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Amazon Studios exec Roy Price resigns after sexual harassment claim

Amazon Studios exec Roy Price resigns after sexual harassment claim

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The accusation against Price is part of a growing wave of visibility for the victims of sexual abuses

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Museum of the Moving Image Award for Achievement in Media and Entertainment
Amazon’s Roy Price and Harvey Weinstein
Slaven Vlasic, Getty Images

Deadline is reporting that Amazon Studios executive Roy Price has resigned, in response to sexual harassment claims leveled online by The Man in the High Castle executive producer Isa Hackett. Contacted by The Verge, an Amazon representative confirmed his resignation. Price was also a producer on Man in the High Castle and other Amazon shows, including Transparent.

Price was suspended from Amazon on October 13th. It’s the latest step in what’s become a groundswell of revelations about sexual harassment and assault in Hollywood following high-profile exposés about film executive Harvey Weinstein. After both The New York Times and The New Yorker published lengthy pieces detailing Weinstein’s alleged behavior — a long history of inviting actresses to nonexistent script meetings or industry parties to get them alone, then demanding massages, offering sex-for-work details, or simply presenting himself naked — there’s been a running backlash against aggressive, unwanted sexual behavior in professional settings. Hackett initially filed a complaint against Price in 2015, when the harassment occurred, but Amazon took no action against him at the time. The company’s quick response this month has clearly been in response to the growing public outrage against Weinstein, though the controversy it faced over harassment claims against Casey Affleck, star of Amazon Studios’ Oscar-winning legitimacy-bid Manchester By The Sea, may also have played a part.

Meanwhile, that public outrage is taking an increasingly wide and expressive variety of forms. Actresses including Amber Tamblyn, Molly Ringwald, and Sarah Polley have written editorials detailing the widespread abuse of actresses in Hollywood, sometimes including assaults on children. Twitter users recently begin using the #MeToo hashtag to talk about their own experiences with sexual assault, and to raise awareness of the ways sexual attacks are routinely ignored by authorities and law enforcement, and brushed off in work settings.

Accusations like Hackett’s, with specific time-and-place details, have been rarer than the general industry reports of a culture of abuse and harassment. That may be one reason Amazon was so quick to respond to the allegations against Price. But the company also clearly wants to avoid the public-relations disaster that’s hit the Weinstein Company. Amazon Studios quickly broke off plans for a prestige TV drama it was producing with the Weinsteins, and has reportedly severed its connection with the company.