Zoe Lister-Jones accuses Chris Noth of “sexually inappropriate” behavior
Her allegation comes after two women accused the actor of sexual assault
Aux News Chris Noth
Zoe Lister-Jones shared her own allegations of inappropriate behavior from Chris Noth hours after the Sex And The City actor was accused of sexual assault by two other women.
In an Instagram post, Lister-Jones wrote:
Last week, my friend asked me how I felt about Mr. Big’s death on And Just Like That…, and I said, honestly, I felt relieved. He asked why and I told him it was because I couldn’t separate the actor from the man, and the man is a sexual predator. My friend was alarmed at my word choice. And to be honest so was I. I hadn’t thought of this man for so many years, and yet there was a virility to my language that came from somewhere deep and buried.
In my twenties I worked at a club in NY that Chris Noth owned and on the few occasions he would show up, he was consistently sexually inappropriate with a fellow female promoter. That same year, I was a guest star on Law And Order and it was his first episode returning as a detective after SATC.
He was drunk on set. During my interrogation scene he had a 22 oz. of beer under the table that he would drink in between takes. In one take he got close to me, sniffed my neck, and whispered, “You smell good.” I didn’t say anything. My friend at the club never said anything. It’s so rare that we do.
Noth was accused of sexual assault by two women who each shared their allegations with The Hollywood Reporter. According to the publication, their alleged assaults occurred more than a decade apart. The first woman said she met Noth in 2004 when she was 22 years old and working at a high-profile firm.
She alleged that Noth got her phone number from the directory and invited her to his West Hollywood apartment. She’d decided to take two friends with her, but Noth asked her to drop off a book he’d lent her at his apartment. According to the woman, while at his residence, Noth kissed her and then proceeded to sexually assault her.
The other woman who came forward said she’d met Noth while working as a server in the VIP section of a nightclub. He asked her to dinner, but when she got to the restaurant, the kitchen had closed, so they had drinks. After drinks, he invited her to his apartment where, she alleged, he “pretty forcibly” had sex with her.
In a statement, Noth told THR, “The accusations against me made by individuals I met years, even decades, ago are categorically false. 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. The encounters were consensual. 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.”
126 Comments
I think I understand now why Carrie didn’t call 911.
Let the crimes die with him!
Like to see her pulling an Anthony Edwards E.R. move, standing over him with the paddles doing nothing.
In one take he got close to me, sniffed my neck, and whispered, “You smell good.”
So that’s what “sexual predator” means?
Yeah, you can see where the years of buried trauma come from. I can’t imagine how she could possibly move forward from this devastating event.
yeah man pretty fucking weird thing to do
…yes?
There are dictionary definitions of “sexual predator:”
a person who has committed a sexually violent offense and especially one who is likely to commit more sexual offenses (Webster)
and legal definitions:
A predator designation requires that a person be convicted of a first-degree felony sex crime or two second-degree felony sex crimes (with offenses, convictions or release from court sanctions occurring within 10 years) and which occurred after October 1, 1993. In addition, the court must issue a written order finding for predator status. (State of Kansas)Unless there’s more to the story, drinking at work, sniffing a neck and saying a creepy thing, is not being a sexual predator.
It’s wrong and should not be tolerated but words and their definitions matter.
He raped two women
In isolation, invading a co-worker’s personal space, sniffing their neck, and telling them they smell good is, at the very least, sexual harassment, and would’ve been enough to get Noth’s was fired in a more conventional workplace. In the context of also witnessing Noth’s “sexually inappropriate” behavior toward another co-worker and hearing the news that Noth raped two other women…yeah, I think Lister-Jones is justified in concluding that Noth is a sexual predator.
Definitely more to the story… apparently a few decades more.
Does your stupid fucking brain think that she is under oath in a courtroom?
Take your moron head out of your shitty asshole and give it a fucking shake.
Well, damn. Whenever I wear my Burberry Touch cologne at work people are always sniffing me and telling me I smell good. Now I know to be offended.
