Chris Noth facing accusations of sexual assault from two women

Warning: the following discusses accounts of sexual assault. 

Chirs Noth, whose Sex And The City fame has been recently rekindled by the series’ reboot And Just Like That, is now at the centre of sexual assault accusations from two different women—neither of whom, it’s being reported, have ever met each other and approached the outlet months apart to tell their stories.

The Hollywood Reporter published a piece recounting the stories of the two accusers who have separately made allegations about assaults occurring a decade apart. The women shared their stories using pseudonyms in an effort to maintain a level of privacy and friends and coworkers who they’d known at the time of the assaults have stepped forward to provide information to substantiate each of their stories.

Zoe (not her real name), now 40, first emailed THR this fall writing, “seeing that [Noth] was reprising his role in Sex and the City set off something in me… For so many years, I buried it.” She recalled that she met the actor in 2004 when she was 22 and working at a firm that did business with the star and where he would often visit and flirt with her. “This was peak Sex and the City,” Zoe’s then-boss told the magazine. “He was like a god to us.”

After meeting him a few times, Zoe accepted an invitation to the pool at his building in West Hollywood. Despite the fact that she’d brought along a friend, she says that Noth contrived a way for her to drop by his apartment to return the book he’d loaned her at the pool. It was there where he assaulted her. “It was very painful and I yelled out, ‘Stop!’” she said. “And he didn’t. I said, ‘Can you at least get a condom?’ and he laughed at me.”

The friend who’d accompanied her to the pool took her to the hospital afterward. “I had stitches. Two police officers came. I wouldn’t say who it was,” Zoe told THR. She explained that her decision to finally come forward was tied, in part, to her mother’s death. She, too, had been the target of a sexual assault. “As she was dying, she was haunted by her assault. I don’t want to be in the same position, where I’m haunted at the end of my life.”

The second woman accusing Noth of sexual assault told THR her story under the pseudonym Lily. The 31-year-old, who was 25 at the time of the alleged incident, said that she met Noth at a New York bar where she worked the VIP section. He asked her out. A confessed SATC fan, Lily said “I was truly star-struck. He was hitting on me, for sure. I was flattered. I knew he was married, which is shameful of me to admit.”

In 2015, after what she thought was meant to be dinner (at Il Cantinori, where fans will remember SATC’s Carrie celebrating a disastrous birthday), she says she accompanied Noth back to his apartment. “I thought, ‘We’re going to drink whiskey and talk about his acting career.’ It sounds so stupid.”

Instead, she alleged, he assaulted her. “He was having sex with me from the back in a chair. We were in front of a mirror. I was kind of crying as it happened.” 

Lily said that Noth continued to try to see her, showing THR a series of text messages the two exchanged. “By the way I have to ask did you enjoy our night last week,” read one message from Noth, “I thought it was a lot of fun but I wasn’t quite sure how you felt.” Her answer read: “Hmm…I certainly enjoyed your company. Great conversation. Not to go into specifics over text message, but I did feel slightly used… Perhaps this is better as a phone conversation but I can’t talk at the moment.” Eventually, she said she stopped replying.

According to the Time’s Up website, it’s common for victims of sexual violence to maintain contact with a perpetrator. “An abuser may have actual or perceived power over his victim, and therefore the victim may seek to maintain friendly contact in order to avoid retaliation from the abuser.”

For his part, Noth has issued a statement denying the assaults. It reads: “The accusations against me made by individuals I met years, even decades, ago are categorically false. These stories could’ve been from 30 years ago or 30 days ago — no always means no — that is a line I did not cross. The encounters were consensual. It’s difficult not to question the timing of these stories coming out. I don’t know for certain why they are surfacing now, but I do know this: I did not assault these women.”

At this point, there is no word on whether the alleged victims will be pursuing their allegations in court. 

Update - Zoe Lister-Jones recounts Noth being 'consistently sexually inappropriate' 

In the evening on the same day of the THR report, Life in Pieces actress Zoe Lister-Jones shared her own allegations against Noth on Instagram where she called him "a sexual predator." In the post, she explained Noth was "consistently sexually inappropriate with a fellow female promoter" when she was working at a New York nightclub the actor owned.

She continued on to recount an occurrence from years later when she and Noth did a scene together on Law & Order. Lister-Jones alleges Noth was visibly drunk and drinking alcohol during the scene and at one point leaned over to her, touched her neck, and whispered, "You smell good." 

Other celebrities have shown support in the comments including Sophia Bush, Helen Hunt, AnnaSophia Robb and Brooklyn Decker. For All Mankind star Krys Marshall wrote, "Girlllll. He used to come to Cipriani when I was a promoter there and yea…. YUP."

Update - Beverly Johnson's 1991 battery case against Noth resurfaces

Meanwhile, a 1995 National Enquirer clipping reporting on Top Model Beverly Johnson's court case against Noth has been circulating on social media. Noth and Johnson dated in the early '90s and the report details incidents both during and after their relationship which started with verbal assaults and escalated to physical abuse.

The paper specifically covers two incidents of assault: one where Noth reportedly "hit Beverly in the face with his fist over and over" one night after the couple attended a party in 1991 and another in 1994, after they were broken up, when he "broke into Beverly's California home and beat her." The outlet says Johnson later hired a bodyguard and was terrified for her life after Noth made death threats against her and her dog, calling her up to 25 times a day. 

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