“I wish him well on this lifelong journey,” Winona Ryder said of Mel Gibson in a statement obtained by PEOPLE
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Winona Ryder; Mel Gibson . Photo: Noam Galai/Getty; Barry King/Getty
Winona Ryder is standing by her account of an allegedly anti-semitic encounter with Mel Gibson after it resurfaced in a recent interview.
The actress, 48, recalled comments the Braveheart star, 64, made toward her in an interview with The Sunday Times as she promoted her new HBO series The Plot Against America. Ryder previously spoke about the incident in a 2010 interview with GQ.
“I believe in redemption and forgiveness and hope that Mr. Gibson has found a healthy way to deal with his demons, but I am not one of them,” Ryder said in a statement obtained by PEOPLE.
“Around 1996, my friend Kevyn Aucoin and I were on the receiving end of his hateful words,” she said. “It is a painful and vivid memory for me. Only be accepting responsibility for our behavior in this life, can we make amends and truly respect each other, and I wish him well on this lifelong journey.”
The actress touched on her own experiences with anti-semitism in an interview with The Sunday Times in which she alleged Gibson had singled her out for being Jewish, asking if she was an “oven dodger.”
Ryder said she remembered being at “at a crowded party with one of [her] good friends” when Gibson made his alleged comments.
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Winona Ryder. Steve Granitz/WireImage
“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?'” Ryder told the outlet.
“And then something came up about Jews, and he said ‘You’re not an oven dodger, are you?'” she said.
Ryder added that Gibson “tried” to apologize at a later date.
A representative for Gibson said in response to her allegations, “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 apologize 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.”
The Plot Against America is centered around World War II and is told through the eyes of a working-class Jewish family in America during the presidential rise of Charles Lindbergh as he turned the nation toward fascism.
It is currently available to stream on HBO Max.
