Film boss allegedly handed exec a list of people she was expected to sleep with

According to The Citizen, a senior South African film and entertainment executive says she was pressured to trade sex for business while working for a major New York-based film company.

Career opportunity turned uncomfortable

The executive told The Citizen she took a role with a company that produced and distributed films internationally and operated at the top levels of the industry. She said she was regularly summoned to the “corner office”, (read The Boss), often at short notice and regardless of what else she was doing.

Progression from meetings to unwanted advances

According to The Citizen, meetings initially included other people but gradually became one-on-one. “These meetings would progressively be just for myself and not with anybody else. Or if there is a collective meeting, I would be asked to stay behind,” she said. The executive described the boss’s conduct as escalating from uncomfortable contact to behaviour that left no doubt about its intent: “There was nothing subtle about it,” she told The Citizen.

Incidents during international travel

The Citizen reports the job took her to major film markets and festivals, and that the situation intensified while travelling. On two occasions, she said an assistant tried to push her into an elevator to attend what was presented as a meeting in a hotel room again with the boss. She said she managed to get out of those situations.

A list and a line drawn

Toward the end of her first year, The Citizen quotes the executive saying the boss summoned her and “I was issued with a list of high-ranking film executives around the world that I was expected to sleep with to get business conducted with the company,” she said. The executive said this was where she drew the line.

Context and aftermath

The executive told The Citizen the events occurred in 2001, some time before the #MeToo movement exposed widespread sexual harassment in the international entertainment industry. She also said she later learned that “the sexual harassment lawsuits against the boss totalled more than all the film budgets in production at the time.”

According to The Citizen, the executive said the company’s environment and a watertight non-disclosure agreement made the situation intimidating while she was a legal alien in the United States.