Getty Images/Jamie McCarthy(LOS ANGELES) — Writer and producer Wendy Riss Gatsiounis is the latest woman to come forward to accuse Dustin Hoffman of sexual harassment.
Riss Gatsiounis told Variety on Wednesday that when she was a struggling playwright in 1991, Hoffman and Tootsie screenwriter Murray Schisgal scheduled a meeting with her to discuss the possibility of adapting her play, A Darker Purpose, into a movie vehicle for Hoffman.
She claims that during a second meeting with the pair, Hoffman, who was 53 at the time, asked, “Wendy — have you ever been intimate with a man over 40?”
Riss Gatsiounis alleges that Hoffman continued, “It would be a whole new body to explore,” before inviting her to go shopping for clothes at a nearby hotel.
She also alleges that Schisgal encouraged her to join Hoffman. She says that after she declined, Hoffman left the meeting, after which Schisgal told her that the play was “too film noir-ish” and that they were going to pass.
A representative for Hoffman declined to comment for the Variety report. In a statement to Variety, Schisgal said, “Dustin Hoffman and I took many meetings with writers and playwrights over many years. I have no recollection of this meeting or of any of the behavior or actions described.”
Earlier Wednesday, in a detailed guest column for The Hollywood Reporter, Anna Graham Hunter claimed that in 1985, while she was a 17-year-old working on the set of a TV production of Death of a Salesman, Hoffman sexually harassed her.
In a statement to THR, Hoffman said: “I have the utmost respect for women and feel terrible that anything I might have done could have put her in an uncomfortable situation. I am sorry. It is not reflective of who I am.”
Copyright © 2017, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.