogul, hollywood hypocrisy and her deeply personal new memoir "brave," plus, puerto rico and the state of the union. my conversation with the mayor of san juan about the long road to recovery from hurricane maria. ♪ ♪ ♪ "amanpour" on pbs was made

possible by the generous support of rosalynn p. walter. ♪ ♪ >> good evening, everyone, and welcome to the program. i'm christiane amanpour in london. the me too movement continues to cast its long shadow from washington to hollywood and points in between, delivering his first state of the union address, president donald trump was met by a sea of black as democratic lawmakers staged a show of support for women in the workplace. it all started when a few brave actors spoke out publicly against the hollywood mega producer harvey weinstein, one of the first and loudest voices belongs to rose mcgowan, and in her new book "brave," she speaks in painstaking detail about the alleged assault by weinstein whom she identifies only as the monster. mr. weinstein denies rose mcgowan's allegations of

non-consensual sexual contact and it is erroneous and irresponsible to con flight claims of inappropriate behavior and consensual sexual contact later regretted with an untrue claim of rape. when rose joined me earlier today she spoke of the rage and sadness of what happened to her and what continues to happen to women everywhere. rose mcgowan, welcome to the program. >> thank you. >> your new book is called "brave" and you have been brave. it can't have been easy to really sort of step out there on to the ledge and take on the most powerful center of the universe in hollywood. >> it wasn't easy. it's not easy. that's what -- i get a lot of flack sometimes. i get so much support which is so amazing and then also a lot of flack, and i do say i'm going -- as big as i can and as

hard as i can and it's more than just hollywood and it really is the overall power structure and he had a lot of tentacles in a lot of different fields, the literary world, the -- obviously, media, hollywood, politics. his power stretched and his tentacles stretched in many different areas and it's not taking out a single power structure. i wanted to show what the propaganda machine is and who is behind it. the book is stories of my life and the other part of it to me is the most important, is the framework for, looking at what happened because if it happened to me it happened to everybody. >> let's go into detail. >> first and foremost you do not name the said producer and you do that consciously. why have you decided to call him just the monster? >> well, you see, i find him to be very ugly. i can maybe we agree on that, and i -- words are really profoundly important to me, and i don't have his name in there because he doesn't deserve a

place in my life, you see. he shouldn't have been there. >> until this book came out, you told the world about an incident, but in this book you spell it out. >> there is a passage in there where it says i leave my body and i fly up to a ceiling and i'm paraphrasing and i'm looking down and all of a sudden you've just been stolen and hijacked and my brain, when i was walking out of the incident was on -- when i was walking away from our meeting which, by the way, people think hotel rooms they don't understand, these are presidential suites and this is a top floor of a massive building. fices inside and in hollywood everybody is in hotels all of the time. so my thought that day when i was walking away from our meeting was i was actually wondering if my lipstick was still on right because there wereas camer outsi rolling and waiting for me to come out. >> what was thmeeting for and what happened instead? >> well, the meeting happened,

you know? it was 10:00 a.m. and the meeting was supposed to happen as i detail in "brave" in the dining room and the stein erickson lodge at sundance film festival in utah, and i was supposed to be the belle of the ball, and i had four movies there, and i was told it was a very big deal and i was very new in the industry, and i thought people told me the truth. i didn't know everybody was lying. i didn't know that yet and the meeting was, i was in the middle of my second film for his company. >> basically in his hotel suite after the meeting, you detail in your bock that you were guided by him to the jacuzzi and basically undressed and you ended up both in the jacuzzi in some form or fashion and there was an unwanted sexual encounter. >> i mean, would you want it?

