Marilyn Manson Clarifies Involvement in Video Depicting Lana Del Rey Sexual Assault

Last month, footage from an unknown project or series of projects surfaced online, depicting scenes featuring Marilyn Manson and Lana Del Rey. Amongst other things, the footage included a scene in which Del Rey was sexually assaulted. A representative for Manson denied Manson’s involvement in the Lana Del Rey scenes, saying “It must be a fan video splicing up old Manson video footage with someone else’s Lana Del Rey footage.” Now, Manson has clarified his relationship with the footage further, in an interview with NME.

Speaking with NME, Manson acknowledged that the footage of him and the footage of Del Rey were both shot by director Eli Roth. However, he said the footage wasn’t intended to be part of the same project. 

“I didn’t deny involvement, I just simply said that it wasn’t meant to be a Marilyn Manson video. The editor of the company that put it out was someone who’s edited my videos. That video was something that was done with a camera that Eli, who’s my friend, and I both wanted to test out, so I let him test it out,” he said. “What they filmed was put in context seemingly as if it were a Marilyn Manson video, and that was in no way the intention.” 

He also said that he and Roth had planned to shoot a real music video with Del Rey, but that it fell through:

Eli and I wanted to do a music video with her but she was being such a problem for me, personally. Although I still respect her, I’m friends with her. I just left, I was tired… I was not willing to make that part of the video. But Eli and I originally had intentions of making a video with her, but that is not the intention that is represented in that film clip because that was not what I filmed, that was not for my video.

He continued:

But the people put it together with my other clips. And it really strongly stands out of place, it doesn’t really make sense. I would not make a video of that nature, because I think it’s not… nor would Eli… Maybe he would. But I don’t think either one of us were ever intending for that to be seen, it was more of a camera test. I’m a person that would beat somebody’s ass if they raped somebody that I know. And, obviously, you can make ‘Lana Del Rape’ jokes that have been in the headlines and things like that. I consider her to be a friend. Eli’s a really good friend of mine. And I think that this was a grand mistake on the person who put it with my videos. And I wasn’t very pleased with that. I’m pretty sure that the other two people involved were less pleased than I was, because I really had nothing to do with it.

In an interview with Wondering Sound, Alan Lasky of the production company Sturmgruppe, who originally posted the video, said that there’s more footage, and that it’s more disturbing than what’s surfaced. “You’re not seeing all of the footage,” he said. “We could only take the tamest pieces of what we did.” That echoes comments Roth made last year, when he was interviewed by Larry King said the footage he’d shot with Manson and Del Rey was “so sick, it’s been locked in a vault for over a year.” (“All true,” Lansky told Wondering Sound.)

Additionally, Lansky wouldn’t confirm or deny that the Lana footage was originally intended for a Marilyn video. 

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