Her comments attracted little attention in the Russian-speaking world but raised eyebrows outside the country.
On Monday, The Daily Beast news website shared the stories of two Moscow theater and movie actresses who were abused by directors 20 years and 30 years their senior.
An actress named Xenia described a job interview with a famous director whose name she did not disclose.
“He closed the door and told me to take off all my clothes,” Xenia said of the encounter during her theater school years.
When she asked why, he kicked her out and yelled that he’s disinterested in actresses “who ask questions instead of doing what they were told.”
Actor Anna Pukhova described two instances where she turned down advances at the cost of job opportunities.
“All my life, since school, I’ve heard that the bed opens doors in theater, but I refused to believe that such a disgraceful thing could be true,” she said.
Former Bolshoi ballerina Anastasia Volochkova told The Daily Beast that she had attended “gala nights” for ballerinas and Russian oligarchs during her career.
The outlet unearthed Volochkova’s 2013 TV interview in which she alleged that the Bolshoi director had “turned Bolshoi into a giant brothel.”