would anybody? let's be real. seriously, let's be real. the thing is i -- the book is about so much more than this. to reduce what i'm talking about in general to that gives him a lot of power, and i don't think he deserves that, and i think we all pretty much know because, by the way, most of us have been assaulted especially women. >> okay, so -- >> we kind of know the story. >> i know you don't want to use his name, but i have to. >> i will say it. harvey weinstein. harvey weinstein, harvey weinstein. there. i said it. >> harvey weinstein. >> he didn't get a place in my book because my book is precious and it will live on. >> all right. harvey weinstein has issued a new statement as your book and documentary has come out -- >> let me just read it and you can respond. >> no, no, no, no. i know what he said. people can google it. i am not here to be challenged by a known, proven by "the new

york times" and "the new yorker" by their best investigative journalists on the planet and you can say it before or after this thing, but i don't need to hear it. thank you, because i know what he did and we all do, okay? all of us women and victims, specifically and there are a lot of us, a lot more than people would think. >> all right. so he is obviously denying it. so i want to hear from you, your voice in response to this latest denial by him and his team. >> they can fall off the planet. i don't care what they say. they don't exist in my reality. they are complete, corrupt losers. this is a warning. do not do it. do not come at me. do not come at us because yes, you are powerful innen and using traditional methods of shame and you have hacked me, you have talked on me, you've spied on me, you've stolen 125 pages of

my book after sexually assaulting me? no. absolutely not. i won't have it and they should know that they are going to be nt your book and your message to warn other people, not just in hollywood, but in all these different professions that have now been outed in the -- in the aftermath of the harvey weinstein allegations. let me ask you because you mentioned it and i want to follow up. your book also is the cult that your parents were in and you grew up in, you were born into in -- not even in the united states. it was called the children of god, and you say, you know, hollywood is just another cult. take me back to your youngest years and what you recall from that period. >> yes, christiane. what i recall was called bambini de dios, children of god.

my father grew up in a very hectic environment and he was dishonorably discharged from the military which he was very proud of. he said i will not kill another race for this country's lives and i think that's been proven to be true. >> you do also recount, quite painful truths about your youth. you say that your father was abusive to you and you talk about, you know, how you yourself after leaving the cult when you were slightly older was sexually abused. tell us about that part of your life. >> my father was and could be very violent of tongue and body. it was like i would see something come over him and it was a mental illness and it was an undiagnosed mental illness and i was a weird kid and i looked up mental illnesses and i said that's it. that explains a lot. >> you talk about a different man sexually abusing you in a

store when you were a teenager and then you expand more about how that affected you, and again, how you feel the hollywood you know was sort of a continuation of that kind of, as you call it cult-like environment where you said, you know, layers and layers of different professionals involved in the hollywood business were enablers and complicit. tell us about that. >> it is so big, christiane, and when i started, you know, with the new york times, when i was at ultraviolet.org i spoke to a woman named shauna thomas, and i told her that i'm writing my book. he's already after me. the people that have been after me the whole time these last 20 years and the complicit machine and i started hammering that word home three years ago when i decided to start poking at the sleeping bear of the power structure.

i'm coming. i'm coming. i'm coming. you don't get to do this anymore. it is a cult. >> i guess what i'm trying to understand is, you know, there were so many people involved and you spoke to people even when things were happening to you and you even met with a lawyer and this you laier who is a woman said you're an actress, you've done a sex scene. you'll never win. you're done. >> yes, and you know, this woman has actually gotten in touch with susan donovan of "the new york times" who wrote a great profile and she reached out and she wanted to apologize, and i accept her apology. it's okay. i understand. you're a part of the machine and they probably got you there to say that specifically to me. >> what do you think is the reason that your own manager spoke against you and did not verify what you said you had told her after the harvey weinstein incident? why not? >> maybe because she got a job

with him for seven years afterward and also anne woodward in the susan donovan piece in "the new york times" piece on me verified the story. anne woodward was jill messic's assistant and she was on a lot of these calls and she's come out, "the new york times" verified her story. >> and in that vein, let me ask you this, do you think that the expectation in hollywood that you're describing and now that many people have described that women would trade sexual favors for their career were so ingrained in the system -- >> no. i think it's ingrained in the system to own and rape women, and the casting couch is us trying to get a job. what if it's you using that power dynamic to rape? think about the difference and think about the spins and write history because it's not us. we need to rise up into our own power and see where we're being manipulated and see why it's a collective stockholm syndrome

