DAWN DUNNING
In 2003, Ms. Dunning was doing small acting gigs, attending design school and waitressing in a nightclub where she met Mr. Weinstein.
The 24-year old was wary, but Mr. Weinstein was friendly, professional and supportive, she said, offering her a screen test at Miramax, inviting her to lunch and dinner to talk about films and even giving her and her boyfriend tickets to see “The Producers” on Broadway.
Then his assistant invited her to a meal with Mr. Weinstein at a Manhattan hotel. Ms. Dunning headed to the restaurant, where she was told that Mr. Weinstein’s earlier meeting was running late, so she should head up to his suite.
There was no meeting. Mr. Weinstein was in a bathrobe, behind a coffee table covered with papers.
He told her they were contracts for his next three films, according to Ms. Dunning. But she could only sign them on a condition: She would have to have three-way sex with him.
Ms. Dunning said that she laughed, assuming he was joking, and that Mr. Weinstein grew angry.
“You’ll never make it in this business,” she said he told her. “This is how the business works.”
Ms. Dunning fled, she said, and when the assistant called her the next day, she hung up. She told her father, Rick Dunning, of the episode within a few months, he said in an interview.
“I was like: Maybe this is how the business works,” she said. She left acting soon after and became a costume designer.
Ellen Gabler contributed reporting.