On August 30, 2005, Disney’s Buena Vista Home Entertainment released the direct-to-DVD animated film My Scene Goes Hollywood: The Movie. Based on Mattel’s Barbie spinoff line My Scene, it stars Kelly Sheridan as Barbie and features Lindsay Lohan as herself. The 70-minute film centers around the My Scene girls as they pretend to be extras on a movie set. Lohan, in the context of the story, is the star of the film-within-a-film.
But it was another celebrity appearing as themselves that overshadowed Lohan’s role when My Scene Goes Hollywood started receiving some renewed attention years later. In the wake of the sexual abuse accusations made against Harvey Weinstein in 2017, many were quick to recall that he’d also popped up in the animated children’s movie. Because the film was produced by Miramax, which was founded by Weinstein, somebody thought it would be a good idea to give him a cameo.
Evidently, whoever came up with the plan didn’t think it was necessary for the cartoon Weinstein to look anything like his real-life counterpart, though.
Harvey Weinstein Once Had a Cameo in a Barbie Spinoff Movie, and the Producer Later Regretted It
Sporting a turtleneck sweater and sunglasses, a preposterously good-looking Weinstein walks up to the movie-within-a-movie’s director at one point to tell him he’s excited about what they’re doing. One of the My Scene girls somehow recognizes Weinstein and alerts the others to his presence. “Don’t you ever watch award shows? He’s, like, the biggest producer in Hollywood,” she explains. Weinstein then approaches an actress on the set and places his hand on her back, saying, “Good job, young lady,” which upsets the girl who spotted him earlier:
When asked about Weinstein’s cameo after the 2017 allegations came to light, the film’s producer, Nancy Bennett, told The New Yorker that she was horrified by the news and “mortified” that she decided to put him in a Barbie movie. Additionally, she expressed her disappointment with Lohan, who’d defended Weinstein in a since-deleted Instagram video around that time. Because of Lohan’s legal issues over the years, Bennett said that she was more worried about Lohan doing something to hurt the brand than Weinstein. “I never in a million years imagined it would be Harvey,” she revealed.
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