and a system that needs to be broken down and again, in my book, when i talk about these stories it's using, if i talk about meryl streep and i don't talk about her in the book or ben affleck or anybody, they're a construct. they're a type. trust me, i know. >> you mention meryl streep and that's now a famous rift between the two of you. >> not a rift. >> okay. well, you have -- you have -- >> i'm not -- >> let me just follow up because i asked her specifically to answer your criticism that you said that people like her knew, that their silence was part of the problem and she, as you know, wrote and said that you had assumed and broadcast things about her that weren't true, and i asked pher the following abou this and this is what she said and i'd like to get your reaction to it. >> i'm sure in many ways she wished i knew. at happened to rose is

unbearable. it sticks a knife in everyone's heart that this man was allowed to continue in his -- the way he worked on people over the bodies of women. he made a business over the bodies of women. for rose, i think i have nothing but empathy and hope that she finds a way to heal. i really do, and i think she and so many of the women that stepped forward, anabellea, mira sorvino, asia argento, we owe them a debt of gratitude because they've changed the 21st century. they really have. >> and i would thank her for that. thank you, meryl streep for that.

the thing is, again, and it's hard to tell off a tweet, you know, when i fired off that tweet people think it's me raging. it was me turned in and crying because i had to see her call him god. so it's not that i wish she knew. it's more that it was part of the propaganda because everybody knew he wasn't. either if you didn't know specifically it was about sexual assault. he's not a good man, never has been, never was, not at all. so that, when somebody calls him god it reinforces his power to him. so again, i'm talking about the establishment, and i praise her for what she said and i thank her and that means a lot to me. i hope we all heal. i hope we all do, but i hope we also get out of the cult. >> your book has landed at an amazing time, "brave," thank you for taking the time to talk to us. >> thank you, christiane.

now the network did due diligence reaching out to harvey weinstein's legal team who provided us with what they say are e-mails purportedly written by ben affleck and jill messic who were her managers at the time of the incident and they deny the claim. a wrenching story. turning now to american politics, when president trump delivered his very first state of the union address last night, watching from the balcony was the mayor of san juan puerto rico. that american territory is still struggling to recover four months after the devastating hurricane maria. the president barely mentioned it and today the u.s. government's emergency response department fema stopped all new shipments of food and water, saying that the island didn't need them anymore. is that rue? mayor cruz is now back home in san juan and she joins me from there. mayor, welcome to the program.

>> thank you very much for having me. >> mayor, what do you make, first of all, when you were in the congress listening to the president's state of the union. he briefly everyone innoned puerto rico and i'll play when he said to have you react to it. >> to everyone still recovering in texas, florida, louisiana, puerto rico and the virgin islands, everywhere, we are with you. we love you and we always will pull through together. always. [ applause ] >> you were a guest there last night. what went through your mind as you heard that? >> it is an utter statement of hypocrisy. the president has not been with the people of puerto rico. here we are 135, 36 days and you

counts from maria, but we had irma before this and 35% of our people do not have electricity. our children are going to school only part-time. about half a million homes are totally disrupted and either need to be rebuilt completely or need to have their roofs completely on top of them which means they lost everything inside. president trump speaks out of both sides of his mouth. on the one hand hes says he was to help puerto rico and on the other hand he imposed with his tax reform a 25% income tax on every good and service that comes from puerto rico into the united states. and he says we will be with you for the long run, and on the other hand, the fda, the fis tr to convince companies to leave

puerto rico and go back to the united states. on the one hand he says he cares and came here and threw paper towels at us and on the other hand, he doesn't provide his administration with a clear set of goals to help puerto rico. yesterday fema said mission accomplished. ve accomplished.t mission they certainly they haven't accomplished the mission of doing what they are supposed to do. the municipalities in puerto rico are aging and the money is running out on us. >> let me just ask you then to respond because many people have been reporting this and they're quite shocked that fema has said -- fema-provided commodities are no longer needed for emergency operations while the government of your country, basically says we were not informed that supplies would stop arriving nor did the government of puerto rico authorize this action. were you blindsided? you must have known that today

