Content Warning: This article includes discussion of sexual assault.
Part one of the two-part Evan Rachel Wood documentary, Phoenix Rising, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in Utah this weekend.
Over the past year, Wood has accused her ex-partner Marilyn Manson of multiple instances of sexual and emotional abuse. The documentary includes yet more allegations.
Wood appeared in the music video for Manson’s 2007 single, ‘Heart-Shaped Glasses’. Manson apparently wrote the song about her. The music video contains a sex scene, which Wood says was nonconsensual.
“We had discussed a simulated sex scene, but once the cameras were rolling, he started penetrating me for real,” Wood says in Phoenix Rising (via Pitchfork). “I had never agreed to that. I’m a professional actress, I have been doing this my whole life, I’d never been on a set that unprofessional in my life up until this day.”
Wood was 19 years old when the ‘Heart-Shaped Glasses’ music video was made. She has been acting since she was 7 years old.
She went on: “It was a really traumatising experience filming the video. I didn’t know how to advocate for myself or know how to say no because I had been conditioned and trained to never talk back – to just soldier through.
“I felt disgusting and like I had done something shameful, and I could tell that the crew was very 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 and I was essentially raped on camera.”
Wood and Manson became an item in 2006. They got engaged in 2010, before breaking up later that year. In February 2021, Wood alleged that Manson “started grooming me when I was a teenager and horrifically abused me for years. I was brainwashed and manipulated into submission.”
Phoenix Rising is set to air on HBO in March and will come to streaming shortly thereafter.
If you or anyone you know is the victim of sexual abuse or domestic violence, find your nearest support service here.
