Meryl Streep on Monday responded to an angry tweet by Charmed actress Rose McGowan criticising a sartorial protest planned for the Golden Globes in January to denounce sexual harassment in Hollywood.

Responding to reports that Hollywood’s top actresses would be wearing black to the January 7 ceremony in support of the #MeToo movement against abuse, McGowan took down the strategy last week, saying it would effect “no real change”. In a tweet, which she later deleted, McGowan said, “Actresses, like Meryl Streep, who happily worked for The Pig Monster, are wearing black @goldenglobes in a silent protest. YOUR SILENCE is THE problem.You’ll accept a fake award breathlessly & affect no real chance. I despise your hypocrisy. Maybe you should all wear Marchesa.”

This post referred to film mogul Harvey Weinstein, who has been accused of sexual assault, including rape, by about 100 women, including McGowan. Marchesa is the womenswear brand started by Weinstein’s estranged wife Georgina Chapman

In a statement to Huffington Post on Monday, Streep said she was hurt by the attack but reiterated that she was not aware of Weinstein’s crimes till reports about the alleged assaults first emerged in October.

“I did not know about Weinstein’s crimes, not in the 90s when he attacked her, or through subsequent decades when he proceeded to attack others.

I wasn’t deliberately silent. I didn’t know. I don’t tacitly approve of rape. I didn’t know.  I don’t like young women being assaulted. I didn’t know this was happening...

...I am truly sorry she sees me as an adversary, because we are both, together with all the women in our business, standing in defiance of the same implacable foe: a status quo that wants so badly to return to the bad old days, the old ways where women were used, abused and refused entry into the decision-making, top levels of the industry. That’s where the cover-ups convene. Those rooms must be disinfected, and integrated, before anything even begins to change.”

Many other actresses also responded on Twitter to McGowan’s post.

Actress and writer Amber Tamblyn said it was “beneath her [McGowan]” to make such statements. In a tweet thread, Tamblyn also wrote: “a black dress is just the beginning of the darkness that will be drained from every industry across the country by the time we’re done. That’s a promise.”

McGowan’s Charmed co-star Alyssa Milano responded to Tamblyn’s tweet, reiterating that she stands by “every woman in the pursuit of permanent change and gender equality”.

McGowan also put up a post, ostensibly in response to Tamblyn’s thread, apologising for the Marchesa jibe. She said that she had been angered by a report in which Milano had spoken up in support of Chapman.

Meanwhile, actress Holly Marie Combs, who was the third of the Charmed sisters, spoke up in support of McGowan.

Writer Dylan Farrow, Woody Allen’s adopted daughter who had accused the director of assaulting her when she was seven years old, also backed McGowan, saying she supported her stance on the Golden Globes black-gown protest.