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#MeToo

Kate Upton Details Sexual Harassment Allegations Against Guess Co-Founder Paul Marciano

The model tells all in bombshell interview.

Kate upton pp

Credit: BACKGRID

Last week Kate Upton, 25, accused Guess co-founder and creative director Paul Marciano of sexual harassment via Twitter and now in an explosive interview with Time, the model is sharing the details of her allegations.

When speaking with Time on Wednesday, Kate alleges that Marciano sexually harassed and assaulter her in July 2010 after the first day of shooting on a Guess lingerie campaign.

“As soon as I walked in with photographer Yu Tsai, Paul came straight up to me, forcibly grabbed my breasts and started feeling them — playing with them actually. After I pushed him away, he said, ‘I’m making sure they’re real,'” Kate said, who was 18 at the time.

“I did everything I could physically do to avoid his touch throughout the meeting,” but claimed that the now-65-year-old fashion mogul continued to touch her in a “very dominating and aggressive way.”

“At one point, he forcibly grabbed the back of my head so that I could not move and started kissing my face and my neck,” she alleged. “I remember not wanting to say, ‘Get off of me,’ because I didn’t want to open my mouth to say anything because I didn’t want him to be able to put his tongue in my mouth.”

“I had two options: do everything I could to wiggle away and avoid his pursuit, or punch the CEO of Guess,” she continued. “So I decided to just wiggle away.”

Kate says that The fashion mogul insisted he walk her up to her hotel room, to which she declined, adding “The only thing I was thinking is if he touches me like that in public, I can’t imagine what he’d try to do in private.”

One month later, the model says she was working on another shoot for Guess but was fired after rejecting Marciano’s invitation to come up to her room.

“The next day, I learned that I had been fired from the shoot. Someone had called my agency to say I had gotten fat and would not be needed on set [that day],” she stated. “I was devastated, especially because at this point no one from Guess had even seen me.”

Following the incident, the model claims “Paul’s texting increased, telling me how excited he was to see me, that he wanted me to change in front of him so he could see my naked body getting into his clothes. He asked if I thought of him when I was posing sexy on set,” Upton claims. “At one point, to avoid Paul coming to set, I told him my boyfriend was going to be there. He was absolutely furious at that. It was an emotional and non-stop battle of games, power struggles and creative avoidance tactics.”

Kate says that she and photographer Yu Tsai “came up with a plan” to have the photographer present anytime she would be in a room with Pal, but Yu was eventually fired from a shoot for Guess Jeans.

During a shoot, Kate alleges that Paul invited her out to dinner, which she again declined. Claiming, the refusal ultimately led to Paul being “outwardly rude and degrading” during her final shoot with the company in 2011.

“He said I was ‘disgusting’ and started telling people how unprofessional I was by spreading rumors that I was drunk on set and partying every night, which of course I wasn’t. I was then told to leave because Paul had said, ‘Get that fat pig off my set.'”

Paul Marciano released a statement denying the accusations saying, “I have never been alone with Kate Upton,” Marciano told Time. “I have never touched her inappropriately. Nor would I ever refer to a Guess model in such a derogatory manner… I fully support the #metoo movement. At the same time, I will not allow others to defame me and tarnish my reputation. I have pledged to Guess and its Board of Directors my full support and cooperation with a fair and impartial investigation.”

Time stated that they reached out to Yu Tsai and that the photographer “corroborated details of her allegations.”