01x03 - The Assistants

[bunniefuu]

How did you feel when I first called

you and started texting you?

Complete terror.

I remember hiding in my bathroom

in complete blind terror.

For 20 years, Rowena Chiu lived

in fear of talking

about her allegation that Harvey

Weinstein tried to r*pe her

at the Venice Film Festival,

when she was his assistant

in the late nineties.

He pushed me against the bed

and said he had never had

a Chinese girl before.

There are legal and cultural pressures

that keep people silent.

Part of my job as a journalist

is to identify those cases

where someone isn't ready to speak

and give them the space to make

that decision.

And it's a hard because I wanna

break the story desperately.

What is your advice for journalists

who are in that situation?

That's a really hard question

to answer.

I'm often asked why did it take you

such a long time to come forward

with your story?

It's just not something that I ever

spoke about to another human being.

I was born in the UK,

so I'm British-born Chinese.

I grew up in Berkshire.

My parents came to the UK

when they were university students,

and they met and married in London.

And so, my sister and I are

first-generation in the UK.

We're a small family,

we're pretty close,

but you know, we don't talk

about a lot of stuff openly.

Chinese families typically

don't complain,

we sort of get on and we work hard.

And Rowena did work hard,

and succeeded right off the bat.

She got her start as a theater kid.

I was President of Oxford University

Drama Society

and I produced and directed plays.

So theater was my first love.

When I left Oxford,

I fairly quickly transitioned over

to film and television.

Rowena was 24 years old when she

applied for a job as a junior assistant

at Miramax,

Weinstein's production company.

It was 1998 and Miramax was one

of the hottest studios in the world.

And the Oscar goes

to The English Patient.

Miramax was absolutely

a dream company for me.

It was a small

and feisty film company

that everybody wanted to join

because it was kinda arthouse

and commercial,

that kind of beautiful formula

that everyone was trying to crack.

So one day in July Rowena

headed to Soho

in central London, and walked

into the Miramax offices.

I climbed up three flights of stairs

and I met Zelda Perkins,

who was in the middle of a tiny room

crammed with towers of movie scripts.

Zelda Perkins was a senior assistant

at Miramax in London,

senior relatively speaking.

She was also only 24 years old.

She told me about the exhaustion,

and she told me about the travel.

That you get calls from New York

at three in the morning

to say Harvey's coming

over by Concorde.

Did she warn you at any point

about Harvey

and the potential for harassment?

She was very clear in her interview

that Harvey was very difficult

to deal with.

You didn't know when

he was gonna lose his temper,

there would be requests

for massages and inappropriate talk.

So she said that explicitly,

that there was gonna be some kind of

a sexual component to this difficulty?

Right.

It's another step to believing that

the boss that you work for

is a serial r*pist

who holds dozens of women against

their will to beds and walls.

That's a very different scenario.

And obviously if you are going into

a situation where you believe

you're going to be r*ped,

nobody takes that job on.

So did you accept the job immediately

or did it require some contemplation?

Not at all, I accepted

the job immediately.

- In the room or later?

- In the room.

When I started with the job,

a courier by bike arrived

with a mobile phone.

Then I knew that I'd made it.

Back in those days, in '98,

a mobile phone was like a brick.

And so I took the thing out

with some reverence.

Thinking this is a powerful office.

Do you remember your first day

on the job?

I remember clearly

the first day meeting Harvey.

He had flown to London

for a screening of the latest cut

for Shakespeare in Love.

I know something of a woman

in a man's profession.

Harvey sat in the middle

of the second row

and he asked me

to sit directly in front of him.

There were other seats in the room,

it seemed ridiculous

that I was sitting right in front

of him, blocking his view,

so I got up to move,

and I immediately was yelled at.

In a pretty brutal and violent way.

It's only way later, 20 years later

that I saw that episode as a test.

Harvey enjoys people who push back,

just enough to stand up

for themselves,

but not so much so that they have

enough self-respect not to do the job.

It's complicated but a lot of people

who worked with Weinstein will say it.

Despite his aggression, he could

make people feel valued, special.

He definitely had a certain charm,

and the problem is that it's not

fashionable to talk about a predator

in the same sentence as charm.

But I think it's important

to understand that

because people don't understand

why we were there.

There was a lure and a charm

to working for Harvey.

He made you feel like anything

was possible.

You're super bright.

What do you want to be?

Do you want to be a writer,

a producer?

That is very compelling,

and I think the points at which

this was the most powerful

is when he's on his own with you.

One of the first times

Rowena was alone with Weinstein

was about two months

after she started the job.

She and Perkins had flown to Italy

to meet Weinstein

for the Venice Film Festival.

