Esmé Bianco, the actress best known for playing Ros in Game of Thrones, has come forward to accuse Marilyn Manson of alleged abuse. The allegations follow similar claims made by Westworld actress Evan Rachel Wood and others.
The actress detailed her allegations to The Cut on February 10. She says that before meeting Manson, she had thought of him as a “massive role model” and stated he had helped her “through some incredibly dark and difficult times as a teenager.” After meeting him, she called him a “monster who almost destroyed me and almost destroyed so many women.”
According to The Cut, Bianco and Manson reportedly first began talking in 2005 when Manson said he wanted to cast her in a horror movie called Phantasmagoria based on the works of Lewis Carroll. The actress alleged in her interview with The Cut that in 2009, Manson flew her out to his home in L.A. from London to shoot a music video for his track “I Want to Kill You Like They Do in the Movies.” Bianco alleges that he convinced her that he’d be using a flip camera “for a home-video feel.”
“I need to have a victim/lover,” Manson allegedly told her via email. Bianco was recently married and thought the job “would be strictly professional,” The Cut claims. The same statement says Manson allegedly sent her another email closer to the day of the shoot that said, “You are gonna have to pretend to like being manhandled by me. Sorry.”
Bianco alleges that upon arrival, “the line between art and reality immediately blurred,” according to The Cut. She claims that she wore lingerie over the next three days, was barely able to sleep and Manson was allegedly “serving up cocaine rather than food.” The Cut reports, “Soon, she says, he became violent, tying her with cables to a prayer kneeler, lashing her with a whip, and using an electric sex toy called a Violet Wand on her wounds — the same kind of ‘torture device’ Wood has said was used on her. Bianco was terrified but tried to calm down by telling herself, ‘It’s just Manson being theatrical. We are going to make great art.'”
The Cut writes that Bianco’s allegations of abuse didn’t end after that encounter. Bianco claims that after the music video shoot, Manson kept feeding her excuses for why it wasn’t being released. It never came out. She states that her marriage wasn’t going well and Manson and her reportedly began a long-distance affair.
Bianco left her husband in 2011 to move in with Manson, and alleges that he “began to control every aspect of her life,” The Cut writes. In Bianco’s words, “I basically felt like a prisoner. I came and went at his pleasure. Who I spoke to was completely controlled by him. I called my family hiding in the closet.”
Manson had allegedly “repeatedly cut her torso with a knife” according to The Cut. “I just remember laying there and I didn’t fight it,” Bianco commented. “It was kind of this final-straw moment where I had lost all sense of hope and safety.” The Cut also alleges that Manson once “chased her around the apartment with an ax.”
Responding to the initial wave of allegations, Manson called them “horrible distortions of reality.” In response to the claims, he was dropped by his record label, talent agency and manager. His ex-wife Dita Von Teese claims that the allegations don’t match her own experience of living with Manson. Wolf Alice’s Ellie Roswell alleges that he distracted her while taking upskirt video of her backstage at a festival.
Bianco told The Cut that being able to speak out is a “massive relief” and alleged him to be a “serial predator.” She told The Cut, “He’s not a misunderstood artist. He deserves to be behind bars for the rest of his life.
Photo credit: Owen Ela
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