Hollywood director Alexander Payne just spoke out to deny claims made by actress Rose McGowan that he “groomed” and sexually assaulted her when she was 15.

In a column for Deadline, Payne denied McGowan’s allegations that he sexually assaulted her in the late 1980s. Since she said she was 15, the incident would have happened around 1988, when the director was 27 years-old.

“She claims that I showed her a ‘soft-core porn movie’ I had directed for Showtime ‘under a different name.’ This would have been impossible, since I had never directed anything professionally, lurid or otherwise. I have also never worked for Showtime or directed under any name other than my own,” Payne wrote.

Payne added that he did not meet McGowan until 1991, when she auditioned for a comic short he was making for a Playboy Channel series. This was his first time directing anything professionally.

“Although she did not get the part, she left a note for me at the casting desk asking that I call her,” Payne wrote. “I had no reason to question how old she was, since the role she read for required an actor who was of age. We later went out on a couple of dates and remained on friendly terms for years.”

“While I cannot allow false statements about events twenty-nine years ago to go uncorrected, I will continue to wish only the best for Rose,” he concluded.

McGowan, who famously brought down Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein by being the first woman to accuse him of rape, previously referred to the allegations on social media.

“For years I had thought a man I had sexual relations with was a sexual experience I had. I now know I was groomed. I auditioned for him at 15,” she tweeted, according to Page Six.

When asked for comment on Payne’s Deadline column, McGowan told Variety, “F–k him and his lies is my comment.”

“I told Payne to acknowledge and apologize, he has not,” she continued. “I said I didn’t want to destroy, now I do. Why do these men always lie? I will now make it a mission to expose him. I am not the only one.”

This piece originally appeared in UpliftingToday.com and is used by permission.

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