It was September 1998.

Rowena's days began around 10 AM,

dealing with the logistics around

Weinstein's meetings,

responding to his various requests

at any given moment.

It's interesting looking back.

I remember there was one conversation

about the stereotype

that Chinese people don't complain,

and Chinese people were discreet

and how he liked that.

Perkins, as the first,

more senior assistant,

would go to the fancy evening events

with Weinstein.

I, as the second assistant,

stayed back in the hotel room,

reading scripts

and preparing for Harvey and Zelda

to come back at around ten.

And I would being that sort

of second late night shift.

A shift that lasted until around 2 AM.

The first day went according

to schedule,

with Weinstein returning

to the suite around 10 PM.

The evening started with a speech

about how he's completely exhausted,

and that is an excuse to kinda disrobe

and take off his clothes

and, for him, get in a position

where he is more comfortable.

To anyone on the outside

this might seem crazy,

but within the tight circle around

Weinstein, it was so routine

it had become normalized.

Harvey was naked when Zelda

was in the room with him.

Harvey had Zelda take dictation

when he was in the nude,

he wandered around without

trousers with everybody.

Because you see it happening

with other assistants,

and you're new to the job,

and you're young,

you think, that's okay, he's far

too important to wear trousers.

After a while, he asked me what kind

of family I came from

and who I was dating

in a way that was personal.

It felt like a game

that I was being forced to play.

He talked about how,

because I was discreet,

he could tell me things

that I wouldn't share with others.

Rowena says Weinstein did make

advances on her that first day,

but she deflected them

and they got the work done.

She went back to her room to sleep

when her shift ended around 2 AM.

Tell me, to whatever extent

you're comfortable,

what happened

that subsequent night.

Similar to the first night,

he said how he was exhausted

by the event of that evening.

He started taking his clothes off,

he started asking me about

the scripts that I'd read.

I'm eager to explain which ones

I think are good

and which ones I think

are not good and why.

He says, you have a real feel

for story and character,

I can see you're gonna

be an amazing film producer.

I can give you anything you want

in this industry.

At that point he was already naked

and he said I had too many clothes on.

There were jokes among the assistants

about wearing extra clothes

when in a hotel room with Harvey

and I'm now infamous for wearing

two pairs of tights.

So he asked me could

he take off a pair of tights.

I must be hot in the two pairs

of tights.

What's going through your mind

as he's saying those things?

He's a big man

and he could get extremely angry,

so I felt it would be physically

dangerous for me

if I made him angry.

We're alone in a hotel room

pretty late at night.

So it could be that nobody

would hear the screams.

So I felt for me it was safer

to make excuses to leave,

and I say, I really think

it's getting late

and I think you're really tired and

you've gotta get up really early.

So I wasn't outrightly screaming

I'm gonna get the heck out of here,

but I was very clearly saying,

that I'm uncomfortable.

It sounds like any rational observer,

hearing you make those excuses,

would pick up on the fact that you were

saying no in the way that you could

under those circumstances.

It wasn't that I wasn't clear

about saying no.

I think if you look terrified

and you're trying to leave,

that's loud enough.

What happened next was, he talked

about how I was so young

and I was so new at this.

He was alluding to the fact that I had

little sexual experience

or little romantic experience

for that matter.

And that was a turn-on for him.

And then, he said he had never

had a Chinese girl before.

And my at that stage thinking,

he's so much bigger than me,

holy crap, I'm really in trouble,

I've gotta get out of here.

That's when he pushed me against

the bed and said,

just one thrust and it'll all be over.

At that point he had taken off

both pairs of tights.

I remember thinking, I only have my,

in British-English, knickers left on,

or only my underwear left and thinking,

there's only one barrier

to him getting what he wants.

He attempted to part my legs

and I tried to keep my knees together

and tried to roll off the bed

and talked again about how it was

getting really late and I had to go.

Eventually, Harvey grew tired

of the game

and I was able to leave the room.

As I was leaving the room he said

rather chillingly,

we'll pick this up tomorrow night.

What was going through your mind

as you left that room?

What am I gonna do to make sure

this doesn't happen tomorrow night?

The next day I showed up for my shift

in the middle of the morning.

Harvey was in Venice,

and Zelda and I are back in the hotel

room straightening things up,

sorting things out for the office.

That's when I start telling Zelda

about the events of the night before

and the weight of what I'm saying

means that we both end up

on the floor crying.

I was shattered because,

as far as I was concerned,

Rowena was my responsibility.

She was working directly for me.

I had put her in that room.

Rowena didn't know what to do.

They were in a foreign country,

on a relatively isolated island.

