Luc Besson Is The Latest #MeToo Accusation, As Actress Claims Director Assaulted Her At Cannes
Actress Sand Van Roy, who worked with Luc Besson on the set of Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets, is claiming that the director raped her, and she’s just the first in a series of recent #MeToo accusations against the Frenchman.
According to the Daily Mail, Sand Van Roy says that Luc Besson first started “flirting” with her while they worked on the film, which also marked her feature film debut.
At the time, said Van Roy, she didn’t turn down his advances because she didn’t “want to get fired” from the film.
She also said that Besson was flirting with other actresses on the set, so she didn’t think there was anything wrong with him flirting with her.
But, she says, after they went to the Cannes Film Festival together this year, things took a turn for the worse.
Describing her sexual assault at the festival in graphic detail, Van Roy said that she was “afraid of dying,” and that she was being raped so violently, she almost “passed out” from the pain.
She said that she conveyed her refusal to perform various sex acts on Besson in several ways, but he persisted. Van Roy also said that Besson kept her as a “sex puppet” for many years.
According to the French press, Van Roy has been Luc Besson’s mistress for the past two years, and even worked with her on her feature film, Olga, which she’d been trying to get made since 2014.
Actress Sand Van Roy has accused Luc Besson of rape and now she's broken her silence on their alleged abusive work relationship: “He likes to make you suffer, and he gets a kick out of controlling you and hurting you when you don’t expect it" https://t.co/wE1LO36pN9 pic.twitter.com/Ssi3aGkCGs
— IndieWire (@IndieWire) July 10, 2018
And while Luc Besson has, through his attorney, categorically denied Van Roy’s “fantasist” claims, there’s another woman who has also just come forward with her accusations against the Lucy director.
Actress Sand Van Roy Details Luc Besson’s Alleged Sexual Abuse, While More Women Accuse Director of Harassment https://t.co/3BugVt0OKV pic.twitter.com/VYWOjRvt08
— IndieWire (@IndieWire) July 10, 2018
According to Variety, extensive research has been done into Besson’s behavior on the set, and they released their results in an outlet called Mediapart.
The French press’ investigation concluded that, in addition to allegedly assaulting Sand Van Roy, he also assaulted a casting director, and allegedly sexually harassed an employee of his film company, EuropaCorp. Besson is also accused of raping an actress he met in Los Angeles.
Only Van Roy has come forward publicly with her accusations. The other three spoke to the French press on the grounds that their claims remain anonymous.
Thierry Marembert, Besson’s lawyer, said that Luc Besson would be “reserving his comment for the authorities so that his innocence can be proven,” but neither confirmed nor denied the accusations made by the three anonymous women.