Are they also leaning over and deliberately sniffing your neck and whispering when they tell you that you smell good?
on the few occasions he would show up, he was consistently sexually inappropriateSounds like “a person who seeks out sexual contact with another person in a predatory or abusive manner” to me, but idk I’m just using basic reading comprehension.
If I walk up to you, sniff your neck, tell you that you smell nice, and then walk away…is it gross and wrong? Yes. Am I being predatory or abusive? That seems like a stretch.
Words like “abusive” and “predatory” are tossed around in just about every internet conversation about sexual misconduct and bad behavior, whether they are warranted or not.
This is insulting to people who suffer far more outrageous things than neck-sniffing.
If you drunkenly sniff my neck and tell me I smell nice — on the job — after I’ve witnessed you being “consistently sexually inappropriate” with a female coworker every time you came into my other place of work, then yes, obviously that’s predatory behaviour, and it’s not wild to say that it’s an abuse of your position as the owner of the club that I worked in.
[Sees picture of a man arrested for a double homicide] “Hey, that’s the guy who attacked me with a knife! I hope that murderer rots in jail.”
VERY SERIOUS PERSON: “Hmm, I don’t think it’s fair for you to call that man a ‘murderer.’ Judging by your story, it sounds like he only attempted to murder you. After all, words matter. In fact, Webster’s dictionary defines ‘murder’ as…”
Word nerds are the fuckin’ worst.
Just because you personally don’t think it’s predatory doesn’t mean anything. It *is* predatory.
You clearly have your ideas firmly rooted, regardless of many people telling you otherwise. Why listen to reason and logic, when you can just wing it with bad, biased information?
Enjoy future visits from HR and various representatives of the legal system.
“This is insulting to people who suffer far more outrageous things than neck-sniffing.”
Oh, you mean like the two women who claimed Noth raped them?
The comments section is full of random strangers behind a username, but you can learn a lot about them just by the hills people are willing to die on.
“That seems like a stretch.”Yeah, especially considering that nobody has ever accused him of raping them in the last couple days.
Jesus fucking Christ, look around the room, retard.
“This is insulting to people who suffer far more outrageous things than neck-sniffing.”
Yeah, I bet the women who are CURRENTLY ACCUSING NOTH OF RAPE probably wish Lister-Jones would stop calling him a predator.
“After reading these accusations of violent rape, I felt like I had to share my story. He smelled me one time. #metoo”
Piss off, apologist.
To the both of ya: what world do you live in, where your coworker can just get up in your personal space, take a deep smell and make a comment?Here’s a little thought experiment: imagine that women and men were actually EQUAL.
It’s inappropriate to do to someone who you don’t already have that kind of relationship with. It’s even more inappropriate to do it to someone who works for you.‘Sexual predator’ and ‘sexual assault’ are both pretty vague terms that can encompass a fairly wide range of behavior. The quoted passage isn’t something that anyone should condone, but if that was the extent of behavior that causes someone to get labeled a sexual predator…it’s not exactly Kevin Spacey (or even Louis CK) levels of badness.Similarly “She’d decided to take two friends with her, but Noth asked her to drop
off a book he’d lent her at his apartment. According to the woman, while
at his residence, Noth kissed her and then proceeded to sexually
assault her.”What, in this instance, does ‘proceeded to sexually assault her’ mean? Butt grab? Full-on rape? Both of those are sexual assault, but there’s a pretty big gap in seriousness.
“After drinks, he invited her to his apartment where, she alleged, he “pretty forcibly” had sex with her.” Is this rape-rape, or is this consensual sex that was different from what she had in mind? ‘Forcibly’ is the kind of adverb that’s usually associated with rape, but coupling that with ‘had sex’ instead raises questions. Is that because it wasn’t really rape, or because the woman feels like she needs to hedge and not call it rape?
It’s almost like the accusations are left deliberately vague so the reader can interpolate any meaning into them.
What, in this instance, does ‘proceeded to sexually assault her’ mean?
Butt grab? Full-on rape? Both of those are sexual assault, but there’s a
pretty big gap in seriousness.