They decided they'd get back

to London then look for help.

In the meantime, Perkins worked

to protect Rowena.

Zelda was incredibly sacrificial

in the sense that she worked both

the early shift and the night shift

and made sure that I was never in

a hotel room alone with Harvey again.

What do you think would

have happened if there hadn't been

a Zelda Perkins there

working with you?

I don't like to think about that.

Once their duties at the Festival

concluded,

Rowena and Perkins

returned to London

and immediately started looking

for a lawyer.

There was no Google,

so you don't type into Google

sexual as*ault lawyer.

So Zelda did things like walk around

Soho and walk into offices

and ask for representation.

Eventually they found a law firm

willing to represent them,

then resigned, sending notice

of pending legal action to Weinstein.

The night Rowena

and Perkins resigned,

another young assistant was working

in the Miramax offices in New York.

Her name is Katrina Wolfe.

Harvey just came walking out,

kind of wandering around,

kinda looking a little lost

and sort of said out loud to nobody

in particular:

"Where's Steve Hutensky's office?"

Steve Hutensky was Wolfe's boss

and a lawyer at Miramax.

Hutensky was responsible for a lot

at Miramax,

people even called him

the cleaner-upper.

One of his duties was dealing

with employment agreements.

That included keeping records on

the employees in the London office.

Wolfe remembers Hutensky huddling

with Weinstein for about 45 minutes,

then calling out

to give her an assignment.

Steve asked me to pull the files, the

employment files for Zelda Perkins

and Rowena Chiu.

And shortly thereafter I remember

him saying,

I need to know who the best criminal

defense attorney in the UK is.

Not long after the resignation,

Rowena and Perkins' lawyer

suggested they enter into discussions

with Weinstein's lawyers.

We thought that the wheels

of justice would turn,

we thought there'd be a court case,

we thought there'd be jurors

saying this is a terrible thing

that happened.

I very naively presumed that we

would seek justice and find justice.

They headed to the UK law firm

representing Weinstein.

Everything felt shrouded in secrecy.

We weren't allowed to come to the

offices under normal business hours,

we were asked to come after 5 PM.

We weren't allowed a pen and paper

to write anything down

we weren't allowed to make

any phone calls,

we were not even given food,

and kept here for quite a long time.

We put a request out to say

we've been here a number of hours

and we're pretty hungry and they

sort of sent up one sandwich

which we split between us,

as a real indication of lack of care.

We were insignificant.

And of course what's even more telling

is that Zelda and I were kept

separately in a conference room,

and our lawyers

would come back and report to us

what Harvey's lawyers

had said to them.

The lawyers were landing

on one solution,

a financial settlement tied

to a nondisclosure agreement, an NDA.

We were horrified, and I still remember

Zelda's expression.

She was adamant that

we wouldn't take blood money.

Her revulsion was almost physical.

Our only motivation was to try

and stop Harvey's behavior,

that was all that we cared about,

so that this didn't happen

to somebody else again.

At the end of the day, both sets

of lawyers pushed us very hard

towards signing the settlement,

not only pushed us very hard,

they told us explicitly

that we had no other choice

but to sign the settlement agreement.

In some ways you can vilify

Harvey Weinstein.

He's the evil r*pist, but he wasn't

the only monster in the room.

Rowena and Perkins

did fight for provisions

that they hoped would rein in

Weinstein's behavior.

Under the terms of the agreement

he was required to go to counseling.

Miramax had to hire

corporate handlers

that would address

harassment claims.

And if Weinstein brokered another

large harassment settlement,

he'd be fired.

It felt like the best they could do

in a situation where it seemed

increasingly clear

he was escaping

any real accountability.

I found it staggering that at no point

in the negotiations,

where there were at least

a dozen lawyers in the room,

nobody stuck up their hand

and said excuse me,

what are we doing here, guys?

Stop the clocks,

this shouldn't be happening.

What is happening here is wrong.

It's unethical, it's immoral.

Even our lawyers that we hired,

it felt to us as though everybody

acted to protect Harvey.

But very few people acted

to protect us

as young assistants, and also

as victims of a sexual as*ault.

They got 125 000 pounds each

and agreed never to speak about

the incident again,

not to friends, not to family,

not even to a therapist.

They weren't allowed to keep a full

copy of the contracts themselves.

Soon after the settlement,

Katrina Wolfe remembers being asked

to print new nondisclosure agreements,

and get all the assistants

and interns to sign them.

And she remembers people who knew

about the incident falling silent,

like one of Perkins' and Rowena's

bosses who'd heard the whole story.

It wasn't long after that that I was

sent over to the accounting office

to pick up a check.

