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Rose McGowan accuses Alexander Payne of grooming and having sex with her when she was 15: 'I was not an adult'

'I was attracted to him, so I thought it was on me, but that's not correct. I was not an adult,' the actress wrote on Instagram

Rose McGowan dropped yet another bombshell allegation last night as she accused Oscar-winning director Alexander Payne of "grooming" her and having sex with her when she was just 15. McGowan, who is now 46, said that "for years I had thought a man I had sexual relations with was a sexual experience I had... I now know I was groomed."

The 'Planet Terror' star, who was one of the first women to come forward against Harvey Weinstein as part of the #MeToo movement, alleged that the ordeal caused her to leave the industry and she returned to Hollywood only after being officially "discovered" at the age of 21.

McGowan, earlier in the day, had referred to Payne as the "well-endowed" man who allegedly "sat me down and played a soft-core porn movie" when she was 15. It later emerged she had first described the incident in 2018 without identifying the filmmaker. 

"If you are out there trying to have sex with an underage minor, you are committing a crime, even if the minor doesn't know it," McGowan revealed in a second 'bomb of truth' post on Instagram. "I was attracted to him, so I thought it was on me, but that's not correct. I was not an adult."

The 'Scream' star first asked for 'acknowledgment and an apology' from the director on Twitter Monday morning.

"Alexander Payne. You sat me down and played a soft-core porn movie you directed for Showtime under a different name," she wrote. "I still remember your apartment in Silverlake. You are very well-endowed. You left me on a street corner afterwards. I was 15."

McGowan followed up last night with a lengthy Instagram post in which she detailed the alleged 'grooming' episode.

"For years I had thought a man I had sexual relations with was a sexual experience I had. I now know I was groomed," she declared. "I auditioned for him at 15. After my experience with him, I quit acting entirely until I was 'discovered' at 21. When that happened, I was like, f*** it, let's do this. I even tweeted a congratulations on his Oscar win in 2012, that's how deep in the Cult of Hollywood I was."

"It wasn't until three weeks after the Weinstein story broke that I re-evaluated the situation," she added.

McGowan said she felt bad about "throwing a bomb into someone’s life and career" but noted that it was probably "social conditioning."

"I'm more sad than angry. Sad for 15-year-old me. Sad for the adult me that still thought it was a choice I made," she continued. "Grooming is real. I want you all to know that it's not your fault if you were mentally massaged into thinking it's okay. It is not. I know this now."

"I would even go up to this director at events and ask him, with a smile, 'remember when you had sex with me at 15?' And I would laugh it off. That is deep societal programming," McGowan explained. "When it happened, I'd recently been left behind in Hollywood by a family member to fend for myself. The wolves preyed."

"Please recognize that if this has happened to you, the shame is not yours, it's theirs. Give it back. Groomers are skilled operators and at 15, I was not aware of the warning signs," she concluded. "Goddess bless us all, except for those that abuse their power. Here's to freedom, yours and mine."

Payne, now 59, was 28 at the time of the alleged sexual encounters and has yet to comment on the allegations. The veteran director shot to fame for movies such as Sideways (2004), Election (1999) and About Schmidt (2002).