Hollywood actress Julianna Margulies has gone into horrifying detail about an incident she alleged happened to her when she was once left alone in a hotel room with actor and director Steven Seagal.
Speaking on a podcast with American journalist Katie Couric, Margulies described a “horrific” incident she experienced with Seagal when the pair were rehearsing a movie scene in his hotel room.
“I walked in and I sat down and I jumped right back up because there was something very uncomfortable and hard in the couch,” the former ER star recalled. “He laughed and said, ‘Oh sorry, that must have been my gun’. He lifted up the cushion and he took out his gun. And I had never seen a gun in my life, not up close.”
The Good Wife star said she started getting sweaty before Seagal told her the gun was “just for all the crazies that are out there”. He told her he needed it to protect himself.
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Meanwhile, the 51-year-old said she felt angry and frustrated for getting herself into that situation, but said she thought a female casting director was also going to be present.
“My inner dialogue was, ‘You stupid idiot. How could you have done this? No one knows where you are, and you’re in a hotel room alone with this guy and he’s got a gun. How stupid. You’re stupid’. I was just chastising myself,” she recalled.
Later in the interview, Margulies said Seagal tried to read her palm and referred to himself as a “healer”. She eventually fled the scene but had to return to the hotel to collect her taxi fare home from the Hard to Kill actor.
“I went back and I knocked on the door, and he smirked, and I think he thought I was coming back, like, ‘Oh, she got smart’,” she recalled.
After the incident, the pair were cast in the 1991 hit Out for Justice together, although Margulies refused to be left alone with the actor again.
“I said to everyone in there, ‘I know you don’t know me, but I’d really appreciate it if no one would ever let me be in the room alone with him’. I was scared.”
It’s not the first time Seagal has been accused of inappropriate behaviour. He was previously accused of sexual harassment in 1991 before a string of other accusations throughout the ’90s and between 2010 and 2017. Other celebrities including Portia de Rossi, Rachel Grant and Jenny McCarthy have also come forward over the years to accuse the actor of abuse.
Seagal has continued to deny allegations against him and is currently under investigation for a 2002 incident involving Grant on a film set.
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