Rose McGowan will not be taking the stage Tuesday at the Code Media conference in Huntington Beach, California.
The actress-turned-activist was announced as a speaker just two weeks ago by Recode senior editor Peter Kafka, host of the two-day event along with executive editor Kara Swisher. A Jan. 30 article announcing her appearance dubbed it “a must-see interview.”
However, just one day later McGowan tweeted that she would be canceling all public appearances following a tense encounter at the Union Square Barnes & Noble in New York City when she was heckled by a transgender woman. The exchange, which was caught on video, saw the woman confront McGowan during her first public book signing for her memoir Brave. The woman was escorted out of the store, and McGowan later claimed the woman was an actor paid to engage with her.
“No one in that room did anything,” McGowan tweeted, tagging Barnes & Noble. “I would like an apology from the manager and all security people, and the audience, who did nothing and let the paid verbal assault of an assaulted woman happen. Cool?”
She added: “I am canceling upcoming public appearances because I have given enough.”
McGowan did, however, show up to a Jan. 1 conversation with friend and journalist Ronan Farrow before a packed audience at Manhattan’s 92Y. Other appearances to promote her book and her new E! docuseries Citizen Rose were called off, including an event at Washington’s Politics and Prose bookstore, a stop at Toronto’s Hot Docs Ted Rogers Cinema and an outing at Barnes & Noble at The Grove in Los Angeles.
The news of McGowan’s Code Media cancelation — first reported by Deadline and confirmed by The Hollywood Reporter — comes on the heels of Jill Messick’s suicide. Messick, a veteran producer and studio executive, served as McGowan’s manager in 1997 when the actress was attending the Sundance Film Festival. It was there that she claims she was raped by Harvey Weinstein.
McGowan responded to Messick’s tragic death on Instagram, posting, “For Jill: May your family find some measure of solace during this pain. That one man could cause so much damage is astounding, but tragically true. The bad man did this to us both. May you find peace on the astral plane. May you find serenity with the stars.”
