On Wednesday, Ben Affleck—who recently took to Facebook to denounce Harvey Weinstein's alleged sexual harassment—was called out on Twitter for grabbing One Tree Hill actress Hilarie Burton's breast during a 2003 TRL interview. Affleck tweeted an apology to Burton on Twitter after footage of the incident resurfaced, but the internet quickly discovered it wasn't the only time the actor had man-handled a woman on camera.
During a 2004 interview with Canadian reporter Anne-Marie Losique to promote Jersey Girl, Affleck pulled Losique onto his lap, asked her why she wasn't showing more cleavage, and then tells her that the TV station would "like it better if [she] did this show topless."
"You usually show a lot more cleavage than this," Affleck says in the interview. "What's the story? Why are you covering it up today?"
"These breasts are really firm... suspiciously firm, they are like two giant stones," he says. "It's a sports bra," Losique replies.
Affleck—who was engaged to Jennifer Lopez at the time—then asked Losique if she "has a boyfriend back in Montreal," and later jokes that "all [she wants] to do is have sex all the time." Later in the interview, he puts on a fake French accent and jokes about appearing disabled.
"Don't make me look like I am retarded," he says, "I look like I have cerebral palsy!"
The 2004 interview, which never actually aired on TV, resurfaced after Affleck said he was "angry" at Weinstein for using "his position of power to intimidate, sexually harass, and manipulate many women over decades" in a Facebook post. When one Twitter user brought up the TRL incident with Burton, the actress, who was just 21 at the time, replied she "had to laugh back then so [she] wouldn't cry." One of Weinstein's accusers, Rose McGowan, also tweeted that Affleck was a liar and had known about Weinstein's on-going sexual abuse for years.
Losique has joked about sitting on Affleck's lap in the past, and told the Hollywood Reporter on Wednesday that the clip "has been blown out of proportion."
"I know that people like fishing for anything, but this is completely out of context," she said. "It was for a show I was producing, so I was not at all a victim. When the cameras rolled, we would start to do that game. As soon as it stopped rolling, there was none of that. He never touched me in any improper way. He was very respectful, I must say."
Still, it's hard not to watch the footage and not feel pretty gross about the whole thing.
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