The original article was not vague on this point: “She says he then pulled her toward him, moved her toward the bed, pulled off her shorts and bikini bottom, and began to rape her from behind. She was facing a mirror. ‘It was very painful and I yelled out, “Stop!”’ she says. ‘And he didn’t. I said, “Can you at least get a condom?” and he laughed at me.’”
I usually don’t comment on comments – but this type of reply keeps cropping up in various places related to this article and many others like it. This response by the victim regarding rape (non-consensual sex) is extremely common and I’m not really sure if commenters who ask this question (a variation of, but is it really rape because she’s kind of talking around it?) time and time again are bothering to read up on sexual assault and how women react to it, or they’d know the answer to this. Women very often question their own truth – largely because of probing questions from strangers just like these. Imagine you’ve been terribly traumatized. Your mind is already in a fragile state. Everyone around you, instead of empathizing you, does this whole interrogation thing, “But did you lead him on? We you okay with it at first and changed your mind? Was it rape, rape, or just bad sex?” You feel attacked again, and in order not to feel attacked a second time, you just mask your pain and say, “Maybe you’re right. Maybe I’m blowing things out of proportion here.” It’s easier to shut people up by agreeing with them, than having to defend your account of a situation when you are feeling raw and vulnerable. It’s hard to confront others when you’re traumatized. As someone who personally was unable to call the years of sexual assault when I was a child “rape”. I’m speaking from a very personal space here when I say, this shit is not easy to do, even when it’s something so obvious as child abuse, you still doubt yourself – by and large because you know others will instinctively doubt you as well. I’ll tell the internet this truth, btw, but not my brothers. I know they’ll doubt. I love them, but I know this. I don’t want to confront that doubt. I don’t need that additional pain. I suspect this woman who told this story is just doing the same thing. She doesn’t want to read some stranger’s opinion that what happened to her “wasn’t rape.” So she softens the language to avoid having to be traumatized about the whole thing all over again. Finally, she describes herself as crying throughout the ordeal. I mean… at some point you have to ask yourself, even if you’re questioning whether or not it’s rape, why are you trying to defend a person who continued to have sex with a sobbing woman? A man who felt the need to after the fact text to make sure she didn’t feel raped or assaulted? Why go to bat for this man acting as a de facto cross examiner of this woman’s testimony? Surely there are better arguments to have.
White women think everything is oppressive to them. They are desperate to convince the world they are marginalized.
She saw this person multiple times engaging in red flag triggering predatory behavior and that was her personal take. Maybe she could have chosen a more precise word, but she was there and you weren’t, and by these accounts this week he very likely actually is a sexual predator whether he gets arrested and convicted or not.
Here’s a hypothetical for you. A person is accused of pedophilia. Someone else comes forward and says that the person had asked their kid if they could touch them, but that is as far as it got. It would seem clear that that was relevant in light of the other accusations, yes? Same thing here.
Now THAT is a hair worth splitting.
Not a good look, homie. May want to take some time to reflect on your life a bit.
he was consistently sexually inappropriate with a fellow female promoter
LOL. Just an ordinary day at the office for you, right?
But I’m in the grays. This site is so stupid.
User has not received workplace sexual harassment training.
They were on set. They were working. Would you want a coworker to say “you smell good” in your ear?
Hasn’t The President been accused of doing the same thing?
Generally not appropriate behavior on set, no.
this got memory holed https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FGwaTnwUUAIv_Jo?format=png&name=small
So… safe to say Logan won’t be appearing in the Law & Order revival?
Det. Logan is probably re-assigned to Staten Island
I imagine some NBC exec involved with the relaunch of Law and Order is now hastily doing a precautionary background check of Sam Waterston. Just in case.
Notorious poon-hound.
As long as the poons fully consent to being hounded, that’s ok!
Sam would never!
Just be skeptical of any insurance products he’s hawking.
Stabler is a cannibal.
I always heard Tutuola was a cop killer
He just didn’t know it was illegal.“You tellin’ me that the taking of a life is considered some kind of crime? Wack.”
That would break my heart.
