Harvey Weinstein: Ex-assistant Speaks Out on ‘How Hollywood kept Harvey's secret’ - BBC News

um listen Harvey Harvey now everyone sees is this sort of repulsive monster which he was and is on one hand but I think what is interesting and what isn't maybe brought forward is that he was also an extremely exciting brilliant you know stimulating person to be around he was at the top of his game at that time he held all the cards everybody came to him and I'm not just talking about people in the entertainment industry I'm talking about people in politics and in you know big business and the industry and so to be in the Enclave of somebody that powerful you know was very exciting he was also very unpleasant to be around but he was a master manipulator and he you know his moods changed very quickly and you never knew whether you were you know his confidante whether you were going to be screamed at so it's a very highly adrenalized environment when did you first notice that he had a problem with women I don't know that I could say I noticed he had a problem with women I think again it's very difficult everybody now says why did everyone go to his hotel room it wasn't as simple as that you know everybody went to his hotel this was where he did business it wasn't in his bedroom it was in his suite you know you had top agents top movie stars male and female coming in hourly for meetings this was his place of business so it wasn't sort of this spurious weird thing that you had to go up to his room however he had a lot of meetings with actresses and he clearly had girlfriends you know he had regular female visitors who were actual actresses sometimes aspiring actresses well-known actresses and they clearly had a fairly intimate personal relationship with him but as a assistant that's not really something that you're involved with did you assume that those relationships were consensual did they seem just to be part of that world yes I presumed they were consensual but there were obviously some some women who were reluctant to come you know when you'd bring up to try and make a meeting they'd always come up with excuses and Harvey would get very angry and threatening and would threaten you know you personally that you had to make sure that this meeting happened with Harvey there was no such word as no and I think that's really the crux of their of the matter Zelda when you first started working for him some voices were warning you what he was like I had one morning and I have to say that woman really saved my my my honor because actually being warned is very important because it armed you and all she had said to me was always sitting in an armchair don't ever sit on a sofa next to him and always keep your pajamas and there were no more than that but actually it was an incredibly important and good piece of advice because it meant that I was ready actually when he did start behaving badly I also meant that I wasn't as frightened because I knew that it had happened to other people so you know I was very robust in the way that I dealt with it and he he you know he he took that he was very persistent and what did you do well I think everybody by now has read pretty much everything know that he has that he's done and he didn't have a very original repertoire you know but it was a system that worked you know massages inappropriate suggestions expecting people to work with him you know unclothed but you know pretty much everything that you've read of have had to experience at some point or other and you then pass that warning on I did warn people that he had a habit of behaving inappropriately but that they were safe because I had always been safe and I genuinely never was physically threatened by him emotionally and psychologically constantly but never physically and I said I'm afraid he's a pain he will he will behave inappropriately you just tell him where to go you're tough with him nothing will happen but I was I was wrong and it came to a head for you when he sexually assaulted attempted rape on your colleague yes we were at Venice Film Festival and he he tried to rape her and what did he do she was extremely distressed she was shaking very distressed clearly in shock didn't want anybody to know was absolutely terrified of the consequences what would happen and I spoke with her and you know tried to cut to calm her for about half an hour and then I went straight downstairs to where Harvey was having a business meeting on the terrace I'm told them he needed to come with me right away for me to have broken into a meeting like that was very unusual and he did not question me he got up and came with me straightaway cuz he knew why I was why I was as angry I'm serious as I was so you accused him of attempted rape yeah and he denied it yes and they said nothing at all it happened and he swore on the life of his wife and his children which was his his best get out of jail card that he used quite a lot and did it ever cross your mind that he might be telling the truth no not if you saw the girl that I had just seen and at this point three four years down my than the time of working for Harvey I knew him pretty well I knew and he was telling the truth or not and then what did you do we returned to the UK and I spoke to my only senior in the Miramax offices and she suggested that I got a lawyer so we both resigned from the company saying that we felt we were