Terry Crews is speaking out about sexual harassment and abuse in Hollywood once again; in a new Buzzfeed News profile, Crews explained how he felt revealing his story, and how people in the industry now respond to him.
In 16 tweets, Crews said that he was groped in his genitals by William Morris agent Adam Venit. While he felt liberated after sharing his personal experience, he knew that things would no longer be the same moving forward.
“Once I hit send, I literally felt this weight come off me,” Crews said. “I went back to work, and I turned my phone off. And when I came back to my phone, the world had changed.”
Part of that change is the legal proceedings Crews began against Venit. Another part, he said, is how people now treat him.
“I walk in the room, and the room is split right down the middle,” Crews said. “It just divides right there. It’s kind of like lightning.”
And Crews says many of those that he once worked with seemingly ignore him.
“No words from anybody. Nothing,” Crews said, mentioning that he's heard nothing from the team he made The Expendables with since calling out one of the producers who allegedly tried to pressure him into dropping the case against Venit. “Believe me, nobody saw that coming. Nobody thought that I was gonna put that out there.”
He added that speaking out has taught him why so many survivors choose to stay silent. “People don’t understand that Hollywood is a very violent place,” Crews said. “The best way to put it is that it’s like a plantation. You use extreme violence. You see a lot of people who never work again. For even speaking up the whole thing is that they cut your head off so that the next person doesn’t speak.”
However, Crews said that he's not living in fear.
"What I’ve been doing is just exposing. If this is the end of my career, just end it now,” he said. “Cause I’m gonna keep living, I’m gonna keep doing my thing."
He added, “They don’t want to see me comment, but I’m not going anywhere. They lead this thing through shame. [They] shame you so you feel like you gotta hide in the house. …[But] once you get rid of shame, you get to step off the slave plantation. And I get to be free. This is a good thing.”