I have a Sam Waterston story that shows he’s pretty much the *opposite* of Noth. While in school, I worked in a legal job for the Baltimore PD. Off-duty officers were (as is typical) working as on-set security for John Waters when he was filming “Serial Mom”. A couple of the cops were sitting down to lunch at craft services and, seeing Kathleen Turner at a far table, one said to the other “Man, as long as I have a face, she’ll have a place to sit!” Then they saw that Waterston was sitting and eating at their table, had heard them – and he got up and left in a huff. The next week, they were let go from the job because he had complained to Waters, and he even made a formal complaint to the PD, and the guys had to go before a review board with my boss to keep it off their records.TL,DR: Waterston was woke by the early ‘90s. (i.e. a decent man.)
He’s also incredibly kind to crew members on set. He is on the correct side of politics and has written a few amusingly cranky editorials about how much he hates 45. And I believe he was recently arrested at an environmental protest. He’s a good dude.
“He is on the correct side of politics”.Wtf does that even mean? lol
He told us in Capricorn One that he was a terrific guy, so I’ve always thought so.
Nothing as dramatic, but when I was in my twenties, I was doing some work in a little cafe in Hell’s Kitchen. Sam Waterston came in and was also there for a several hours because he was apparently on a break from filming L&O and didn’t want to sit in his trailer. He read the newspaper and drank coffee. He was polite to everyone, including me, and nobody made a fuss.
Sam Waterston lives up near my parents’ house, and I’ve run
into him a couple times. Once was at the local hardware store, where he
was picking up some parts for a small home repair project, and yeah, if
his face wasn’t instantly recognizable to literally everyone you’d
never know he was super famous. Just a friendly guy who fixes his own
sink and makes small talk at the cash register.On a tangential note, Chris Meloni also has a house in the area, and for about a year my friend carried around a can of mixed vegetables in her backpack in case she ran into him. She eventually saw Chris Meloni in a coffee shop, and I’m happy to report that he did sign her can of mixed vegetables.
In fairness, that cop had a point.
I guarantee networks execs are already well aware of the behavior (both good and bad) of their biggest stars.
Beverly Johnson’s claims have resurfaced. Oh wow, if true, he’s a monster:“Sources close to the model claim that the abuse continued – and then intensified after she broke up with him in 1993. The insiders allege that the actor began ‘calling [Johnson] up to 25 times a day threatening to kill her or disfigure her’ and at one point say he ‘even threatened to kill her dog, Flame’. “
According to the woman, while at his residence, Noth kissed her and then proceeded to sexually assault her.He raped her.
I didn’t want to “like” this post but this is a much better descriptor than the term the article uses.
She’s not even that good looking why would Mr Big be interested in that anyway.
I have a friend who is from NYC, and one time he was an extra on Law and Order. He said Jerry Orbach was extremely nice, but Chris Noth was a huge asshole.That’s all I have to contribute here.
Ive heard that a lot about Orbach. Played the roughest New York characters but was really a singing dancing sweetheart who was closer to Lumiere then Lenny Briscoe. Shame he’s been gone so long.
I’ve long wondered how he felt about Lenny Briscoe overshadowing his theater/musical work. I mean, he appears to have genuinely loved the men and women of the NYPD so he didn’t have an “I Am Not Spock” dislike of the character.The person who recently surprised me with his “gruff cinematic demeanor, song-and-dance man at heart” is J.K. Simmons. I was ripping some old CDs to iTunes before boxing them up for donation and noticed that he was one of the supporting actors in the Peter Gallagher-starring “Guys & Dolls” revival from the ‘90s.
Did you post more or less the same sentiment in the Movie Crush FB group?
Just checked my Facebook Groups and didn’t see anything like that among my memberships.
J.K. is the peanut M&M!
I imagine he liked the character well enough, he was a riff on his Prince of the City character. But I imagine he was Broadway first, gritty cop second. Also yeah JK really likes musicals, I kinda wish he would get up and sing in Spider-Man.
I saw that production!! Wow, never put two and two together.
Orbach was a career actor, and until L&O, a real “that guy.” I suspect that getting the role of Briscoe after he’d been in show business for over 35 years (unlike Nimoy, who was roughly the same age as Orbach, but got his signature role in his 30s) gave him a different perspective. If nothing else, it says something that he was signed up to star as Briscoe in a L&O spinoff at the time he died.
