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Evan Rachel Wood is sharing her journey from abuse victim to activist in the powerful new trailer for the upcoming HBO Max documentary Phoenix Rising.
The two-minute clip finds the actress referring to her alleged abuser and former fiance, Marilyn Manson, by his real name — Brian Warner. “Numerous women heard my story, and knew exactly who it was,” she explains in the trailer, referring to her testimony before Congress in 2018, where Wood detailed her personal experience with sexual assault, without naming names at the time. In 2021, Wood officially named Manson as her alleged abuser via Instagram.
“The name of my abuser is Brian Warner, also known to the world as Marilyn Manson,” she wrote at the time. “He started grooming me when I was a teenager and horrifically abused me for years. I was brainwashed and manipulated into submission. I am done living in fear of retaliation, slander or blackmail.”
“I wasn’t the only one that this had happened to,” Wood claims in the trailer, as she’s seen hugging other women who have come forward with allegations against the rock star.
The two-part documentary will delve into Wood’s recounting of the ways in which Manson allegedly abused her sexually and controlled her, and her journey as an advocate for the Phoenix Act, a 2019 law that extended the statute of limitations for sexual abuse survivors in California. The documentary also features interviews with Wood’s mother and brother, who claim in the trailer that Manson “groomed” Wood as a young actress.
“We need to make sure that this doesn’t happen to anybody else,” Wood says. “I realize that this is the first time I haven’t been doubted or questioned or shamed. This is the first time that someone was really listening. And I was like, ‘What is this feeling?’ And it’s this feeling of being believed.”
In the film, which premiered at Sundance in January, the actress alleges that the rocker sexually assaulted her while they were filming his music video for “Heart-Shaped Glasses.” Howard King, Manson’s lawyer, denied that accusation. “Of all the false claims that Evan Rachel Wood has made about Brian Warner, her imaginative retelling of the making of the ‘Heart-Shaped Glasses’ music video 15 years ago is the most brazen and easiest to disprove, because there were multiple witnesses,” he said in a statement shared with Billboard at the time. “Brian did not have sex with Evan on that set, and she knows that is the truth.”
Manson has also denied all accusations of assault and abuse against him since the actress first named him as her abuser. Immediately following Wood’s allegations in 2021, he took to Instagram to deny the abuse claims. “Obviously, my art and my life have long been magnets for controversy, but these recent claims about me are horrible distortions of reality,” he wrote. “My intimate relationships have always been entirely consensual with like-minded partners. Regardless of how – and why – others are now choosing to misrepresent the past, that is the truth.”
Phoenix Rising premieres on March 15 on HBO Max, which you can sign up for here. Watch the trailer below.