Actress, TV personality and cosplayer Chloe Dykstra has shared her #MeToo story in a long and emotional essay that accuses an unnamed ex-boyfriend, presumably Chris Hardwick, of “long-term” emotional and sexual abuse and career blacklisting.
Although Dykstra does not name the ex-boyfriend in her essay published Thursday on Medium, the timing and key details suggest that she is referring to TV personality and Nerdist podcaster Hardwick, whom she dated from 2012 to 2014, according to Heavy.com.
Dykstra, 29, referred to her celebrity-obsessed ex-boyfriend as a man who was nearly 20 years her senior and who went from being “a mildly successful podcaster to a powerhouse CEO of his own company.”
Hardwick, 46, has become famous and probably very rich by transforming his love of geekdom into a wide-ranging career that includes his Nerdist Industries network of podcasts and YouTube shows and interviewing celebrity fans of “Walking Dead” and “Breaking Bad” for AMC’s “Talking Dead” and “Talking Bad” after-shows.
In her essay, titled “Rose-Colored Glasses: A Confession,” Dykstra said the man displayed what she called “controlling behavior” that began just two weeks into the relationship. The daughter of Oscar-winning special-effects artist John Dykstra, Dykstra said she was a “vibrant, goofy” kid when she met the man at a convention. But almost immediately, he laid down certain rules.
She said she was to reserve her nights for her boyfriend, which alienated her from her friends, and she wasn’t to have male friends. She also wasn’t allowed to drink — Hardwick is known to be sober, according to Heavy.com — and to not take any photos of them as a couple.
“I was terrified to piss him off- so I did what he said… including let him sexually assault me. Regularly. I was expected to be ready for him when he came home from work,” Dykstra wrote.
Because Dykstra she said she was struggling with an eating disorder, she sometimes didn’t feel well. But she said her boyfriend would threaten her if she begged off from getting intimate, saying, “I just want to remind you, the reason my last relationship didn’t work out was because of the lack of sex.”
So, Dykstra said she would have sex with him, “occasionally in tears.”
“He thought the whole idea was funny,” Dykstra wrote. “To be fair, I did go along with it out of fear of losing him.”
Dykstra, who co-hosted the cosplay show “Just Cos” on Nerdist’s YouTube channel, said her boyfriend “pressured” her to take an on-camera job at his company that she didn’t want, because she said she wasn’t comfortable working with significant others. “He insinuated I would be ungrateful to not accept it,” she wrote.
When they attended their first Comic Con in San Diego, Dykstra said her boyfriend told her to not leave the hotel room. She wrote he went to parties by himself and nabbed the phone number of a famous actress he hoped to date at the same time he was still in a relationship with her. “I found out months later, and couldn’t bring myself to say anything because by this time, my self-worth was in the toilet,” Dykstra wrote.
Dykstra wrote that she finally left him “after three years of being snapped/yelled at constantly, very rarely being shown any affection.”
Dykstra and Hardwick announced their split via tweets in 2014, according to The Wrap. Hardwick then married model, actress and lifestyle blogger Lydia Hearst, the daughter of Patty Hearst, in 2016.
Dykstra alleged that after the breakup, her ex-boyfriend “made calls to several companies I received regular work from to get me fired by threatening to never work with them. He succeeded. I was blacklisted.”
The Wrap reported that it had reached out to representatives for Hardwick for comment but they had not responded.
Early Friday, Dykstra tweeted her thanks to well-wishers for “your support and kind words.”
I quietly posted an article today, unlisted on Medium. It clearly made the rounds. I’m overwhelmed and I want to thank all of you for your support and kind words- they mean so much to me. I may take some time off the internet, please know your support means everything to me.
— Chloe Dykstra (@skydart) June 15, 2018
