Saturday's issue of the New York Times published a lengthy admission from actress Uma Thurman that she was also a victim of Harvey Weinstein's sexually-devious behaviour. However, the article also shows footage of a particularly disturbing car crash involving Thurman on the set of Kill Bill, which has received much flack over the weekend. Many have interpreted this as another incident of a man pressuring a woman into doing something she was not comfortable with.
Quentin Tarantino spoke with Deadline exclusively to give his side of the story before the public constructs a falsified image of the director. Tarantino reveals that he had known for a while that Thurman was going to expose her experiences with Weinstein publicly, noting how she asked him to unearth the car crash footage so she could include it in the NYT piece.
Tarantino admits that "I never talked to Uma about this, but I don’t exactly know exactly what caused the crash, and Uma doesn’t know exactly what caused the crash. She has her suspicions and I have mine. I thought, if I get this footage to her and she puts it out there in the world, that a crash expert can look at it and determine exactly what happened on that road." The director gives a detailed recollection of what happened that day before the crash, revealing that "I didn’t go barging into Uma’s trailer, screaming at her to get into the car. I can imagine maybe rolling my eyes and thinking, we spent all this money taking this stick shift Karmann Ghia and changing the transmission, just for this shot."
Tarantino ultimately admits the accident "was heartbreaking. Beyond one of the biggest regrets of my career, it is one of the biggest regrets of my life. For a myriad of reasons." The director also reveals that he helped Thurman with writing the piece by "being her accomplice, talking through it with her, working my own memory, figuring out the timeline even as to when the assault happened."
