Evan Rachel Wood says Marilyn Manson 'essentially raped' her

Evan Rachel Wood has alleged that she was “essentially raped on-camera” by Marilyn Manson.

In her new documentary, Phonenix Rising – Part I: Don’t Fall, Evan Rachel Wood shares fresh, unsettling claims about Marilyn Manson.

The film, which premiered Sunday night (23 January) at the Sundance Film Festival, details the alleged abuse Wood experienced during her on-again, off-again relationship with the disgraced musician.

Wood says that Manson, known off-stage as Brian Warner, “horrifically abused” her from 2006 until 2011, when she made her “final escape”.

Among the most troubling allegations is that a simulated sex scene in the 2007 music video “Heart-Shaped Glasses” wasn’t simulated at all.

Filmed when Wood was 19, the video sees Wood grope her genital area before appearing to have sex with Manson her while fake blood drenches them.

But it was all real, Evan Rachel Wood, now 34, alleges in the film.

“We’re doing things that were not what was pitched to me. We had discussed a simulated sex scene, but once the cameras were rolling, he started penetrating me for real,” she says, according to USA Today.

“I had never agreed to that […] it was complete chaos. I did not feel safe. No one was looking after me. It was a really traumatising experience filming that video.”

Paralysed by a sense of “disgust” and “shame”, Wood said she felt unable to tell any of the crew about what really happened.

“I was coerced into a commercial sex act under false pretences,” she adds.

“That’s when the first crime was committed against me. I was essentially raped on camera.”

The documentary was filmed partly before Evan Rachel Wood publicly accused Marilyn Manson of abuse.

Having once testified in the US Congress about the haunting realities of domestic violence, she named her alleged abuser as Manson in a 2021 Instagram post, touching off a wave of lawsuits from other survivors.

“My story is not unique,” Wood said at questions and answers sessions following the premiere.

Reading from journals she kept at the time, Wood says in the film that in the early days of their relationship Manson appeared to empower her. But, looking back, Wood believes that Manson was simply “lovebombing” her.

Grand romantic gestures in the early days of a relationship might seem sweet, experts say, but can be clingy and manipulative, forcing the partner to feel they have found “the one”.

In Phoenix Rising, which will be shown on HBO later this year, Evan Rachel Wood recounted how Marilyn Manson carved an “E” and she etched an “M” on their pelvic regions to show their loyalty to one another.

“The way the press handled this story for many, many years is shameful,” Wood said at the Q&A. “And it’s time we finally tell the whole story.”

Filmmakers approached Manson for comment. His lawyers said the artist “vehemently denies any and all claims of sexual assault or abuse of anyone”.

“These lurid claims against my client have three things in common – they are all false, alleged to have taken place more than a decade ago and part of a coordinated attack by former partners and associates of Mr Warner who have weaponised the otherwise mundane details of his personal life and their consensual relationships into fabricated horror stories,” a statement in the film reads.