Julianna Margulies details ‘horrific’ hotel room meeting with Steven Seagal. Source: Sky News
Julianna Margulies has gone into detail about her terrifying hotel room ordeal with Steven Seagal.
The Good Wife star opened up to Katie Couric on a podcast about the "horrific" encounter she had with Seagal when she went alone to his hotel room to practise a scene with him.
"I walked in and I sat down and I jumped right back up because there was something very uncomfortable and hard in the couch," Margulies said.
Julianna Margulies had a bad encounter with Steven Seagal in a hotel room. Photo / Getty Images
"He laughed and said, 'Oh, sorry, that must have been my gun.' He lifted up the cushion and he took out his gun. And I had never seen a gun in my life, not up close. And I said, 'Oh, my god.' I started getting very sweaty and he said, 'Oh, it's just for all the crazies that are out there. I have to protect myself.'"
Margulies, who was under the impression that a female casting director was going to be in the room as well, recalled that she "started getting angry at myself" for getting into the situation.
"My inner dialogue was, 'You stupid idiot. How could you have done this? No one knows where you are, and you're in a hotel room alone with this guy and he's got a gun. How stupid. You're stupid.' I was just chastising myself."
The actress, 51, told Couric that at one point during the meeting Seagal explained he was a "healer" and started reading her palm.
Sexual assault investigation opened against actor Steven Seagal. Photo / Getty Images
"At that point, to be honest, as a New York girl, I kind of started laughing inside," Margulies said.
"Like, this guy's pathetic. Does he think I'm buying this line of crap?"
Margulies "squirmed" her way out of the hotel room but had to return to collect a taxi fare for her trip home which it had been agreed earlier she would receive.
"I went back and I knocked on the door, and he smirked, and I think he thought I was coming back, like, 'Oh, she got smart'," Margulies said.
"And I stayed on the other side of the door and I held my hand out and I said, … 'It cost me $15 to get here and I need cab fare to get home'."
Seagal gave Margulies the money and as she left she thought to herself, "I couldn't believe it."
Julianna Margulies starred in The Good Wife which ended in 2016. Photo / Channel 10
"I thought if I just survived Steven Seagal and a gun in a hotel room by myself, I can handle a subway back to Brooklyn," she said.
Margulies later starred alongside Seagal in the 1991 movie Out for Justice but was understandably wary of being alone with the male actor.
"I said to everyone in there, I know you don't know me, but I'd really appreciate it if no one would ever let me be in the room alone with him," she said. "Because I was scared."
Steven Seagal is currently under investigation after another woman said the action star sexually assaulted her at a casting session at a Beverly Hills hotel room in 2002, when she was 17 years old. The actor's lawyer says he adamantly denies the allegations.
