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Two years after publishingthe article that helped bring down Harvey Weinstein,New York Timesreporters Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey have written a book that includes more details of how the women who accused the now-disgraced movie mogul of sexual harassment, including actressesGwyneth PaltrowandAshley Judd, decided to come forward with their stories.
“She was Harvey’s biggest star. She was the golden girl of Miramax. The whole idea of conceiving of Gwyneth Paltrow as a victim was almost strange to us,” Kantor tells PEOPLE about their initial outreach to Paltrow. “But lo and behold, we got a text that she had a story and that she was willing to speak.”
Though Paltrow was “nervous” at first, she became crucial to their investigation, Kantor and Twohey explain.
The authors: Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey.Martin Schoeller
While more than 80 women have accused Weinstein of sexual assault, harassment and other misconduct that goes back decades, Ashley Judd was thefirst actress to accuse Weinstein of sexual harassment on the record.
“I said no, a lot of ways, a lot of times, and he always came back at me with some new ask,” Judd toldTheTimesin October 2017. “It was all this bargaining, this coercive bargaining.”
After Kantor and Twohey’s first article was published,Paltrow was willing to join other actresses on the record. In a story eerily similar to Judd’s, Paltrow told theTimesabout a business meeting with Weinstein that allegedly turned ugly. He touched her and asked to give her a massage, she claimed.
“I was a kid, I was signed up, I was petrified,” she told theTimesin 2017. The incident allegedly happened in the mid-’90s, just after Weinstein gave her the title role inEmma, the film that would jump-start her career.
Mira Sorvino Is ‘Hell-Bent on Nothing Bad Happening to My Kids’ in Wake of Harvey Weinstein
Penguin Random House
Weinstein has denied all allegations of non-consensual sex and retaliation against women for refusing his advances. He isset to go to trialin New York City in January 2020 on charges of rape and predatory sexual assault related to the accusations of two women.(He has pleaded not guilty to the charges.)
According toShe Said, once Weinstein learned about the investigation he was determined to find out the identities of his accusers.
Before the initial article was published, Weinstein came to theNew York Timesoffice and accused Judd and another accuser of “being mentally unstable,” the authors write. Kantor also recalls getting panicked texts from Paltrow after Weinstein arrived to an event at her house. Paltrow hid in the bathroom and texted Kantor.
“Her worry was that he was going to demand an answer about whether or not she was speaking to us,” the reporter recalls. “We learned he was really obsessed with the question of whether or not we were speaking with her.”
But speak she did. The accounts of Paltrow, Judd and dozens of other women caused Weinstein to be ousted from his company and fueled the #MeToo movement against sexual harassment.
For the epilogue of the book, entitled “The Gathering,” Kantor and Twohey organized a group interview with the actresses and other women, including Rachel Crooks, who accused Donald Trump of sexual assault (which he denied), and Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, who testified against Brett Kavanaugh before he was confirmed as a Supreme Court Justice. Paltrow hosted the gathering in her L.A. home.
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“We wanted to end the book with these women coming together to see how, no matter what their status, what their background, that they had all been dramatically transformed in the process of taking the brave step in coming forward,” Twohey says.
During the session, Paltrow discussed a disturbing allegation, according to the book. After her story went public, Paltrow said she spoke to other women “who told her that Weinstein, while harassing or assaulting them, would routinely cite her and her soaring career, falsely implying she had yielded to him,” the authors write.
Judd’s transformation was just as powerful. She’d always wanted to be an activist, and now the world recognized her as one.
“I have to know the hill on which I’m willing to die,” Judd explained to the other women, according to the book. “The equality of the sexes is that hill for me.”
She Saidison salenow.
source: people.com
