Uma Thurman Took a Dramatic Step Before Promising to Strike Out At Harvey Weinstein's "Wicked Conspirators"

By Joanna Robinson, Vanity Fair

25 November 17

Thurman coldly dishes up some revenge.

ast month, Uma Thurman gave a restrained-yet-seething interview to Access Hollywood on the subject of the sexual harrasment scandal rocking Hollywood. Some took the actress’s promise that she would speak when “ready” as a dodge, but as it turns out, those interested in her opinion wouldn’t have to wait that long to hear it. Early on Thanksgiving Day, Thurman posted a threatening message on her Instagram account including an allusion to her classic revenge films: the Harvey Weinstein-produced Kill Bill: Vol. 1 and 2. Though she suggested we all “stay tuned,” Thurman had already taken a dramatic step.

Thurman’s holiday message revealed she had her own experience with misconduct (#metoo) and that more was coming for those who had wronged her. Thurman worked with Weinstein on seven projects—including the Kill Bill films. The photo she chose comes from a moment in Kill Bill Vol. 2 where the vengeful Bride lays out her plan:

Bill’s last bullet put me in a coma. A coma I was to lie in for four years. When I woke up, I went on what the movie advertisements refer to as a ‘roaring rampage of revenge.’ I roared. And I rampaged. And I got bloody satisfaction. I’ve killed a hell of a lot of people to get to this point, but I have only one more. The last one. The one I’m driving to right now. The only one left. And when I arrive at my destination, I am gonna kill Bill.

Thurman said, evocatively, in her Instagram post that Weinstein and all his “wicked conspirators” didn’t “deserve a bullet” (a.k.a. a swift reprisal), but her social media post nonetheless ripped through the slow news day of Thanksgiving like a shot. A day before the post went live, Deadline announced that Thurman had left her talent agency of two years: C.A.A.. No reporting suggests the two are related, other than Thurman’s ominous-but-vague “stay tuned” warning in the Instagram post. But as a recent report in Vanity Fair found, agencies like C.A.A., put on blast by actress Rose McGowan, have found themselves caught in the middle of the ongoing sexual harassment scandal, and forced to reckon with ways in which they may have helped predators like Weinstein continue to operate.

For example: when Gwyneth Paltrow described a meeting with Weinstein early on in her career she mentioned that it came through official channels that led her to believe the encounter would be above board: “It’s on the fax, it’s from C.A.A..” A source inside C.A.A. told Vanity Fair the agency would never intentionally put a client in an unsafe situation. Paltrow is now represented by U.T.A. But Vanity Fair also reported that in the wake of the dismissal of Kevin Ly, who had been accused of inappropriate behavior at an Emmys party, C.A.A. partners Bryan Lourd and Kevin Huvane addressed their staff about the Weinstein case and forcefully condemned him in a way that “rang true.”

Thurman doesn’t have a revenge plot as clearly laid out as The Bride’s, and as recent months have sadly proved, there is no single Bill-like villain to blame for Hollywood’s sexual assault issue. But as everyone from agencies to studios to Kill Bill director Quentin Tarantino and House of Cards creator (and writer of Thurman’s new Broadway play The Parisian Woman) Beau Willimon grapple with their previous inaction, Thurman stands ready to remind them inaction is no longer an option.