I remembered hearing titters of laughter, murmuring of responses around the rehearsal room … I opened my eyes and Geoffrey was kneeling over me and he had both his hands above my torso and he was gesturing stroking up and down my torso and gesturing groping or cupping above my breasts. He was looking up to the front of the room and kind of raising his eyebrows and smiling and licking his lips. I heard [the director] say ‘Geoffrey stop that’.
That was Eryn-Jean Norvill, unfamous young female actor, telling the Federal Court about one of the things she claims Geoffrey Rush, famous old male actor, did to her while they were rehearsing her death scene in King Lear, and what she says the rest of the cast and crew did about it.
Norvill is giving evidence, not to pursue her rights or reclaim her dignity and career, but to save The Daily Telegraph from a potentially massive defamation payout to Rush, as he seeks to vindicate his reputation and stare down the allegations that he says are slanderous lies.
Norvill was preceded into the witness box by a parade of luminaries; a who’s who of Australian theatre. I didn’t see him do anything, said those who were in a position to see. He wouldn’t, said those who weren’t. Nope, she never complained to me. As Norvill had plaintively said to Robyn Nevin in a text message when the story first broke, “I’m fairly alone now”. Nevin expressed sympathy. But she swears she didn’t say to Norvill, “I thought Geoffrey had stopped doing that”.
Norvill had said more in her texts to Nevin: “And the truth is I tried to keep out of it. But here I am, in the eye of the storm. I just want to do my job and feel safe.” That hope is gone.
The media haven’t had so much fun in ages. How often do they get to chase Judy Davis down Phillip Street? The narrative is positively Shakespearean; pounds of flesh being carved out of passionately heaving breasts for our evening entertainment.
The law demands that there be an objective truth at the bottom of this. Either Norvill is lying, or Rush is lying. If this case doesn’t settle (my bet is it probably will) before it’s finished chewing up the scenery and the public resource of our court system, the judge will have to conclude that one of these fine actors was acting.
From that verdict, we will learn precisely nothing of value. We will be no closer to knowing what really happened. This case is creating only wreckage.
We are in the wrong forum. If we want to learn anything new, if we would like to evolve as a society, then we have to find something better than forcing young women into the witness box to tell their stories and be retraumatised repeatedly, in the quixotic quest for the “truth”.
*Thanks to Lane Sainty of BuzzFeed, I totally stole your quoting of Norvill’s testimony.
This is a pretty slapdash response, full of smugly confident assertion and precious little serious reflection.
I also learned nothing from this article.
Me too!
Me too, I learnt’t nothing from this article either. I am still in the dark whether it was the left breast or the right breast. If only Winter and Norville could get their story straight.
My whole thing with this circus which leaves behind nothing but a trail of destroyed reputations, future careers & as far as the Telegraph’s concerned well having to pay out money (again) cos their reporter’s struggle to stick to telling the truth…veering off into the land of let’s make it up as we go along…but the reality is that after the Millie Dowler affair, (in Britain) the gutter press don’t learn their lessons, because they don’t care, the lot of them should have gone to jail..but there won’t be another chance, defamation suits seem to have more destructive effect on the aggrieved, than the rags they are forced to protect themselves against…I was taught a long time ago & it applies well in this situation, between each position that either party holds somewhere the truth lies… personally this seems highly unlikely to be resolved, just because the press again is involved in reporting the circus that this has become…
The real scandal is that the story was given to the commercial media. The young female actor made a confidential comment to the theatre company, but quite reasonably decided that she had little to gain by making her concerns public. Why did somebody in that company decide to blab to the Smellygraph reporter? They must have known what would happen and could have seen what would be the consequences for both Rush and Norvill.
The issue isn’t Geoffrey Rush’s behaviour, it’s whether the Daily Telegraph had reliable evidence of this when they published the information. According to my information Eryn Jean Norville did not speak to the Telegraph before it published the articles. She merely made a comment about the behaviour in a restaurant and this was overheard and reported to the Telegraph. IN fact she didn’t want to make an issue of it. My heart goes out to her. This iexperience must be devastating especially as she has had her name published so widely.
“The issue isn’t Geoffrey Rush’s behaviour, it’s whether the Daily Telegraph had reliable evidence”
Huh? So you’re saying even if the claims are completely correct, that’s irrelevant because the paper didn’t have completely incontrovertible evidence at the time?
You think it’s ok for someone’s reputation to be trashed on the front page of a newspaper, without actually talking to the person who was allegedly victimised? Front page smears based on hearsay and second-hand reports? Really? If GR did the things he’s been accused of then certainly he should be held accountable. However, the Tele did not help anyone by their actions, except themselves. They have made the situation significantly worse for the young actor who had no control over the ensuing storm. There would appear to be no hope of a conclusive outcome, which leaves her career prospects damaged as a result.