Actress Esmé Bianco, known best for her recurring role as Ros on Game of Thrones, has accused Marilyn Manson of abuse.
Speaking with The Cut, Bianco detailed how she first met Manson in 2005 through his then-fiancée, Dita Von Teese, sharing how the shock rocker wanted to cast her in his planned Phantasmagoria horror film, based on the works of Lewis Carroll. "I thought, 'My teen idol wants to work with me. Don't eff this one up,'" she recalled.
After his marriage ended in 2007, Manson kept in touch with Bianco platonically over email. That changed in 2009, upon Manson buying Bianco a plane ticket from her home in London to Los Angeles so she could star in the music video for his song "I Want to Kill You Like They Do in the Movies."
The Cut details that interaction as follows:
[Manson] explained that it would be shot on a flip camera for a home-video feel and would involve Manson "kidnapping" Bianco in his home. "I need to have a victim/lover," he wrote in an email. Bianco believed that the job would be strictly professional. "You are gonna have to pretend to like being manhandled by me. Sorry," Manson emailed her a few days before the shoot. Once she arrived, she says, the line between art and reality immediately blurred. Bianco, who was 26 at the time, says she spent the next three days in lingerie, barely sleeping or eating, with Manson serving up cocaine rather than food. She remembers him losing his temper and throwing the camera at a smoke alarm. Soon, she says, he became violent, tying her with cables to a prayer kneeler, lashing her with a whip, and using an electric sex toy called a Violet Wand on her wounds — the same kind of "torture device" Wood has said was used on her. Bianco was terrified but tried to calm down by telling herself, It's just Manson being theatrical. We are going to make great art.
Bianco told The Cut that she and Manson began a long-distance affair, alleging that when the pair would meet, Manson "would bite her during sex without her consent, leaving her whole body bruised." In March 2011, Bianco left her husband in London to move into Manson's West Hollywood apartment at his invitation.
The Cut reports the following:
She says there was a very brief honeymoon period during which Manson showered her with attention, but he soon began to control every aspect of her life. She says he dictated what she could wear (she says he preferred her in a short pencil dress with stockings), her sleep schedule ("I was often violently shaken awake should I go to sleep without permission," she told the California Assembly), and when she could come and go from the apartment (she says she didn't have a key). One night in May, Manson sent Walters a text saying someone had broken a glass in the studio and that "Esme is gonna get the brunt of this. Don't care.
"I basically felt like a prisoner," says Bianco. "I came and went at his pleasure. Who I spoke to was completely controlled by him. I called my family hiding in the closet."
Bianco spent "roughly two months" living with Manson, recalling that she drank heavily to cope and that she was often in a dissociative state, "hovering above life like I was looking at it through a net curtain."
She recalled a time where Manson "repeatedly cut her torso with a knife" ("I just remember laying there, and I didn't fight it...It was kind of this final-straw moment where I had lost all sense of hope and safety") and a "breaking point" where the artist "chased her around the apartment with an ax."
Bianco first came forward as an abuse survivor in 2019, though did not name Manson publicly while testifying in front of the California Assembly.
You can read her interview with The Cut here.
After Evan Rachel Wood named Manson as her abuser earlier this month, multiple women have come forward with allegations of abuse and inappropriate behaviour.
Manson has since been dropped by his label, cut from various TV appearances, and lost his longtime manager. He has denied the claims against him.
Speaking with The Cut, Bianco detailed how she first met Manson in 2005 through his then-fiancée, Dita Von Teese, sharing how the shock rocker wanted to cast her in his planned Phantasmagoria horror film, based on the works of Lewis Carroll. "I thought, 'My teen idol wants to work with me. Don't eff this one up,'" she recalled.
After his marriage ended in 2007, Manson kept in touch with Bianco platonically over email. That changed in 2009, upon Manson buying Bianco a plane ticket from her home in London to Los Angeles so she could star in the music video for his song "I Want to Kill You Like They Do in the Movies."
The Cut details that interaction as follows:
[Manson] explained that it would be shot on a flip camera for a home-video feel and would involve Manson "kidnapping" Bianco in his home. "I need to have a victim/lover," he wrote in an email. Bianco believed that the job would be strictly professional. "You are gonna have to pretend to like being manhandled by me. Sorry," Manson emailed her a few days before the shoot. Once she arrived, she says, the line between art and reality immediately blurred. Bianco, who was 26 at the time, says she spent the next three days in lingerie, barely sleeping or eating, with Manson serving up cocaine rather than food. She remembers him losing his temper and throwing the camera at a smoke alarm. Soon, she says, he became violent, tying her with cables to a prayer kneeler, lashing her with a whip, and using an electric sex toy called a Violet Wand on her wounds — the same kind of "torture device" Wood has said was used on her. Bianco was terrified but tried to calm down by telling herself, It's just Manson being theatrical. We are going to make great art.
Bianco told The Cut that she and Manson began a long-distance affair, alleging that when the pair would meet, Manson "would bite her during sex without her consent, leaving her whole body bruised." In March 2011, Bianco left her husband in London to move into Manson's West Hollywood apartment at his invitation.
The Cut reports the following:
She says there was a very brief honeymoon period during which Manson showered her with attention, but he soon began to control every aspect of her life. She says he dictated what she could wear (she says he preferred her in a short pencil dress with stockings), her sleep schedule ("I was often violently shaken awake should I go to sleep without permission," she told the California Assembly), and when she could come and go from the apartment (she says she didn't have a key). One night in May, Manson sent Walters a text saying someone had broken a glass in the studio and that "Esme is gonna get the brunt of this. Don't care.
"I basically felt like a prisoner," says Bianco. "I came and went at his pleasure. Who I spoke to was completely controlled by him. I called my family hiding in the closet."
Bianco spent "roughly two months" living with Manson, recalling that she drank heavily to cope and that she was often in a dissociative state, "hovering above life like I was looking at it through a net curtain."
She recalled a time where Manson "repeatedly cut her torso with a knife" ("I just remember laying there, and I didn't fight it...It was kind of this final-straw moment where I had lost all sense of hope and safety") and a "breaking point" where the artist "chased her around the apartment with an ax."
Bianco first came forward as an abuse survivor in 2019, though did not name Manson publicly while testifying in front of the California Assembly.
You can read her interview with The Cut here.
After Evan Rachel Wood named Manson as her abuser earlier this month, multiple women have come forward with allegations of abuse and inappropriate behaviour.
Manson has since been dropped by his label, cut from various TV appearances, and lost his longtime manager. He has denied the claims against him.