Evan Rachel Wood

Evan Rachel Wood is strongly denying allegations that she “manipulated” Ashley Morgan Smithline into making allegations of rape against Marilyn Manson.

Days after Smithline made those explosive accusations, Wood filed her own declaration in Los Angeles Court on Monday (Feb. 27), saying she had proof that it was Smithline who had first contacted her with accusations against Manson (real name Brian Warner), not vice-versa.

“I never pressured or manipulated Ashley Morgan Smithline to make any accusations against plaintiff Brian Warner, and I certainly never pressured or manipulated her to make accusations that were not true,” Wood wrote in the filing.

Wood attached screenshots of purported text message conversations, including one in which Smithline told her “I have no reason to make this up!” Another set of messages read: “Just know you set me free. By listening. I love you.”

“Ms. Smithline has always told me that she was abused by Mr. Warner,” Wood wrote.

Smithline and Wood are two of several women to accuse Manson of serious sexual wrongdoing over the past two years. After Wood posted her allegations to Instagram in February 2021, lawsuits quickly followed from Smithline, Manson’s former assistant Ashley Walters, Game of Thrones actress Esmé Bianco and two Jane Doe accusers.

Manson has denied all of the allegations, and the cases by Smithline, Walters and Bianco have since been dropped or dismissed. Now, Manson is pursuing his own defamation lawsuit, claiming that Wood and another woman, Illma Gore, had “secretly recruited, coordinated, and pressured prospective accusers to emerge simultaneously” with false accusations against him.

In a filing last week in that defamation case, Smithline made her bombshell accusations about “manipulation” against Wood: “I succumbed to pressure from Evan Rachel Wood and her associates to make accusations of rape and assault against Mr. Warner that were not true.”

In a response on Monday, Wood’s lawyers submitted Wood’s declaration stating that she had never coerced Smithline. They also filed formal arguments urging the judge to ignore Smithline’s new declaration, calling it nothing more than a “bad-faith attempt” by Manson’s lawyers to save his “meritless” defamation lawsuit against Wood from being dismissed.

“Documented evidence shows that it was Smithline who reached out to Wood about plaintiff’s abuse more than a year before Smithline now claims defendants somehow convinced her that she was abused,” Wood’s lawyers wrote.

In a statement to Billboard on Tuesday in response to Wood’s new filings, Manson’s attorney Howard King said: “It is unsurprising that Evan Rachel Wood is desperately fighting to keep Ashley Smithline’s testimony out of court – because she knows the truth will expose her plot to manipulate the women who trusted her in order to destroy Brian Warner.”

On top of denying Smithline’s accusations about manipulation, Monday’s filings from Wood and her attorneys also came with explosive new allegations of their own.

In a separate declaration, a supposed friend of Smithline named Karl Neilson stated that he was in possession of a voicemail from July 2022 in which Smithline had told him that Manson’s lawyer, King, had improperly reached out to her directly to discuss the case — and that she was worried he was trying to get her to flip on Manson’s other accusers.

“I have not called back, obviously. Obviously, it’s very clear that a lawyer legally shouldn’t and can’t call me without calling my lawyer directly,” Smithline allegedly said in the voicemail to Neilson.

“The only reason why he would be calling me at all, a week ago, and leaving a message is that he thinks I’m the weak link, and he might want to settle with me to turn on the other girls, and say that it was all, like, a ruse,” Smithline allegedly said in the voicemail to Neilson.

In his statement to Billboard on Tuesday, King flatly denied that he had improperly reached out to Smithline.

“I never discussed Ashley Smithline’s claims against Brian Warner until after she had reached out to me and terminated her counsel,” King said. “Moreover, when Ms. Smithline recently spoke with me for almost two hours, we taped the conversation in full and that recording proves that every single thing in her declaration was taken from her words, not mine.”

A woman who sued Marilyn Manson for sexual assault says in a new legal filing that the allegations were untrue, claiming she had been “manipulated” by the rocker’s ex-girlfriend, Evan Rachel Wood.
With Manson currently suing Wood for allegedly orchestrating an “organized attack” of false rape accusations, the singer’s lawyers filed a bombshell statement Thursday (Feb. 23) from Ashley Morgan Smithline — one of several women who has accused Manson of sexual abuse over the past two years.

