The ‘True Detective’ and ‘No Time to Die’ director is facing numerous charges of inappropriate workplace conduct and using his power to engage in relationships with younger women.
‘No Time to Die’ director Cary Fukunaga is accused of inappropriate behavior in the workplace and abusing power on set to engage in relationships with younger women. Anonymous sources from the production of the upcoming AppleTV+ miniseries “Masters of the Air,” which Fukunaga, 44, is directing, told Rolling Stone he engaged in an “absolute abuse of power and clear” when to engage with young female cast and crew members.
Fukunaga denies the claim, with his lawyer Michael Plonsker issuing a statement which notes, “There is nothing salacious about pursuing consensual friendships or romantic relationships with women.” Plonsker continued that “no one has ever – not once – expressed such feelings to” Fukunaga over allegations of harassment. “It creates a creative, collaborative and welcoming work environment for all,” Plonsker said in a statement.
IndieWire has reached out to representatives from Fukunaga and Apple TV+ for comment.
Fukunaga is also facing allegations of grooming 23-year-old actress and skateboarder Rachelle Vinberg, whom he met when she was 18. Vinberg took to social media earlier this month to share a leaked selfie with Fukunaga, captioning: scared of him. The man is a groomer and been doing this shit for years. Beware, women. She later reposted Fukunaga’s pro-choice Instagram story following the leak of the Supreme Court’s draft opinion to overturn Roe v. Wade.
“So he posted this today,” the ‘Skate Kitchen’ star wrote. “And it pisses me off because he literally doesn’t care about women. It only traumatizes them. I spoke to many girls. Fuck you, Cary.
Vinberg wrote that she met Fukunaga the day after she turned 18 at a casting call after a casting director approached her at a skatepark to audition for a Samsung commercial that Fukunaga was directing. Vinberg added that Fukunaga asked her to pretend to be his niece when they were together in public.
In a statement, attorney Plonsker confirms that Fukunaga “had a very brief and consensual romantic relationship with [Vinberg] which ended “and alleges that Vinberg’s claims stem from the fact that she is” clearly unhappy with Mr. Fukunaga, but as everyone knows, relationships end all the time and many times a person (or two) is unhappy.
‘Maniac’ twin sister actresses Cailin Loesch and Hannah Loesch earlier shared a blog post alleging that Fukunaga engaged them in a relationship that spanned years since they met in their 20s on the set of the show. Netflix.
“We were not raped, fired from a job, or forced to do anything physical against our will,” reads the Loesch sisters’ joint statement. “So why does it hurt so much now to see this man, the one we’ve willingly walked away from, cast as the honorable creator who brought a much-needed ‘feminist touch’ to an iconic film franchise?”
The post continued: ‘The purpose of writing this is not to launch a witch hunt directed at Cary or any one man. We’ll never even know for sure what his intentions were. We only know what happened and how it made us feel. We share it because we know we are not alone in our experience, and how it has stayed with us and carried on our hearts.
Through his attorney, Fukunaga claims he never asked the sisters to be in a threesome, as they suggested in their blog post. The Loeschs said that while in a hot tub, Fukunaga asked if they were willing to participate in a threesome and, according to their post, said “incest is okay” if all parties agree with that”.
Two sources on “Maniac” also claimed that Fukunaga likes to surround himself with young women. “We used to call him his fan club,” said one. “I would say, ‘Why the hell are all these young girls still hanging around like puppies? “”
After Vinberg and the Loesch twins came forward, other former partners of Fukunaga commented. Margaret Qualley, who was romantically involved with Fukunaga in 2017, “liked” Vinberg’s post about “gaslighting” men on Instagram. Kristine Froseth, who also dated Fukunaga, shared Vinberg’s initial statement about Fukunaga in an Instagram story alongside posts about grooming stages and signs. Model Lizzie Swanson and her boyfriend, actor Charlie Plummer, who co-starred with Froseth on Hulu’s “Looking for Alaska,” also reposted Vinberg’s claims.
Swanson told Rolling Stone that she “knew Cary for some time and although he never physically acted on anything, the emotional and mental patterns and manipulative tactics” she experienced “are very, very similar” to those Vinberg was referring to.
“This is absolutely fucked up and disgusting,” Swanson wrote. “I believe them and fully support them. It must be stopped. »
In 2021, Fukunaga was accused of firing “True Detective” actress Raeden Greer for refusing to go topless in a scene that was not in the original script. Greer was cast as the exotic dancer but nudity was not disclosed in her contract.
“Cary said to me at the time, ‘Everyone on this show is topless. All the women on the show are topless. Your character is a stripper, so you have to do that,'” said Greer at The Daily Beast last year: “He was trying different things to convince me it was no big deal. [was] it’s going to be very tasteful, or it’s just going to be really insignificant in the background. I was like, ‘Well, if it’s so insignificant, why is he so insistent that I have to do this?’ It was just over and over and still.
Greer called the encounter “degrading” and “humiliating.” She was later fired from the project in 2013.
Now, in 2022, amid similar allegations of cast and crew members being fired due to their sexual preferences and spurned advances, Fukunaga’s attorney says the director “doesn’t even take the final hiring decisions. As with most administrators, its hiring process is done in collaboration with many people and is based on an individual’s talent qualifications and whether they are a good fit for the project.
Fukunaga’s former writing partner Nick Cuse expressed support for Vinberg and the Loesch twins. He wrote in his own Instagram Story that Fukunaga is the “worst human being I’ve ever met in my life”, saying the way Fukunaga treats non-celebrities “is horrible”.
Cuse, who worked as a consultant on ‘No Time to Die’ and was a co-producer and writer for ‘Maniac’, continued, “He didn’t groom me to fuck me, but he used a lot of the same tactics to get me. have his screenplays written for him, which he would then put his name on. Once, after spending three weeks on a screenplay for him, he told me to open the cover page and type his name under “Written By “. I literally had to type in the stolen credit with my own fingers.
The ‘No Time to Die’ director once spoke out against Sean Connery’s past portrayal of James Bond, saying the vintage character “essentially rapes a woman” in ‘Thunderball’ and ‘Goldfinger’. Fukunaga helped recruit Phoebe Waller-Bridge to co-write “No Time to Die” with a feminist perspective.
A “Masters of the Air” production source told Rolling Stone that the director is “doing this charade” trying to sound feminist. “He does things to hide behind,” the source said. “Look, I can’t hurt women, I hire women. I do things for women.
You can read the whole story on Rolling Stone.
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