NEW YORK: Veteran actor Meryl Streep has once again said that she was unaware of disgraced Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein's alleged sexual transgressions.
In an interview with the New York Times, the multiple Oscar-winning actor said, as a person who is not active on Twitter, she "really had to think" before commenting on the scandal which has since engulfed prominent Hollywood A-listers such as her "Kramer vs Kramer" co-star Dustin Hoffman, Brett Ratner, James Toback and Kevin Spacey.
"I found out about this on a Friday and went home deep into my own life. And then somebody told me that on 'Morning Joe' they were screaming that I haven't responded yet. I don't have a Twitter thing or – handle, whatever. And I don't have Facebook," Streep said.
"I really had to think. Because it really underlined my own sense of cluelessness, and also how evil, deeply evil, and duplicitous, a person he was, yet such a champion of really great work," she added.
Streep worked with Weinstein on multiple films, including "August Osage County" and "The Iron Lady", for which won an Oscar. In her Golden Globes acceptance speech, Streep had once jokingly referred to Weinstein as god.
"You make movies. You think you know everything about everybody. So much gossip. You don't know anything. People are so inscrutable on a certain level. And it's a shock. Some of my favourite people have been brought down by this, and he's not one of them," Streep said.
The actor also questioned the silence of US First Lady and President Donald Trump's wife Melania Trump on Trump's infamous locker room talk.
"I don't want to hear about the silence of me. I want to hear about the silence of Melania Trump. I want to hear from her. She has so much that's valuable to say. And so does Ivanka. I want her to speak now," Streep said.
The veteran actor again argued that she "really didn't know" about Weinstein's behaviour towards women, and that she assumed he was just "having girlfriends." "Well, honestly for me in terms of Harvey, I really didn't know. I did think he was having girlfriends. But when I heard rumours about actresses, I thought that that was a way of denigrating the actress and her ability to get the job.
That really raised my hackles.
"I didn't know that he was in any way abusing people. He never asked me to a hotel room. I don't know how his life was conducted without people intimately knowing about it," Streep said.