constructively dismissed because of his behavior and that we would be he'd be hearing from our solicitors and so you found a lawyer semester yes and at this point I thought we were going to go to criminal proceedings and take him to court and and that he would be punished for what he had done you were prepared to go that far and have him locked up what was the only it was the only route I thought there was and it was the only route as far as I was concerned and what happened the lawyers made it very clear that we didn't have very many options we hadn't because we hadn't gone to the police when we were in Venice we had no physical evidence and ultimately it would be too under 25 year olds women words against Harvey Weinstein Miramax film corporation and essentially the Disney company because I naively believed that if we went to Disney they would be horrified and would fire Harvey or you know or help us with the proceedings but the lawyers the lawyers made it very clear that that was not how the world worked so you were ready to bring him down at that point you took the only option you thought you could and you faced door slamming in your face essentially yeah yeah and it sounds odd but for me you know this was really where the my trauma started and my abuse started I could deal with Harvey he was an unpleasant difficult man but I had ways of dealing with him what I couldn't deal with what I had no equipment for was to deal with the legal system you know essentially I'd gone to the parents to say you know somebody's done something bad and there was no there was no recourse it seemed and that was really shocking and very frightening to discover that the law couldn't help me in hindsight it wasn't as simple as that my lawyers were giving me the advice they thought was best however and I think probably if we had gone to the police I don't know what would have happened in truth I don't know if we would have gone got anywhere you know and at 23 when you're faced with that your own advice you know the advice from your own legal team is be quiet you know you will get dragged backwards forwards and sideways through the courts as will your family as will your friends as well anybody who knows anything about you you haven't got a chance you will be destroyed it's it's quite a it's quite difficult to know where to turn do you think now that you were terribly advised or do you think they protected you as best they could in truth I don't know you ended up signing a nondisclosure agreement tell us how that came about this is very difficult because once the lawyers presented damages agreement as our only option the one thing that I was very clear about was that we had to find some way of stopping Harvey's behavior and to that I didn't want money to change hands at any point at this point I was told the only way that we would even get Miramax to the table was by making a monetary request I mean it was a very intense agreement in terms of the secrecy I was not allowed to ever speak to anybody about even really my time working at Miramax I was not allowed to speak to a therapist without them signing a confidentiality agreement I was not allowed to speak to my accountant with regards to the money that I received which was how much it was 125,000 and I think at this point once I realized that this was my only arsenal the only thing I was going to have to try and prevent Harvey's behavior was to create an agreement that was as binding to him and as difficult for him as it was going to be for me and the only way that I could accept the fact that money was going to have to change hands was that he was going to have to do an awful lot for that money and what did you ask him to do well there were a lot of obligations initially but during the negotiations I had to concede we had to concede some of them but some of the main ones that stay was that he had to attend therapy for his behavior and that I was to be present in his first therapy session because I was very concerned that he wouldn't talk about the relevant reason that he was at a therapist again you have to remember this is a man who can manipulate everybody and I was very aware of this and I was trying to put teeth into any little clause that I could and did you go with him to that third session that never happened I don't know if he attended therapy or not I pushed to have this meeting but the his his legal team kept stalling and after this process I actually was pretty broken I was pretty broken and exhausted and so disillusioned and I didn't have the energy to go on fighting and in reality it was not my obligation to follow up his obligation and what's extraordinary looking back is you would imagine that Miramax Films would have been bending over backwards to make sure that all of those obligations were fulfilled but they weren't your career path was ended at that point pretty much yeah so what did you do I ended up moving to Central America to train horses I did spend a little bit of time trying to look for work again in London and it was a pretty unpleasant experience because my reputation was pretty suspect and when you've spent a month of your life fighting with every ounce of your strength for right and to stop you know a predator to have to face that kind of environment afterwards was was very very hard I really couldn't I couldn't stay stay in in in the in the industry at that point he calls himself