If you haven’t check out the musical episode of Oz, which has a bit with Simmons (and Lee Tergesen) doing an awesome dance number
I watched the ‘Rockin The Boat’ number from the Tony Awards on Youtube and was so shocked to see him there!
My introduction to Simmons was SVU, so it’s been a wonder seeing the massive variety across his work. He’s just fun, even when he’s being a prick.
Simmons came and spoke to our tour group back when I visited NYC in about ‘93 or whenever he was in Guys &Dolls. Didn’t know who he was but kept an eye on his career and we all know how well that’s been going over the past 30 years.
I dunno if it’s the same kind of thing, but I was recently quite surprised to learn that Kelsey Grammer was originally in the off-Broadway production of Sunday in the Park with George.
I have two close friends who worked on “Law & Order” with Orbach during his entire time on the show, and they say he was one of the best people they’ve ever known in their lives. He was, by all accounts, a lovely, funny, warm man who really knew how to tell an entertaining story. (I played on the show’s softball team with Noth, among others, and I did not like him, Sam I Am. I certainly have no stories about him possibly being a sexual predator, but I can assure you he was very pleased with himself and was more than a little bit of plain old dick.)
Oh yeah he struck me as the kind of guy that could bring a bar down from all the entertaining stories. Also not shocked about Noth, he always felt high and mighty and I’m better then this. I wasn’t expecting sexual predator but its not like I’m floored.
I heard a similar story about Orbach from an actor friend who did some stand-in work on L&O. Friendly guy who treated the extras like pals. Didn’t get any dirt on Noth tho.
You can kind of smell it on Chris Noth. The one I liked was Criminal Intent, and his character was brought into that show for a couple stints. The Law & Order shows don’t spend a lot of time on character development but even they kind of wrote his shit into the show. Each of Julianne Nicholson’s and Annabella Sciorra’s characters have to basically fend him off at some point.
Why bring him back? I don’t understand what the point was. They obviously wanted him dead, and it turns out the actor actually sucks too, just say he died in the gap between the movie and now.
They probably wanted a big death to kick off the show.
My ultra-cynical take is that the timing of Big’s death and the accusations against Noth are suspiciously perfect for the show which now gets all of the publicity and none of the stigma (since he’s gone from the show). BTW I am only suggesting that THR held onto the story until they and AJLT would get the maximum exposure.
Makes a lot of sense
Publications can’t generally afford to hold on to big stories to maximize attention — they don’t own the stories, and they can get scooped by another publication while they wait. And at least one of the victims here made clear she came forward because the new SATC show brought new attention to Noth, so she didn’t provide the information for the story until recently.
Doubt it. Seems more likely these victims just buried this awful memory and were triggered by al the press. Noth hasnt been in the news like this in forever. Now they see his name everywhere and they are like “oh wait, the culture is much more open to believing victims than back when i was raped”. They thus have the courage to speak up, finally. This is the most likely, by far, explanation. If anything, Noth trying to make the timing suspicious, when it is literally the OPPOSITE, is a form of gaslighting.
“Why bring him back?
Because he was a big part of the show and lots of fans loved him, and oh yeah they wrote and shot the ENTIRE season before these allegations came out two days ago.
The fact that everyone wound up talking about it, and then Peloton had to issue a statement and an ad about it, all explain why it made sense to bring him back (heck, this new SATC series is basically named for the transition after his death scene). Presumably, they didn’t know about the rape allegations, and thought his misbehavior was limited more to the kind of thing that’s being reported here—inappropriate comments, showing up to set drunk (which I think is part of what got him fired from his first stint on L&O)—than him possibly being a serial rapist with a thing for mirrors.
I doubt Sex in the City would have wanted this association at all. They didn’t kill him off because they thought this news was coming, they wanted to reset Carrie’s single status and having him guest star instead of die or divorce offscreen was a way to get some story and drama out of it.There was a huge time gap and they lost a core member of the group, if they didn’t want Noth involved in the new series they could have left him in the past very easily.
oh no, he sniffed you… oh the horror.. so sick of all these wannabe victims. its no wonder all these creatures can find is sexual predators the way they over exaggerate everything. women are so not worth the risk. delusional creatures.
