A 30-year-old female tech executive alleges she was sexually assaulted by Sex and the City actor Chris Noth while working as a hostess and lounge singer at the Midtown Manhattan restaurant Da Marino in 2010. She was 18 at the time and Noth was 55.
On Thursday, The Hollywood Reporter published two separate accounts of women accusing Noth of sexual assault. One claims she was assaulted at his apartment in West Hollywood in 2004 and the other at his Greenwich Village home in 2015. Both women, Zoe and Lily, told THR that Noth raped them from behind while facing a mirror. (Noth called the allegations “categorically false.”)
The latest victim to speak out is a friend I met at acting school who first told me of her assault the day after it took place in 2010. She has been grappling with the traumatic incident ever since she found herself alone with Noth in a dark office many years ago. In the wake of The Hollywood Reporter article, she came forward with her story on Thursday and provided an account of her assault that she says was written in October of 2020. Her name has been changed to protect her identity.
“They were looking for a pretty hostess that could draw people to the restaurant and double as entertainment on nights where they had a pianist play Broadway show-tunes,” Ava explains about getting hired at Da Marino, located on 49th street off of Times Square. At 18, she had just graduated from an acting conservatory and desperately needed side jobs to supplement her acting career, so the chance to sing was appealing.
Ava says her job was to stand in front of the restaurant and convince passersby to go inside, the goal being to fill the restaurant with enough patrons so that she could perform. “The better I was as bait, the longer I got to sing,” she maintains.
When Noth came to Da Marino he was always intoxicated, claims Ava. “I cannot remember in detail how many times we spoke, but with great familiarity, one night he told my boss I would sing with him even though I hadn’t filled the restaurant yet.” They played characters in their song duets, and at his table, they talked about his career and her hometown of Toronto. “I love Canadian women,” she remembers him saying as he repeatedly pulled her onto his lap while groping her and “pressing me onto his erection.”
She says it confused her at the time because, on some level, it was exciting. She was getting the attention of Noth, whom she’d watched as the iconic character of Big on Sex and the City: “I remember how electrifying his hand, the hand I watched hold Carrie Bradshaw in Sex and the City, felt grabbing me.”
Sarah Jessica Parker and Chris Noth in And Just Like That…
HBO
At the end of her shift, around 1 a.m., Ava’s manager informed her that he’d pay her in the office, which was accessible by way of the kitchen. As she gathered her coat and envelope of cash, the lights shut off behind her. She remembers that Noth had made his way into the office. “He acted as if we had intentionally snuck off together clandestinely,” she recounts. Instead, she found him “sloppy,” “heavy,” and “strong.”
“At first, it felt as though I was the only person in the universe who could hear me saying no,” she shares. She says Noth began kissing her and pressed her body against a desk. After pulling down her tights to digitally penetrate her, he felt her tampon. “I was so hopeful that would be the end of it,” she remembers. Instead, Noth asked if she was at the end of her period and continued to grope her. She slid into an office chair to create more distance and pressed her arms and legs against his body, pushing him away. “My limbs hurt in the morning.”
“He wasn’t hearing ‘no,’ but he heard me when I said ‘not here’ and convinced him that I would meet him somewhere else,” she explains. The idea of relocating to his home inspired Noth to stop and gave her the opportunity to escape the office and his grasp. Noth told her he would send a car once he got to his apartment. After Noth left the restaurant, Ava went home without the intention of going. He texted her from his home, awaiting her and asking for her address, but she never replied.
“At first, it felt as though I was the only person in the universe who could hear me saying no.”
The following day, she called her parents, who had made friends with the owners and management of Da Marino when they’d visited New York. They listened to Ava’s story in disbelief, trying to make sense of a restaurant they believed would protect Ava like family. On a call with Ava, she says the owner rejected her claims about Noth: “They told me he [Noth] would never be interested in someone as insignificant as me. I never went back.” (Da Marino did not respond to requests for comment; the owner at the time, Pasquale Marino, passed away in 2015.)
“Ava is an open book, particularly among her close circle of friends, and this incident was no secret to us,” says James, her close friend she met at acting conservatory. Ava was confused at the time by what happened and chose to make light of it when explaining the incident with Noth to friends.
In a Facebook message observed by The Daily Beast from May 10, 2010, a friend from Toronto wrote to Ava, “I feel terrible about the thing you told us all and that that happened to you… I just want to say that what happened to you is neither funny nor a joke and I hope you realize that as well.”
When reached for comment, Noth’s publicist said that Noth “denies this as ever happening and has no idea who this woman is.”
Ava eventually left acting behind to start her own business in property technology and a family. Three years ago, at the height of #MeToo, she’d begun to come to terms with what happened to her in that dark office years ago. She wrote a Facebook post about the horrific episode, though didn’t name her assailant, and participated in anonymous email chains where survivors and advocates shared stories and compiled evidence against celebrity offenders. But she says “the fad passed, and the emails stopped.” Noth “was never the headline. His name was never in the lists.”
While watching the documentary Jeffrey Epstein: Filthy Rich on Netflix, Ava identified a moment that felt familiar. An Epstein victim described the look of the flight crew as she walked off his private jet—a knowing look that seemed to communicate how they knew of his crimes and they too were complicit. “I haven’t been able to shake the memory of how the kitchen staff looked at me as I emerged from the office with Chris Noth.”