It’s rare for a film screening, let alone an anniversary film screening, to be anything other than a light-hearted event. However, that certainly wasn’t the case for the 20th anniversary panel for Wag the Dog, according to those who attended the event. At the panel, John Oliver asked Dustin Hoffman about a recent sexual assault allegation made against the actor, and things quickly got heated.
In early November, Anna Graham Hunter penned a guest column for The Hollywood Reporter, detailing her time as a production assistant on the 1985 TV film Death of a Salesman. At the time, Hunter was 17 years old. According to the column, when asked what he wanted for breakfast one morning, Hoffman replied to the PA, “I’ll have a hard-boiled egg … and a soft-boiled clitoris.”
Last night, Oliver asked Hoffman about this accusation, and the actor “grew visibly uncomfortable,” as described by The Washington Post‘s Steve Zeitchik. After a heated back and forth, Hoffman said to Oliver, “You weren’t there.” The late night host counted quickly, saying, “I’m happy I wasn’t.”
The subject was then dropped for several minutes before Hoffman brought it up again. The A-list actor accused the comedian of not having an “open mind” and of “unquestionably believing accusers” — two charged accusations in 2017’s current landscape that likely don’t make Hoffman look as good as he predicted they would.
Oliver also accused Hoffman of not being “self-reflective in the way the situation demands.” Zeitchik included a video of the panel in his write-up for The Washington Post, which you can watch here.