In Netflix’s upcoming Arnold Schwarzenegger documentary series “Arnold,” the actor and former California governor somewhat apologizes for groping women in the past (via Rolling Stone). Five days before the 2003 California governor election, the Los Angeles Times published a report in which six women accused Schwarzenegger of groping and humiliating them. Schwarzenegger said at the time the reports were “made-up” and he “never grabbed anyone,” though he also admitted he “behaved badly sometimes” in the past.
“My reaction in the beginning, I was kind of…defensive,” Schwarzenegger now says in the three-part Netflix documentary series. “Today, I can look at it and kind of say, it doesn’t really matter what time it is. If it’s the Muscle Beach days of 40 years ago, or today, that this was wrong. It was bullshit. Forget all the excuses, it was wrong.”
Despite the allegations, Schwarzenegger still won the election. The Los Angeles Times investigation ended up not affecting the polls or even Schwarzenegger’s career.
“Personally, I was surprised that it didn’t have more of an effect on the election. I thought that more people would be offended themselves,” Los Angeles Times reporter Carla Hall says in the documentary.
“When Schwarzenegger announced he was running for governor, the staff of the LA Times immediately went into high gear to start looking into stories that we had heard for years, but no one had actually investigated them fully,” she adds. “We had barely six weeks to work on this, and we started talking to women.”
The “Arnold” documentary is being released as a follow-up to Schwarzenegger’s Netflix action-comedy series “Fubar,” which marked a return to leading roles for the action icon. The show’s rollout also saw Netflix humorously naming Schwarzenegger its chief action officer.
Schwarzenegger’s “Arnold” debuts June 7 on Netflix, while “Fubar” is now available to stream. Head over to Rolling Stone’s website for more highlights from the documentary.
