Amy Berg’s two-part HBO documentary “Phoenix Rising” finds Evan Rachel Wood reflecting on her abuse allegations against Marilyn Manson. New details from the documentary’s second part (airing March 16 on HBO) have emerged courtesy of Insider and the New York Post, including Wood’s allegation that Manson told her to make him dinner right after she got an abortion. Wood became pregnant with Manson’s child while making the 2011 HBO miniseries “Mildred Pierce.”
“He flew out for the abortion. I was just so scared and sad,” Wood says in the documentary. “I obviously believe in a woman’s right to choose, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t devastating…The second it was over [he] was like, ‘Make me dinner.’ And I remember being like, ‘I’m supposed to be resting — my body has gone through this trauma, there’s aftermath here.’ And he didn’t care.”
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Wood alleges in the documentary that Manson “refused to wear a condom, ever” during their relationship, adding, “And it was very much sex on demand, and it was going to cause more problems if I said no. You don’t have time to use birth control when somebody’s just penetrating you while you’re asleep or if they’ve given you a pill that made you black out.”
Wood and Manson made their relationship public in 2007 when she was 19 years old and he was 38. The two had a brief engagement before their relationship ended in 2010. Wood speaks to her activist friend Illma Gore in the documentary and says she tried to commit suicide after her relationship to Manson ended.
Manson, whose real name is Brian Warner, filed a lawsuit against Wood earlier this month. The musician citied defamation over Wood’s sexual abuse allegations against him and called them a “malicious falsehood.”
In a statement to Insider about the new allegations made in part two of “Phoenix Rising,” Manson’s attorney Howard King said, “As we detailed in our lawsuit, nothing that Evan Rachel Wood, Illma Gore or their hand-picked co-conspirators have said on this matter can be trusted. This is just more of the same. But, then again, what else would you expect from a group who have spread falsehood after falsehood about Brian and even went as far as to forge an FBI letter to further their phony claims?”
In the first part of “Rising Phoenix,” which debuted at the Sundance Film Festival in January, Wood says she was “essentially raped on-camera” while filming the 2007 music video for Manson’s “Heart-Shaped Glasses.” The video features Wood having sex with Manson while fake blood rains down on them. Wood was 19 years old when she filmed the music video and alleges that she was fed absinthe on set to the point that she was barely conscious to object when Manson had sex with her on camera.
In a previous statement to Variety, Manson’s attorney Howard King said: “Of all the false claims that Evan Rachel Wood has made about Brian Warner, her imaginative retelling of the making of the ‘Heart-Shaped Glasses’ music video 15 years ago is the most brazen and easiest to disprove, because there were multiple witnesses.”
HBO will premiere “Phoenix Rising” on back-to-back nights. Part 1, “Phoenix Rising: Don’t Fall,” debuts Tuesday, March 15. Part 2, “Phoenix Rising: Stand Up,” debuts Wednesday, March 16. Both episodes will be available to stream on HBO Max beginning Tuesday, March 15.
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