3 weeks ago
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Noel Clarke told a producer to “fuck off” after being warned that his behaviour with a female actor before a sex scene would “end up on the front of a national newspaper”, a witness has told the high court.
The producer said he had approached the former Doctor Who star after being informed by a distressed actor, named as Maya, that Clarke had said “things like ‘we’re going to fuck later on, we’ll fuck next week’”.
“Maya also told me that Noel had been pressuring her to be nude in the scene,” the producer said. “I spoke to Noel and told him that Maya felt he had been saying things to her that were unprofessional (specifically his comments about fucking her). I remember Noel denied that he had said anything of the sort. I said to him: ‘Why would Maya make that up?’”
The producer said he had not believed Clarke, 49, during what he told the court was a “combative” conversation.
“Noel was very resistant and belligerent during this conversation,” the producer said. “When Noel said that we would need to get a different actress to replace Maya. I distinctly remember saying to him words to the effect, ‘You’ve been saying ‘we’re going to fuck later’ to her – surely you can see where that leads? Do you really want to end up on the front of a national newspaper? As that’s the way this is going.’ In response, Noel told me to ‘fuck off’”.
The producer was giving evidence as a witness for Guardian News and Media (GNM), the publisher of the Guardian, in its defence against a libel claim by Clarke relating to seven articles and a podcast published between April 2021 and March 2022 accusing him of sexual misconduct.
Clarke denies putting pressure on Maya over the sex scene or acting inappropriately. He has said he apologised to her in a phone call for one comment in which he recalled saying something like, “don’t worry, you look great”, in order to “boost her confidence”.
Cross-examining the producer, Philip Williams, representing Clarke, suggested the account was not true and asked why it was that Maya went on to send Clarke friendly messages after working with him. The court heard that Maya had also thanked Clarke for making her feel “at ease” during an initial audition.
The producer responded that he was not aware of what happened after they had worked together but that he would have been “pleased” if they had been reconciled.
A female producer on the same production said she had also been informed by Maya that Clarke was pressuring her to be naked during the sex scene and that she felt he was “coming on to her because he was being leery and suggestive”.
Asked about the later apparent friendliness in messages between Clarke and Maya, the producer responded that it did not surprise her as “that’s how it was” for women in the business when dealing with powerful people.
A female runner on the same production told the court that Maya had told her that Clarke was “bullying her and undermining her, saying to her she would ‘never make it’, and insinuating that he could ruin her career and that she was only in this show because of him”.
She added: “Maya said she felt she was in a #MeToo situation with Noel.”
Clarke’s barrister suggested that Maya was already a successful actor by that stage and that the former runner had been mistaken in her evidence, which she denied.
He asked whether she was a “driver” of the MeToo movement. “I’m supportive of it but I don’t engage on a daily basis,” she said.
The court also heard from Lisa Graham, who claimed that Clarke had “put his hand over my thigh and in-between my legs” while she had been assisting him as a volunteer at a convention centre in Birmingham in 2016.
Graham claimed that his hand had gone “an inch or two from my pantyhose”, forcing her to physically move her chair away from him.
She further claimed that Clarke had repeatedly proposed that they “go upstairs and have sex” and ranked passing women on their sexual attractiveness, including a pregnant woman who he said he would “bang” because “you can’t put another baby in them”.
Clarke denies the claims. His barrister accused Graham of misinterpreting the conversation and jumping on a bandwagon.
She denied the accusation, telling the court that she had been forced to “relive things that I did not want to have to relive” but that she had decided that speaking out was the “right thing to do”.
A final witness, Garry Moore, an amateur film-maker, told the court that Clarke had shown him a clip of a female actor named as Florence in a scene in which she was naked. He said he had been “shocked” that Clarke had the footage on his phone.
Put to him by the claimant’s junior barrister, Arthur Lo, that this was part of the process of selecting an actor for a part, Moore said they were not at that stage and that he believed Clarke simply wanted to “show that he could get actresses to do anything that he wanted”.
The trial continues.
