"We got ya," Rose McGowan said. "We got you."

The actress "didn't believe this day would come," she said on an American morning television show, Megyn Kelly Today, on Friday.

She was reacting to the early morning arrest of Harvey Weinstein, whom she says raped her 20 years ago at the Sundance Film Festival.

Weinstein surrendered to New York authorities on Friday morning and was led into a courtroom in cuffs and charged with crimes including rape for alleged forcible sexual acts against two women in 2013 and 2004, Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance Junior said in a statement.

The judge set his bail at $US10 million ($13.2m) and restricted his movements to New York and Connecticut. Weinstein agreed to be electronically monitored. He has consistently denied any nonconsensual sexual relations and continued to do so Friday.

Calling the day both real and surreal, McGowan suggested that the surrender was strategically timed.