Rose McGowan Fears She’ll Be Killed and 9 More ‘Citizen Rose’ Revelations

Rose McGowan Fears She'll Be Killed and 9 More 'Citizen Rose' Revelations

"If I die, you have to keep all my work to be studied," she tells actress Amber Tamblyn. "It's our purpose. Everything I'm doing has a purpose."

Rose McGowan is one of the polarizing figureheads of the #MeToo movement, but in the premiere of her new E! docuseries "Citizen Rose," the actress said a lot of that has been propaganda.

"I live in a motherf-cking funhouse," she said. "And the sad part is, I'm just trying to get people to stop raping and killing us."

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The two-hour premiere special (the rest of the series debuts in Spring 2018) attempts to unpeel the mysteries surrounding McGowan's public persona. "It's totally done through the media, it's propaganda," she said of her "weirdo" public image. "It's very obvious, you've just never had anyone from the other side telling you the truth."

In a world where truth is subjective, this is a truth. It's Rose McGowan's truth, and no matter how you feel about her, you can't deny her passion and conviction in her mission of helping women stand up against their oppressors and try to make a better world so the next generations don't have to go through what she and so many others in the #MeToo era have.

Below are the 10 most powerful, unexpected, and downright bizarre revelations from "Citizen Rose."

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Hollywood

When asked about Hollywood, McGowan has not been shy about saying that she's grown to hate it. "It's been really, really hard having the mind of an artist and being in a town that sells you as just a commodity," she said of a woman's relationship with Tinseltown. "I want to reverse course. This town, it's paved on women's bodies. The bodies of the hurt. And all they did was dream."

Those bodies are fully formed individuals, and thanks to #MeToo and #TimesUp, with a helping push from McGowan's #RoseArmy, they are empowered for the first time in history to speak their truths and demand not only to be heard, but that justice be served.

And it's not just the harasser and assaulters McGowan is ready to see taken down, it's those who have enabled their reprehensible behavior for decades. "That's the people that I find most reprehensible is all the people who are complicit," she told a group of survivors.

Black Dresses

After Hollywood women made the decision to wear black as a statement that #TimesUp for workplace inequality and harassment, McGowan came under fire for her response to it. She called out Meryl Streep for her complicity — the show spotlighted an acceptance speech where Streep called Weinstein "God" — in the circle of silence that protected Weinstein, and questioned the genesis of the black dresses. "It just felt really stunt-ish to me and really craven," she said.

"I'm sure a lot of these women are well-meaning, but it's a PR machine stunt, overall, because the people behind it are the agents that sent us women — not me, but others — into the lion's den to be eaten and consumed," she said. "It's not just dresses, it's a lie. It's not my world. It shouldn't be anybody's."

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Father

Weinstein being dubbed a "god" wasn't McGowan's first experience with someone being equated with divinity. Her late father was one of the leaders of the Children of God, a Christian cult McGowan grew up in. "He was a star. He called himself god with a little 'g,'" she noted. Her father ultimately left the church when "they were starting the practice of adult-child sex," according to McGowan, but he never lost that need to be seen as something larger than life.

"To me, his greatest flaw was being a man who needed to be worshiped. It was the hardest thing in our relationship, and something I could never give," McGowan said. "The Children of God, I'd look at the women worshiping the men and I couldn't understand why."

Mother

McGowan's family members throughout the special have said that she's always carried that torch of strength and conviction. "I've scared her a lot," McGowan said of her relationship with her mother. "I'm scary to someone like her. She has so much repressed."

Even now, her mother struggled to talk about McGowan's alleged assault and the growing movement that its revelation has spurred. "I don't think it's a case of I didn't want to hear it, or I didn't pick up clues," she said in a confessional. "I mean partly because we were living states away from each other and you're really busy trying to survive your own life, right?"

McGowan takes some ownership of the communication problems between the women. "For years I would try to talk to her, but I probably approached it like a sledgehammer, knowing me," she said.

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The Monster

Obviously, Harvey Weinstein was a prominent presence looming over the entire production, but McGowan was able to take some control of that. As she did in her book "Brave" and on social media, she only refers to him as "The Monster," and censors his name completely from "Citizen Rose." If his image shows up, a black bar obscures his eyes.

"The very sweet, very innocent person that I was did get killed, yeah," McGowan said of Harvey Weinstein and the Hollywood machine. "But they built a motherf-cking beast. They built a f-cking problem, and I am that problem."

The cameras captured the moment she found out that an early draft of her book had been acquired by Weinstein's alleged spies. "When I found out the Monster stole the first 125 pages of my book to discredit and destroy my voice, I can't tell you how violating it felt," McGowan said later. In the moment, she was visibly shaken and moved near tears. "It was like being back in that room with him all over again. Only this time it was the inside of my mind and not my body."

Spies

That betrayal has eroded McGowan's trust almost completely. A woman who had become close to her and even offered to invest in her #RoseArmy movement, purportedly turned out to be a spy for Weinstein, after a copy of her book before it could be published.

"She inserted herself into my life as a fake women's activist," McGowan marveled. "It was like this woman was a businesswoman and very kind and very smart and caring and seemed to really want to do the right thing and — It's mind-boggling.

"I don't feel paranoid. It's not paranoia. It's reality."

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Warrant

She also thinks the recent felony warrant issued dating back to a January 2017 flight is part of Weinstein's network of spies seeking to discredit her. The warrant claims she left behind something that tested positive for narcotics. "It's not fair, it's not normal what's happening," she said.

Even after the "network of spies" story broke, McGowan had to get arrested and post bail in order to process the arrant. "Apparently having an international ring of spies against you is not enough to convince them of my innocence. I don't know what more I can do."

Death

The betrayals and paranoia have reached the point where McGowan now fears for her life. She told actress Amber Tamblyn that people were trying to kill her, explaining why she wouldn't answer the door for a flower delivery.

When Tamblyn went to leave, McGowan pulled her in close and whispered, "If I die, you have to keep all my work to be studied. It's our purpose. Everything I'm doing has a purpose."

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RoseArmy

McGowan explained that the #RoseArmy is not about her, and she doesn't even see it as being named after her. "Rose Army isn't about my name at all," she said. "I saw these roses once growing through sidewalk cracks. And I thought, hell, so many disenfranchised people have to grow through these cracks. And the thorns, they carry weight.

She reiterated this at a public speaking event, telling the assembled women and allies, "It's not me, it's the flower. And like the rose, we have thorns, and those thorns are justice."

The goal of her army and movement is to build a better world by exposing what's wrong with this one. "You want forward momentum for the world, you want to reframe ideas," she explained. "It's really an army of thought. If we see somebody doing something really bad, we can all just pound on them virtually through media, and take them down."

It's an ongoing mission.

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