Paul Schrader Accused of Sexually Assaulting a Former Assistant

Taxi Driver and American Gigolo screenwriter Paul Schrader has been accused of sexually assaulting and harassing a former personal assistant, and then breaching contract by allegedly backing out of settlement payments. In a civil lawsuit filed in New York State Supreme Court on Thursday and obtained by The Independent and The Hollywood Reporter, a 26-year-old woman identified as Jane Doe alleges that the 78-year-old filmmaker subjected her to a “sexually hostile, intimidating, and humiliating environment” and “near-constant inappropriate sexual questions and lewd and misogynistic commentary” while she was under his employment from 2021 until 2024. The complaint accuses Schrader of “luring her into a hotel room” last year and “forcibly grabbing her and kissing her, despite her verbal protests.” (According to Doe, this happened during the Cannes Film Festival, which Schrader attended for the premiere of his film Oh, Canada.) Doe recalls returning to Schrader’s room three days later, after receiving “numerous calls and angry text messages” in which he claimed to be dying and unable to pack his bags by himself. Allegedly, Schrader opened the door “with his penis fully exposed,” wearing only an open bathrobe. Doe claims that he repeatedly invited her to feel “how wet” his sweaty bedsheets were as she packed his bags “in terrified silence.”

Doe’s legal team claims that Schrader sent Doe multiple emails indicating that he knew his conduct toward her was “unwelcome and offensive.” (“I sense you are uncomfortable with my affection for you,” he allegedly wrote in May 2023, similarly stating in another alleged email from May 2024, “I sense you recoil every time I have the impulse to touch you.”) Doe claims that she was ultimately fired in September 2024 as an act of retaliation for refusing his “sexual and romantic advances.” The suit alleges that Schrader sent her an email two days after her termination, acknowledging that he had “fucked up” and that she “of course” had “no choice but to put [him] in the rearview mirror” if he had “become a Harvey Weinstein in [her] mind.”

According to Doe, her and Schrader’s attorneys negotiated and reached a written agreement that he would pay her an undisclosed amount of money to resolve her allegations. Doe’s complaint claims that Schrader delayed signing the agreement for weeks before telling his legal team that he had done some “soul searching” while he was sick and ultimately decided that he could not “live with himself” if he paid out the settlement. This prompted Doe to file her suit. “As stated in our motion, Ms. Doe is simply seeking to enforce the settlement agreement between the parties resolving her sexual harassment and sexual assault claims,” Menaka Fernando, an attorney for Doe, told The Independent. “We have no further comment at this time and ask that the media respect Ms. Doe’s privacy.”

Schrader’s attorney, Philip Kessler, vehemently denied Doe’s allegations in a Friday phone call with The Independent. “The underlying intentions of the plaintiff here contain many very material inaccuracies, and are obviously designed to paint Mr. Schrader in a very false light, in an effort to intimidate and coerce him into settling,” Kessler said. “And just to be very clear, Mr. Schrader never had sex in any form with the plaintiff, nor did he ever attempt such a thing. We will vigorously defend this.” In a separate statement to The Hollywood Reporter, Kessler denounced the filing as a “desperate, opportunistic and frivolous lawsuit to enforce a settlement that was never signed by Schrader.” He went on to characterize the suit’s claims as “in many respects inaccurate, in other respects materially misleading and exaggerated,” adding that the “circumstances here will be shown to have been blown very wildly out of proportion to reality.”

• [The Independent]
• [The Hollywood Reporter]

Related

• Every Paul Schrader Movie, Ranked
• Paul Schrader Thought He Was Dying. So He Made a Movie About It.
• Paul Schrader’s Oh, Canada Is the Confession of a Man Who’s Faced Death