Chris Noth fired from ‘The Equalizer’ amid sexual assault allegations
The veteran actor, who was also dropped by his talent agency, claims the sexual encounters "were consensual."
Actor Chris Noth will not be appearing in more episodes of the hit CBS series The Equalizer amid sexual assault allegations leveled against him by three women.
“Chris Noth will no longer film additional episodes of The Equalizer, effective immediately,” Universal Television and CBS said in a joint statement on Monday, People reports.
On The Equalizer, the series reboot starring rapper-actress Queen Latifah, Noth portrayed ex–CIA director William Bishop, and will be seen in only one upcoming episode following reports that he raped two women over 10 years ago. The alleged victims shared similar accounts to The Hollywood Reporter.
The women, using the pseudonyms Zoe and Lily, claim the attacks occurred at Noth’s home. Zoe told THR she was at the former Sex and the City star’s Los Angeles apartment when he raped her “from behind” in 2004. Lily claims the former Law and Order actor also raped her “from behind” at his New York home in 2015.
“I realized there was blood on my shirt. I got out of there. I went to my friend’s apartment [in the same building],” Zoe, who was 22 at the time, recalled, per the report. “I walked right in and went to the bathroom and tried to get the blood out of my shirt. They wanted to know what happened. I said, ‘I just want to go home.'”
Lily, who was 25 at the time, claims the assault occurred three years after Noth and his current wife, Tara Wilson, wed in 2001. The couple shares two sons.
“He said marriage is a sham. Monogamy is not real,” she asserted. “He was having sex with me from the back in a chair. We were in front of a mirror. I was kind of crying as it happened. I went to the bathroom [after] and put on my skirt. I was feeling awful. Totally violated. All of my dreams with this star I loved for years were gone.”
Noth — who briefly appears in HBO’s Sex & The City sequel, And Just Like That — claims these past sexual encounters “were consensual.”
“The accusations against me made by individuals I met years, even decades, ago are categorically false,” he said in a statement. “These stories could’ve been from 30 years ago or 30 days ago — no always means no — that is a line I did not cross. It’s difficult not to question the timing of these stories coming out. I don’t know for certain why they are surfacing now, but I do know this: I did not assault these women.”
A third woman, using the pseudonym Ava, has also come forward claiming Noth sexually assaulted her when she was 18 and working at a New York City restaurant in 2010. As reported by People, Noth denied her accusations in a statement.
“The story is a complete fabrication, and the alleged accounts detailed throughout read like a piece of bad fiction,” a rep for Noth said. “As Chris stated yesterday, he has and would never cross that line.”
Meanwhile, amid the rape allegations against Noth, an old National Enquirer article has resurfaced about him reportedly beating up his ex-girlfriend Beverly Johnson.
The allegations were made in court documents filed by the former supermodel in 1995, when she sought a restraining order against Noth — whom she dated from 1990 to 1995 — after he allegedly threatened to kill her, The Daily Mail reports. No criminal charges were brought against him after he allegedly beat Johnson up, threatened to “disfigure” her and kill her dog.
As theGrio previously reported, Latifah leads the cast and serves as an executive producer on the reimagined The Equalizer drama created by Richard Lindheim and Michael Sloan that aired for four seasons in the mid-to-late 1980s. On it, Edward Woodward played Robert McCall, a retired intelligence agent who uses skills gained from that career to help innocent people in dangerous circumstances get justice. Latifah plays a revised role originally made famous by Woodward.
In addition to being dropped from The Equalizer amid the sexual assault allegations, Noth has been dropped by his talent agency A3 Artists, and exercise equipment brand Peloton has removed a viral ad in which he starred from its social media and YouTube channels.
“Every single sexual assault accusation must be taken seriously,” a Peloton spokesperson told THR on Thursday. “We were unaware of these allegations when we featured Chris Noth in our response to HBO’s reboot. As we seek to learn more, we have stopped promoting this video and archived related social posts.”
Meanwhile, Noth’s wife is said to be “very upset” by the sexual assault allegations against him, a source told The Sun.
“He may be non-monogamous, we have established that his wife didn’t know,” the source told The Sun. “If anything, he is guilty of that. She is in L.A. and is very upset … she’s not doing well. They planned to spend Christmas together, but that is now unknown.”
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