a sex addict now do you think that was at the root no I don't think he's a sex addict he's a power addict everything he did everything that drove him was about dominance with men and women he put an enormous amount of energy into humiliating men and an enormous amount of energy into getting women to submit I'm getting men to submit that was what drove him you know here's his over arching need for for power so you think now if you had been listened to at that point everything that came after 20 years ago would have been avoided yeah it was the entire system you know and and the system essentially protected Harvey in this case but I can guarantee you it protects a hundred other people like that because if you have the power and the money to create agreements that cover up essentially a very serious in this case crime criminal action then I I dread to imagine you know what other things are being covered up you describe these feelings of signing an NDA that basically put you at exactly the opposite position to the one you'd hope do you wanted to be speaking out you wanted to be changing the culture and you were gagged how long did he live with that before you had enough well this happened 19 years ago during that time there were a couple of occasions where I made attempt to circumnavigate my agreement however it's almost impossible for me because one of the clauses of the agreement dis allows me to have a copy of it so I don't actually have a copy of the agreement that I signed why because it's a smoking gun if you have an agreement that somebody has signed that says that he will go to therapy that he will be dismissed from his own company if anybody else makes a claim in the ensuing period you know that HR policy for sexual harassment has to be brought into the company it's pretty clear that something's wrong so they never let you have a copy of it they never let you see the whole thing I was I'm allowed to look at it supervised in I was allowed to look at it supervised in my lawyer's office what do you think should happen with NDA's now I mean as you say you broke your cover you want others to do the same listen I'm not stupid I understand that non-disclosure agreements have a place in society and for both for both sides but it's really it's really important that legislation is changed around how these agreements are regulated you cannot have a legal document that protects a criminal this isn't someone selling you a dodgy car you know and in fact now the state of California New Jersey and New York are changing legislation so that you can no longer hide sexually assault or abuse in a non-disclosure agreement I want that to happen here it has to happen here we're a civilized culture you know this this has to be debated and the law needs to be changed you can't change the Harvey Weinstein's of the world there are always going to be people who follow the darker side of their character but if the rules and the laws that we have to protect ourselves enable that then there's no point in having them do you think that culture is changing now do you feel that this has been a proper watershed yeah I think it has I think it's still got a very long way to go I think that women are in a much stronger position but I think we have to be extremely careful and I think the media has to be very responsible with its reporting but I think there's still there's still a long way to go do you think Hollywood will change now or do you think it will always go where the money is and the artistic minds are yes I think Hollywood will change but if this isn't just about Hollywood this isn't about Hollywood this is about the reason that this story's captured everybody's imagination is is because it involves glamorous famous people and because if you were trying to paint a fantasy monster Harvey Harvey fits the bill perfectly so it's a perfect media storm but this isn't about Hollywood this is about the abuse of power how do you think you will see 2017 in this context in your life looking back it's an interesting question because everybody when they talk to me about this say this must be very distressing for you and the one thing it isn't is distressing the last 20 years have been distressing where I'd not been allowed to speak where I've not been allowed to be myself and not just for me for lots of women you're not being able to own their past and for many of them their trauma and I think I've realized that actually it was much more traumatic than I realized at the time because the freedom of being able to speak and being validated and being able to now see that I wasn't mad that you know this was wrong this is this is right and that although you know the process that I went through was legal it was immoral and now I feel that maybe I can be instrumental in some sort of change and if I can make one good thing happen out of something as horrific is all the all the damage that Harvey is cause then you know that makes this year a fabulous year for me personally Zelda Perkins thank you

Channel: BBC News

Views: 2,129,494

Keywords: bbc, bbc news, news, asia argento weinstein, Harvey Weinstein, zelda perkins, zelda, perkins, weinstein, newsnight, news night, exclusive, exclusive interview, asia argento, asia argento harvey weinstein, Harvey Weinstein's former assistant

Id: q91eZF9_ggI

Length: 22min 24sec (1344 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 19 2017