Former “Entourage” star Jeremy Piven has been accused of sexual misconduct by three more women in instances that allegedly occurred between 1985 and 1996.
According to a report from BuzzFeed News, each of the women — one of whom preferred not to be identified — claim to have experienced aggressive sexual advances from Piven, including being pinned on a couch and against a wall. One of the women says that Piven exposed himself to her in his Los Angeles home after a consensual encounter turned aggressive.
In a statement obtained by Variety, Piven strongly denied the allegations. He referred to a polygraph test regarding whether he had ever used force to obtain sex that he took and passed when the first allegations against him broke in November of last year, and the results of which he provided to BuzzFeed.
“These allegations, which in one case goes back more than 30 years and the two others more than 20 years ago, are false,” the statement reads. “As evidenced by the lie detector test I took and passed, I have never forced myself on anyone, nor have I ever exposed myself or restrained anyone against their will. To the contrary, if any woman ever said no, I stopped.”
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One woman, Susan McCain Olson, described an incident that she said took place on the set of “Lucas” in 1985, during the summer between her junior and senior years of high school. McCain Olson was an extra on the film, which was Piven’s first. One day, after she went into another person’s trailer to get something, Piven — who was 17 at the time — allegedly followed her inside, forced her onto a couch, and started to kiss her while attempting to feel up her shirt and down her shorts.
Olson, now 51, said she was eventually able to escape, though she was shaken. She said that although she saw Piven on the set, he did not approach or speak to her again. BuzzFeed News reached out to four other people who said that McCain Olson had told them about the alleged incident both at the time it allegedly occurred and in the intervening years.
A second woman, who preferred to remain anonymous, said she met Piven in Montreal around 1994 at a hair salon where she was working at the time. They arranged to meet up again so she could show him around town, but when she arrived at his hotel, she was told to go up to his room because he wasn’t ready. Once there, the woman said, he pinned her up against a wall and tried to kiss her. When she pushed him off and asked him what he was doing, he allegedly asked her what she had come up to his room for. Two longtime friends corroborated her story to BuzzFeed News.
Diane Gonzalez said she met Piven when she was an extra on the set of “Ellen” in February 1996, on which Piven played Ellen DeGeneres’ cousin Spence Kovak. According to Gonzalez, after the second night of filming, she went out for drinks with other members of the cast and crew at Piven’s invitation. Afterwards, Piven asked her to go back to his house, and on the way to Gonzalez’s car — she was going to follow him home — he kissed her.
“I was taken aback, but I kind of just went with it,” she told BuzzFeed.
After arriving at his house, Gonzalez was given a tour and the two paused in the kitchen to talk. Gonzalez was looking at pictures on Piven’s refrigerator when she turned around to find that he had completely exposed himself. Gonzalez said she tried to laugh it off and “play it cool” since the situation “could go really wrong.” According to her, Piven then grabbed her, kissed her, picked her up, wrapped her legs around his waist, and took her into the bedroom, where he pinned her on a bed and began kissing her. Gonzalez said that as he became more aggressive, she felt uneasy and started saying that she wanted to go home while trying to push him to the side.
“The kissing was very intense and at this point his penis is still exposed, so that’s when I …[thought], ‘No, no, this isn’t right,’” Gonzalez told BuzzFeed. “I was just starting to get very cautious to how I was going to react to this.”
Gonzalez said Piven also tried to unbutton her pants, but that eventually she was able to wriggle away and purposely fell onto the floor, telling Piven that she “really needed to go.” At that point, Gonzalez said, the actor began to belittle her and asked her why she had bothered to come over. Both a longtime friend of Gonzalez’s and her partner told BuzzFeed that she had recounted the story to them.
In Piven’s statement, he questioned the physical possibility of Gonzalez’s claim.
“Some of the assertions, as related to be by BuzzFeed, are not even physically possible. As one example, there is a claim that I grabbed the woman, started to kiss her, picked her up, and wrapped her legs around my waist. It is hard to understand how someone could hold a woman and at the same time wrap both of her legs around his waist without the consent of the woman.”
All of the women said they decided to come forward after reading Piven’s denials of the previous allegations, which combined with the three new accusations, total eight. Since the allegations, Piven’s CBS show “Wisdom of the Crowd” has been canceled.
