Oscar-winning actor and “The Glorias” co-star Timothy Hutton is now facing accusations from a woman who claims that he raped her when she was just 14 years old in 1983. The alleged victim is Sera Johnston, whose story was outed via a BuzzFeed News report on Monday (then again, always take that site’s “news” with a grain of salt).
Johnston claims that Hutton assaulted her during the making of the film “Iceman.” Johnston also claims that she has two witnesses to the rape, which happened when they were invited to Hutton’s hotel room, the actor was 23-years-old at the time and she was 14.
Hutton is vehemently denying the accusations. His lawyers say the actor “will not spend one more minute dignifying these allegations as they are patently false and designed only to extort money from him.” The statement also attacks Johnston’s narrative, which “provided salacious, heinous, and graphic details of this made-up sexual encounter that supposedly occurred 36 years ago. Although these were disgusting details any smut fiction writer could conjure up.”
According to Johnston, back in 2017, Hutton agreed to a payout deal with her in the amount of $135,000. The BuzzFeed story features testimony from several witnesses who corroborated her story, which could further complicate his defense.
Hutton, who already lost his Fox show “Almost Family” yesterday due to the inevitable backlash, was most recently seen in the Gloria Steinem biopic “The Glorias” at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival. That movie, a non-starter that garnered mixed reviews at the fest, will now have to contend with a major elephant-in-the-room. Hutton is featured in more-than-a-few scenes in the film, which is unabashedly feminist, this will most likely lead producers to have no choice now, but to completely scrub off Hutton from the movie, or maybe, as Jeffrey Wells suggested to me earlier today, CGI his face.
There is no chance in hell that Hutton survives the final cut of “The Glorias.” Whether he is innocent or guilty of the charges, what’s known is enough to get him canceled by today’s culture.
I wouldn't call this film great — it stops short of that because of how neatly it resolves itself — but I'll give Rock his due here: this is much better than his previous directorial effort, "Top Five."