In February this year, French fashion designer Jean-Luc Brunel was found hanging in his cell, where he was awaiting trial for raping minors.
Telling us about how it felt to be reading back her own voice, she said: ‘Part of me would compartmentalise, like being a good actress or model, but as I’m doing it I’m hearing the voice and seeing my handwriting, I sort of went back into that time period, and a psychologist did say that’s normal, to go back to that younger age, and I was surprised.
Sutton told us: ‘I didn’t think I was the only person but I had no idea how many, and how prevalent the sexual assault, harassment, abuse, is within the industry and so it’s widespread.’ ‘I beat myself up for years thinking how could I let this happen, how stupid was I, but then later when I wrote my book to debunk shame and to release that shame and to come out into public and say this is what happened to me, I own it, judge me if you want, this is the truth, go ahead, judge me, but I wrote it so that other people who experienced it could dissolve their shame, so it’s been a great experience to meet the other women, it’s only helped us to lessen our shame and I hope it lessens...
However, despite having control in changing the ending of a screenplay, Shine was left vulnerable when re-opening wounds for this docuseries, and in the case against Brunel while he was still alive. ‘Watching this docuseries and seeing all of the women, it’s been heart-breaking and also healing at the same time to be part of this.’
Dodd added: ‘As women that experienced this years ago, we want change now, we want change. And I think that the MeToo movement that happened after Harvey Weinstein was outed, that laid the ground work, it was the first big global thing that happened, and when that started I had a vision of a tsunami covering the whole earth, of women being angry, from being suppressed by men for so many years, for all of our lifetimes and generations.
‘There was nobody to tell,’ Sutton said. ‘It was implied that if you complained about anything like that you just weren’t going to get a job.’