In it, Smithline claims that she had been “manipulated by Ms. Wood” and others, and eventually had agreed to “spread publicly false accusations of abuse” against Manson (real name Brian Warner).

“I succumbed to pressure from Evan Rachel Wood and her associates to make accusations of rape and assault against Mr. Warner that were not true,” Smithline wrote in the sworn statement. “Eventually, I started to believe that what I was repeatedly told happened to Ms. Wood and [others] also happened to me.”

In a statement to Billboard, a spokesperson for Wood strongly denied Smithline’s accusations: “Evan never pressured or manipulated Ashley. It was Ashley who first contacted Evan about the abuse she had suffered. It’s unfortunate that the harassment and threats Ashley received after filing her federal lawsuit appear to have pressured her to change her testimony.”

The statement by Smithline is a major revelation in Manson’s two-year legal saga, in which at least five women have accused him of serious sexual wrongdoing. After Wood posted her allegations to Instagram in February 2021, lawsuits quickly followed from Smithline, Manson’s former assistant Ashley Walters, Game of Thrones actress Esme Bianco and a Jane Doe accuser.

Smithline’s case was dismissed last month after she fired her lawyer and stopped participating in the case.

Manson has denied all of the allegations and filed his own defamation lawsuit in March 2022 claiming that Wood and another woman, Illma Gore, had “secretly recruited, coordinated, and pressured prospective accusers to emerge simultaneously” with false accusations against him.

In her declaration on Thursday, Smithline told a story that supported Manson’s allegations against Wood. She said she had been initially contacted by other alleged victims and, when she denied that such abuse had happened to her, was repeatedly told that she might just not remember it.

“While at first I knew Mr. Warner did not do these things to me, I eventually I began to question whether he actually did,” Smithline wrote. “On numerous occasions, I was told … that I may just be misremembering what happened, repressing my memories of what happened, or that my memories had not yet surfaced — which they said happened to people against whom these acts were perpetrated.”

Eventually, Smithline said she agreed to participate. She said Gore drafted an accusation statement for her and posted it to her account for her, and that she was then connected with Jay Ellwanger, the same lawyer who represented Bianco.

“Leading up to the filing of the complaint, I felt pressured by Mr. Ellwanger to go on a press tour, which included an interview on The View and an interview and photoshoot with People magazine,” Smithline wrote. “I was very uncomfortable doing this press but felt pressured to do it.”

Smithline also noted that she had “never received any money” from Manson as part of any settlement agreement to stop pursuing her case and that she did not intend to refile her case against him.

“Looking back, I feel I was manipulated by Ms. Wood, Ms. Gore, Ms. Bianco, and Mr. Ellwanger to spread publicly false accusations of abuse against Mr. Warner,” Smithline wrote.

In a statement to Billboard, Ellwanger said that his response to Smithline’s allegations was “constrained by ethical obligations regarding client confidentiality” to his former client. “But what I can say is that the specific allegations regarding my representation of Ms. Smithline are categorically and verifiably false.”

The new revelations come as Wood’s attorneys are seeking to dismiss Manson’s case by citing California’s so-called anti-SLAPP statute — a law that aims to make it easier to dismiss cases that threaten free speech. Wood’s lawyers say Manson’s case is exactly that: an effort to punish Wood after she chose to speak publicly about years of abuse.

“For years, plaintiff Brian Warner raped and tortured defendant Evan Rachel Wood and threatened retaliation if she told anyone about it,” her attorneys wrote. “Warner has now made good on those threats by filing the present lawsuit.”

Manson’s attorneys want to cite Thursday’s new statements from Smithline as a reason to deny the anti-SLAPP motion since such motions require courts to assess the validity of a case’s allegations. In asking the court to heed the filing, they wrote: “This newly obtained evidence is critical to Warner’s opposition to the anti-SLAPP motions, in which defendants argue that there is no ‘admissible evidence substantiating his allegations.’”

In a statement to Billboard, Manson’s attorney, Howard King, said Smithline’s declaration “proves” that the lawsuit’s core accusations are true. “As we have always said, the coordinated campaign of #MeToo lies against Brian Warner is going to go down as one of the greatest hoaxes of all time,” King said. “Vulnerable women were manipulated by unscrupulous individuals seeking to build their own brands and pursue their own vendettas.”

Read Smithline’s entire declaration here: