Charlize Theron on why she won’t name her harasser: “He knows who he is”

Charlize Theron has opened up once again about an incident of sexual harassment early in her career, but made it clear that she still doesn’t intend to name the man involved.

In a recent conversation on the ‘Call Her Daddy’ podcast, Charlize Theron recalled the unsettling moment when she was invited to a director’s home late at night for what she was told would be an audition.

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When she arrived, he greeted her in pajamas. As the so-called “audition” went on, she says he placed his hand on her knee.

“The little voice inside me definitely said, ‘This isn’t right,’” Theron told host Alex Cooper. “But then the other voice in me says, ‘Well, I don’t know. Maybe it is right.’”

This is not the first time she’s shared the story. Back in 2019, she spoke publicly about the experience, though without naming the director then, too. Now, she has explained why she continues to withhold his identity.

“This guy, he got a little nervous for a while there,” she said. “I’ve never said his name because honestly, I don’t want the story to be about him. It’s not because I’m protecting him or anything… He knows it’s him.”

According to Theron, after she spoke about the experience in public, the director reached out, not with an apology, but with a letter attempting to explain away his behavior. “He wrote me a pretend letter trying to explain his behavior and how I must have misunderstood it, which is classic, isn’t it?” she said.

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She described him as panicking, clearly shaken by the public attention. But for Theron, keeping his name anonymous gives her more power.

“I just realized, like, I won’t even f***ing say your name because you know you’re the scumbag,” she said bluntly. “And I kind of like that he’s got to be on a hot seat. He doesn’t know when it’s going to come. I kind of like that a little more.”

In discussing the emotional weight that survivors carry, Theron reflected on the guilt and internal conflict that often follow such experiences.

“I remember being furious with myself because I couldn’t believe how I had let myself down,” she said. That self-directed anger, she explained, can be compounded by a culture that dismisses survivors or pressures them to “speak up sooner.”