Oh, no. How will they cope without your predatory ass?
Fuck you, you fucking fuck.
Tell me you’re a fucking creep who doesn’t know how to act around women without telling me you’re a fucking creep who doesn’t know how to act around women.
women are so not worth the risk
How about we send a drunk predatory gay guy twice your size to talk about how you smell and see how you like it?
I’m sure the women of the world collectively thank you for not taking that risk.
Nothing says, “I have succeeded in being a valuable human being” more than developing an actual non-satirical real-life worldview like that of Mac in “Always Sunny.”Phenomenal role model, right there.
So this means you’ll leave women alone? Awesome.
If it comes out that he was inappropriate to Jodie Whittaker or Mandip Gill when shooting Doctor Who I will be particularly upset. But it seems like a lot of predators he more targets people who are comparatively powerless and vulnerable and unlikely to speak up
Yes, it would be so much worse if he raped those two specific women. Then it’s a whole other level. Raping these two women? Not as big of a deal!What an amazingly fucking stupid comment…
When you’re The Doctor, you’re the face of the brand. Anything that happens to you makes it back to BBC brass. If Noth had tried to be creepy with Jodie, that’d have bitten him in the ass so fast.
“If it comes out that he was inappropriate to Jodie Whittaker or Mandip Gill when shooting Doctor Who I will be particularly upset.”
Yeah, who cares if it’s someone you don’t know, right?
I wonder if the new show’s producers had a whiff of all these accusations coming beforehand.
Maybe but I doubt it. He’s one of those out of sight, out of mind actors and nobody was talking or thinking about him before the premiere. Hiring him for a high-profile guest slot even if it’s to kill the character off isn’t exactly heroic nor does it do them any favors, not like cutting all ties completely.
My question is, given his supporting role on the new Equalizer – what will the showrunners and Queen Latifah do, assuming the show gets renewed for Season 3?
All right, who’s responsible for un-greying this chucklefuck?
I’d really enjoy it if artless edgelords could just up and spontaneously die.
“Women are not worth the risk” is a hot take coming from an obvious incel.
That’s my favorite opinion style to come from this whole issue.“Women are the worst. They ruin your life. I don’t even bother trying to date anymore.” *he says while putting down a Monster can covered in orange goo from a mixture of Cheetos and other unnamed fluids*
“Dames ain’t nothin’ but trouble!”
I wish guys who thought that way would take it to its logical conclusion and just avoid women altogether
“women are not worth the risk” is such a telling phrase. This fucker weighed the pros and cons of sexual assaulting women. A totally normal thing that non-predatory men do /s
The referring to women as “creatures” throughout seems like a bit of a red flag also.
There were four upvotes of that comment when I saw it. Even if he upvoted himself – he seems the type – there are three mysterious people around here I’m very concerned about.
Thanks for flagging them. I did too.
Oh c’mon what is wrong with this site, I’ve been commenting for years and this creep gets to post?
I hadn’t thought of this man for so many years, and yet there was a virility to my language that came from somewhere deep and buried.Because there’s no adverbial form for “vitriol”, which I reckon is what she was reaching for, and it’s a shame because it’s a fucking brilliant choice otherwise. Same goes for “vituperative” – no easy adverb.
The sentence calls for an abstract noun, which is exactly what both ‘virility’ and ‘vitriol’ are (‘virility’, meanwhile, lacks an easy adverb form itself). ‘Vitriol’ would be the more conventional choice, but ‘virility’ is understandable, if ironic/unfortunate, so I’m not sure what’s to be gained by finely parsing a victim’s lexical style.
[if you’re stretching for v-words, I’d probably have gone with ‘vehemence’, while plain ‘vigour’ also fits fine, if a little blandly. But I don’t think this was really the part of the story she wanted people to focus on – I think the intent was more to discuss the sexual harassment]
Has anyone called Captain Olivia Benson yet?