It’s summertime so that means street harassment is at an all time high. And sadly, stars like Anika Noni Rose aren’t immune to unwanted attention and conversations while navigating the streets.
The Quad actress recently shared her own experience in which a man responded aggressively when she refused his advances.
She told The New York Times that she asked the alleged harasser, “Why are you so closer to me?”
“I thought we were walking together,” he responded.
Rose continued, “I could hear anger in his voice as he said, ‘Don’t get hit by that cab,’ like that would be my punishment for running away from him,”
The actress, who’s getting critical acclaim for her latest role in the Off-Broadway production of Carmen Jones, shared the incident to make the point that men have imbalanced expectations of women.
Rose also shared more about her own #MeToo story, which she initially spoke about on SiriusXM’s Make It Plain with Mark Thompson back in January. In the candid interview, the actress said she had been sexually assaulted while sleeping on a plane.
“I still haven’t found who that person was and I still want to, because I thought that’s the most punk-ass thing to do to somebody,” she told the newspaper in the wide-ranging interview. “It’s so ugly, weak and disgusting.”
Carmen Jones, which is playing at the Classic Stage Company in New York City until August 19, is her first appearance in a musical since winning a Tony Award for the 2004 Broadway production of Tony Kushner’s Caroline, or Change.