I don't recall the amount.

But it was definitely six figures,

and it was to that person.

Meanwhile, Rowena

was coming to understand

yet another factor that keeps people

quiet, the professional consequences.

From about autumn 1998

to spring 1999,

I went and interviewed for every film

and television company in London,

and I didn't imagine that I would

have any difficulty

getting another entry-level position.

But, they would say, I see that you

worked for Harvey for a month or so

and that you've left his employment,

can you tell me more about that?

And I would say, I really can't talk

about that time of my employment.

By spring of the following year,

I was getting pretty desperate.

There was a clause in the contract

that said if she or Perkins ran

into this problem,

they could call up Steve Hutensky

and ask for help.

So I called Steve Hutensky

and it was painful.

It was painful and harrowing

and it brought up memories

that I didn't want it to.

Because there was an insistence that

I come back to work at Miramax

in some shape or form.

I was getting pulled back in.

She demanded a job that would never

put her in the same room as Weinstein,

all the way in Hong Kong, acquiring

Asian content for the US market.

Zelda told me, after you took that job,

he shouted at her when they crossed

paths at Cannes

at the Majestic Hotel,

that he had won.

That must have felt devastating.

It was horrifying and suffocating,

and they didn't give me

any other choice.

Much like with the NDA,

we didn't get another choice.

In Hong Kong, Rowena felt isolated.

It was a very surreal

and dark time.

She struggled with depression.

Working in Hong Kong was a tightening

noose on many different levels.

Having to work at Miramax,

knowing that the CEO is someone

who attempted to r*pe you

is a very difficult experience

in itself.

And then, there's almost a double

violation in being asked to keep silent

about something

that's incredibly traumatic,

and not being able to go to a therapist

or a doctor

or talk to one's own boyfriend

or one's own family.

I tried hard to make a new life

in Hong Kong,

but in the end the house of cards

comes tumbling down.

In Hong Kong, Rowena attempted

suicide twice.

After two years,

she left the film industry for good.

I had actually lost not only a career,

but also a passion,

that was really strangled in its cradle.

A few years later she moved

to the United States, got married,

and settled with her family

near San Francisco.

I went on to work for big corporations

that had HR departments

and glass offices and seemingly

transparent processes for complaint.

They weren't the wild west in the way

that the film industry was.

But no matter how much distance

Rowena put between herself

and her time at Miramax,

she lived in constant fear

that the story would resurface

and upend her life all over again.

I don't think there's a person who's

signed a settlement agreement

with Harvey Weinstein that doesn't

spend the rest of their lives

looking over their shoulder.

For 20 years I felt terrified that

somebody would find me

at my residence and they would ask

the question that I had been dreading,

which is, didn't you used to work

for Harvey Weinstein?

In October 2017, The New York Times

and The New Yorker broke

the first stories about Weinstein's

history of predation.

After the story broke, I felt terrified

about what had been set in motion.

I hadn't told my family, my husband,

my children, my parents,

and I wasn't ready.

And when Zelda Perkins agreed to talk

to me for a story for The New Yorker,

that's when Rowena found herself

wondering what to do

about calls from me

and other reporters.

I remember hiding in my bathroom

with my very young baby,

who was only six months old,

and speaking to Zelda

in hushed whispers on the phone

as though my house were bugged.

What were you afraid of?

When you take a leap

into the unknown

you have no idea what the

repercussions really are going to be.

No one can actually reassure you,

no journalist, no publicist,

no former colleague can really

reassure you

what is actually going to happen.

Once your story's out there,

you can't take it back.

For Rowena it took

two years of thinking,

but she finally concluded she couldn't

and shouldn't stay silent.

We thought that we had signed

a watertight agreement,

meaning that Harvey would not be able

to as*ault other women,

and it really wasn't anything

like that at all.

Imagine finding out then that there

had been other women

who had been subject to these types

of settlement agreements,

not only around our time,

before our time,

and most harrowingly, after our time.

What happened to me

shouldn't happen to other women.

What do you think the next step

should be?

There's still so many people

who have almost no power,

they either are not

in this country legally,

they work in an industry

where they're barely paid.

And if the MeToo movement

can become more inclusive,

that's where

I think we could really create

some kind of social change

that is worth applauding ourselves for.

Weinstein's attempt to suppress

disclosures about him

were sometimes enabled by the media.

That's something I got to see myself,

alongside my producer,

Rich McHugh

It was a couple of days before

we were gonna go to LA

to interview a woman with a credible

allegation of r*pe against Harvey.

And then the decision was handed

down to me, you are to stand down.

Done, we're done here.

In that moment I realized

the story was dead at NBC.