Terry Crews: ‘If this is the end of my career, just end it now.’
The actor is telling his side of the story about how he intends to move forward.
Last week, it was determined that Terry Crews’ alleged groper, Hollywood’s WME Agent Adam Venit, would not be charged with a misdemeanor crime.
Last week, it was determined that Terry Crews’ alleged groper, Hollywood’s WME Agent Adam Venit, would not be charged with a misdemeanor crime.
“The matter was rejected because it was beyond the statute of limitations,” a city attorney source told Deadline. Weeks prior, the same case was denied a felony charge due to a lack of evidence.
Now, Crews is telling his side of the story again about how he intends to move forward.
In conversation with Buzzfeed News, he spoke extensively about what the reality of his current situation.
“What I’ve been doing is just exposing,” said Crews. “If this is the end of my career, just end it now. Cause I’m gonna keep living, I’m gonna keep doing my thing. But if I don’t do another Expendables, then let’s not do another one. I’m OK with that.”
Crews — who has publicly called out his assailant’s attempts to silence himself through Russell Simmons and WME’s management — also called out Avi Lerner, a producer of the popular movie franchise The Expendables, for allegedly calling his management and telling Crews that if he dropped the suit against Venit, there would be no “problems” with the movie’s sequel.
However, since speaking out, Crews has received no updates on the movie.
“No words from anybody. Nothing,” Crews told Buzzfeed. “Believe me, nobody saw that coming. Nobody thought that I was gonna put that out there.”
Crews continued, “People don’t understand that Hollywood is a very violent place. The best way to put it is that it’s like a plantation. You use extreme violence. You see a lot of people who never work again. For even speaking up the whole thing is that they cut your head off so that the next person doesn’t speak.”
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His #MeToo Moment
Crews detailed the moment he decided to speak up. It was only five days after the huge New York Times’ exposé on Harvey Weinstein and days before the #MeToo movement had gone into overdrive.
“I was on the set [of Brooklyn Nine-Nine], shaking,” Crews recalled. “I didn’t call my publicist, I didn’t call my friends, I didn’t call my manager, I didn’t call my wife. I just started tweeting.”
Crews tweeted about that moment in 2016 which has suddenly come back to him like a bad dream— a moment where a high-profile Hollywood agent sexually harassed him at a party. At the time, Crews kept his name unidentified but a few weeks later, everything changed.
“Once I hit send, I literally felt this weight come off me,” he continued. “I went back to work, and I turned my phone off. And when I came back to my phone, the world had changed.”
The Cost of Pain
Six months later, Crews has realized the cost of that change.
“I walk in the room, and the room is split right down the middle,” he told Buzzfeed. “It just divides right there. It’s kind of like lightning.” Crews asserts that on one side, he has those who are rooting for him and applauds his courage to speak out. On the other side of the room, people would prefer if he just shut up and went away.
“It’s because if you’ve got any kind of sympathy for these toxic dudes then you don’t even want to be around me,” Crews speculates about people who have grown to keep their distance. “Because I will put you on blast.”
Crews not only has to see his attacker get away with the alleged abuse, but he must also continue to pay Venit until the end of his contract.
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“What business [is this] that you can do something like that to another human being, and I still have to pay you?” said Crews. “Everybody feels like that’s OK. But this is not right. There are no checks and balances. There is no one to watch you. And given what he did to me, imagine some young girl, and an agent rapes them, and they’re on a show or whatever, and they still got to pay this guy.”
