Featured Image Credit: Alamy
Topics: Evan Rachel Wood, Marilyn Manson, Music
Cameron Frew
Evan Rachel Wood discusses her 'traumatising' experience with Marilyn Manson's 'horrific abuse' in a new documentary.
Manson, real name Brian Warner, has been the subject of multiple allegations of abuse following the Westworld's star's first named statement last year. 'He started grooming me when I was a teenager and horrifically abused me for years,' she said.
Phoenix Rising, a new two-part documentary directed by Amy Berg, chronicles Wood's upbringing, her rise to fame as Hollywood's 'troubled teen' actor, and eventually her relationship with Manson between 2006 and 2011.
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Wood appeared in Manson's 2007 video for Heart-Shaped Glasses, dressed in a pair of heart-shaped shades like the ones from the poster for Lolita, Stanley Kubrick's 1962 movie based on Nabokov's 1955 novel about a middle-aged professor who becomes infatuated with a young girl.
'[The glasses are] so iconic and it was meeting someone who had the sense of humour to know that, okay, people are going to make fun of the fact that it’s a Lolita-esque friendship/relationship, whatever the case might be,' Manson previously said.
The video features scenes of Manson and Wood having sex, with fake blood later raining down on them. 'It’s nothing like I thought it was going to be. We’re doing things that were not what was pitched to me,' Wood explains in the film.
'We had discussed a simulated sex scene, but once the cameras were rolling, he started penetrating me for real. I had never agreed to that... it was complete chaos. I did not feel safe. No one was looking after me. It was a really traumatising experience filming the video. I felt disgusting and that I had done something shameful and I could tell that the crew was uncomfortable and nobody knew what to do.
'I was coerced into a commercial sex act under false pretences. That’s when the first crime was committed against me. I was essentially raped on camera.'
In a Q&A following the film's premiere at Sundance, as per USA Today, Berg said, 'The industry needs to take inventory of themselves now because we ran into a lot of stumbling blocks even in just trying to clear music in this film, because people are still protecting [Manson], and they don't want to participate in anything that might upset him.'
Wood added, 'The way the press handled this story for many, many years is shameful. And it's time we finally tell the whole story.'
Phoenix Rising currently doesn't have a release date, but it's expected to premiere on HBO later this year.
If you have been affected by any of the issues in this article and wish to speak to someone in confidence, contact The Survivor’s Trust for free on 08088 010 818, or through their website thesurvivorstrust.org