was d-day for cutoff of these supplies. >> we didn't know. that's what happens when you live in a colony. we didn't know. i want the people from great britain to understand this, we have paid the ultimate price. this does not help. in 1917 we were made american citizens by birth just with enough time to be trafficked from world war i and we have ever since been part of every major or minor conflict that the united states has been at, so we have paid the ultimate sacrifice. fema is an insurance. when you have a mortgage you pay for that insurance. not only did fema say and there was a big outcry yesterday in one of those magical moments where everyone in puerto rico is for the same thing, your mission has not been accomplished, but president trump allows the army

reserve which has been doing a good job, to leave puerto rico. so rather than building bridges where people are right now today just reaching ropes to go from one side of the refer to another. they left. just this past monday, three days ago, i had to send a school 45 minutes out of san juan, water and powdered milk. these children have no electricity, have no running water and there wasn't enough food for them to take care of themselves. this is not mission accomplished, and i think that what has happened is that puerto rico and the botched effort and the inability of president trump to show and get true leadership to show empathy as a human being has become a black eye in the united states and has become a black eye for the trump administration. it is so different from what the american people have been doing. >> i was going to say, this

program is broadcast around the world and across the united states and the american people have been incredibly generous. so i just want to dig down because we reached out to fema, and they said yes, we are cutting off new supplies, but we have stockpiles and they specifically said 46 million liters of water, 4 million meals and snacks and they told us they believe that's sufficient for your transition needs. is it sufficient? this is what they don't understand and they've had four months to understand it. you cannot continue to treat the puerto rican situation as a standard operating procedure. fema was telling us around the first week, after september 20th when we have no elect rhys tric use our telephone or the internet connection to just call in and just register to get aid. now what fema doesn't get and

they have since been forced and i want to say thank you, not only to the american people, but to you and great britain because you have been very, very cognizant of the fact that if it hadn't been for the british people and people in europe and south america, the people of the united states, the world would have want known what is happening in puerto rico. what is happening in puerto rico is that people are still dying, it's that people died when they weren't supposed to die because of the botched effort of an administration of a man that is more enamored with the idea of making himself look good than doing what is the right thing. so, no, it is not enough. while our electrical grid is not up in a constant, it will not be enough. >> indeed, we understand a third of the people of puerto rico are still without elericity four months after hurrinerma and

maria. but i want you to respond to senator marco rubio. obviously, there say big debate over how american is port ridiculous owe, statehood, no statehood and this is what he said about the u.s. responsibility. >> at the end of the day, here's the bottom line. puerto rico is a u.s. territory. it is the responsibility of the united states. these are american citizens. their children and their residents wear the uniform of this country. >> so mayor, how can puerto ricans hold the united states, lawmakers accountable? i think you asked for debt relief and you also want some kind of relief because the law as it stands means that rebuilding efforts have to be exactly the same as those structures that have already been knocked down where you want to rebuild in a about thor, more sustainable way and i understand there is another hurricane season upon you. >> yes. hurricane season begins on july

1st. the stanford act which is the disaster relief act which structures fema is very antiquated and it basically says if you have a wooden house you have to rebuild a wooden house. well, that makes absolutely no sense, and we are asking for a waiver from the stanford act. we are also asking for a waiver of the jones act which forces us to have anything that comes into puerto rico to come with ships that have an american flag in them. that is to say, if great britain, for example, were want to help puerto rico with electrical light bulbs, you would have to decide whether you ship them to the u.s. and then someone in the u.s. brings them over here or once we come here you cannot take the same ship into the united states. so that is really financial exploitation and financial domination, and he is right, marco rubio, what he doesn't want to say is that being a

territory is being a pol me and the time to be silent has long passed and we need to make alliances with people around the world and also with lawmakers in the united states that do understand. >> right. >> that we are human and if you cannot meet the legal imperative, lead the moral imperative. >> mayor cruz, your voice has been loud and clear tonight. thank you so much for joining us from san juan. two sobering conversations tonight, and that is it for our program. thanks for watching "amanpour" on pbs, and join us again tomorrow night. ♪ ♪ amanpour on pbs was made possible by the generous support of rosalynn p. walter.

♪ ♪ ♪