As the fallout over sexual misconduct in showbiz continues, many people are mining pop culture for clues that were dropped about the predatory nature of powerful men. Seth MacFarlane was said to have hinted at the Kevin Spacey allegations on a 2005 episode of Family Guy. Asia Argento confirmed that a plot development in her 1999 film Scarlet Diva was based on a particularly horrifying Harvey Weinstein experience. Today another movie scene is going viral in the wake of fresh allegations about talk show host Charlie Rose. It’s from Wes Anderson’s 2001 film The Royal Tenenbaums, and shows the Rose-esque character Peter Bradley groping the breast of Margot Tenenbaum (Gwyneth Paltrow) during her publicity tour. A screenshot of the prescient scene was shared by C. Mason Wells, a programmer at New York’s Quad Cinema.
Anderson has never explicitly stated that Peter Bradley is a parody of Charlie Rose. But there’s plenty of evidence to suggest the director was creating a fictionalized version of the longtime TV host. One scene shows Royal Tenenbaum watching his son Eli Cash being interviewed on a bizarre talk show called The Peter Bradley Show, which features a black background in the style of Charlie Rose. The film’s DVD extras include a full episode of The Peter Bradley Show, in which Bradley (Larry Pine) mocks Rose’s mien by asking his guests awkwardly random questions about the pronunciation of their last names and the inner workings of the steel industry. Anderson was frequent guest on the real Charlie Rose show — though, perhaps tellingly, Gwyneth Paltrow only ever appeared on it once.