“Stranger Things” star Winona Ryder discussed her Jewish heritage in a new interview ― and who but Mel Gibson showed up in an anecdote about anti-Semitism she’s experienced.
Gibson, whose drunken anti-Jewish rant at a California cop in 2006 derailed his career for years, was on a bigoted roll years earlier at a Hollywood bash where Ryder said she saw him.
Ryder, born Winona Laura Horowitz, told the Sunday Times of London:
“We were at a crowded party with one of my good friends, and Mel Gibson was smoking a cigar, and we’re all talking and he said to my friend, who’s gay, ‘Oh wait, am I gonna get AIDS?’ And then something came up about Jews, and he said, ‘You’re not an oven dodger, are you?’”
Ryder shook her head, incredulously, as she told the story, according to the Sunday Times. Gibson “tried” to apologise later, she added.
A rep for Gibson disputed Ryder’s claim, telling HuffPost: “This is 100% untrue. She lied about it over a decade ago, when she talked to the press, and she’s lying about it now. Also, she lied about him trying to apologise to her back then. He did reach out to her, many years ago, to confront her about her lies and she refused to address it with him.”
Ryder has previously referenced the incident, which seems to date to the mid-1990s.
The slur story surfaced in a wide-ranging Sunday Times profile of the 48-year-old “Plot Against America” actor, who said she had relatives die in Nazi camps. It caught Twitter’s attention.