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New York - She was meeting a movie star for dinner, and Alec Baldwin's accused stalker said on Wednesday it quickly shaped up like a dream date.
He picked her up on a February Friday in 2010 at a posh hotel where he'd helped her secure a room, surprised her with tickets to a Broadway show, took her to an intimate dinner and spent an amorous night filled with promises of a future together, Genevieve Sabourin told a court that had heard a sharply different account from Baldwin the previous day.
"Am I naive, stupid? I don't know. You can laugh at me as much as you want, but I believed him," the Canadian actress said.
Sabourin got her rambling turn on the witness stand in her non-jury trial after days of peppering the proceedings with remarks, gasps and sobs from the defence table — outbursts that got her declared in contempt of court on Wednesday and ordered to spend 30 days in jail, regardless of the outcome of the trial.
Interrupting the proceedings
Baldwin says their 2010 dinner was simply that. But Sabourin went on to conduct a campaign of harassment that escalated from an onslaught of unwanted phone calls and e-mails to showing up uninvited at his New York and Hamptons homes, the 55-year-old 30 Rock star said.
"It was nightmarish," he testified.
Sabourin says what he calls stalking was only the denouement of a sexual relationship, which he denies they had.
"I may be annoying, but I don't do it in the purpose or the intent to be. I'm seeking the truth," she said.
Closing statements were set for Thursday. In the meantime, Sabourin was headed to jail on Wednesday night. Before her testimony, Manhattan Criminal Court Judge Robert Mandelbaum declared her in contempt after she disregarded his warning to stop interrupting the proceedings.
During testimony, Sabourin said Baldwin was "very flirtatious" from their first meeting in 2000, during the Montreal filming of the sci-fi comedy The Adventures of Pluto Nash. He had a cameo, and she was a publicist.
She said she left him a message about having lunch in 2006 but didn't hear from him until early 2010, when "Pluto Nash" and "Scarface" producer Martin Bregman asked Baldwin to give her career advice.
Baldwin soon was calling her every day, always from phones that displayed on her own cellphone only as private numbers, she said. Then, she said, he invited her to New York, planning dinners and days at his home in the Hamptons hamlet of Amagansett. She paid for her plane ticket and hotel room.
But after their Friday night together, he disappeared to Amagansett without her, she said.
Sabourin was the producer's mistress
Over the next two years, she said, they maintained a fraught e-mail and phone relationship that veered from talk of getting together again to a steamy phone call to him writing that his girlfriend wanted Sabourin to leave him alone.
Baldwin said that's what he wanted as soon as she started sending romantic messages, though he acknowledged he sent some friendly e-mails along the way. He said they were efforts to placate her.
Meanwhile, Bregman became a side issue in the case.
Baldwin testified that Sabourin was the producer's mistress. The married Bregman, however, later said by phone that he never had an affair with her. Sabourin also denies it.
Bregman told The Associated Press he thought Baldwin had found Sabourin attractive, but "I don't know if anything happened between the two of them".
Prosecutors listed Bregman as a potential witness but said they didn't call him because he indicated he had little to say about the matter. But the judge decided he could legally infer that Bregman's testimony wouldn't have favoured the prosecution.
Bregman didn't testify for the defence, either.
He picked her up on a February Friday in 2010 at a posh hotel where he'd helped her secure a room, surprised her with tickets to a Broadway show, took her to an intimate dinner and spent an amorous night filled with promises of a future together, Genevieve Sabourin told a court that had heard a sharply different account from Baldwin the previous day.
"Am I naive, stupid? I don't know. You can laugh at me as much as you want, but I believed him," the Canadian actress said.
Sabourin got her rambling turn on the witness stand in her non-jury trial after days of peppering the proceedings with remarks, gasps and sobs from the defence table — outbursts that got her declared in contempt of court on Wednesday and ordered to spend 30 days in jail, regardless of the outcome of the trial.
Interrupting the proceedings
Baldwin says their 2010 dinner was simply that. But Sabourin went on to conduct a campaign of harassment that escalated from an onslaught of unwanted phone calls and e-mails to showing up uninvited at his New York and Hamptons homes, the 55-year-old 30 Rock star said.
"It was nightmarish," he testified.
Sabourin says what he calls stalking was only the denouement of a sexual relationship, which he denies they had.
"I may be annoying, but I don't do it in the purpose or the intent to be. I'm seeking the truth," she said.
Closing statements were set for Thursday. In the meantime, Sabourin was headed to jail on Wednesday night. Before her testimony, Manhattan Criminal Court Judge Robert Mandelbaum declared her in contempt after she disregarded his warning to stop interrupting the proceedings.
During testimony, Sabourin said Baldwin was "very flirtatious" from their first meeting in 2000, during the Montreal filming of the sci-fi comedy The Adventures of Pluto Nash. He had a cameo, and she was a publicist.
She said she left him a message about having lunch in 2006 but didn't hear from him until early 2010, when "Pluto Nash" and "Scarface" producer Martin Bregman asked Baldwin to give her career advice.
Baldwin soon was calling her every day, always from phones that displayed on her own cellphone only as private numbers, she said. Then, she said, he invited her to New York, planning dinners and days at his home in the Hamptons hamlet of Amagansett. She paid for her plane ticket and hotel room.
But after their Friday night together, he disappeared to Amagansett without her, she said.
Sabourin was the producer's mistress
Over the next two years, she said, they maintained a fraught e-mail and phone relationship that veered from talk of getting together again to a steamy phone call to him writing that his girlfriend wanted Sabourin to leave him alone.
Baldwin said that's what he wanted as soon as she started sending romantic messages, though he acknowledged he sent some friendly e-mails along the way. He said they were efforts to placate her.
Meanwhile, Bregman became a side issue in the case.
Baldwin testified that Sabourin was the producer's mistress. The married Bregman, however, later said by phone that he never had an affair with her. Sabourin also denies it.
Bregman told The Associated Press he thought Baldwin had found Sabourin attractive, but "I don't know if anything happened between the two of them".
Prosecutors listed Bregman as a potential witness but said they didn't call him because he indicated he had little to say about the matter. But the judge decided he could legally infer that Bregman's testimony wouldn't have favoured the prosecution.
Bregman didn't testify for the defence, either.
