A comprehensive timeline of the Harvey Weinstein allegations
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16th Sep 2019
Since the suppressed bottle of sexual harassment allegations against Harvey Weinstein desolately popped open just last week, more information about the case and further celebrities and voices alike have come forth to bravely open up about their experiences with Weinstein too.
With reports and news stories flooding the Internet, we thought it best to amalgamate the key pieces of information necessary to understanding the timeline at large. Below, a guide to navigating through the case:
5 October, 2017: An investigation by The New York Times found previously undisclosed allegations against Weinstein, nearing over three decades and documented through interviews, with both current and former employees and film industry persons. Further, legal records, emails and internal documents from Miramax – Weinstein’s company – were sourced and compiled to complete the research.
The investigation has brought to light a number of stories of misconduct, mainly, that twenty years ago actress, Ashley Judd was invited to the Peninsula Beverly Hills hotel for what she expected a breakfast meeting with Weinstein, rather to be sent up to his room, finding him in a bathrobe and asking her for a massage or to watch him shower.
Further, former Weinstein company employee Emily Nestor was similarly invited to the Peninsula in 2014 on the first day of the job, telling her that if she accepted his advances, he would help with her career. Other names including former Weinstein company employee Laura Madden and Zelda Perkin reported to The New York Times they too were sexually harassed and also placed in similar hotel room scenarios.
Following the investigation release last week, Weinstein shared in a statement to The New York Times, “I appreciate the way I’ve behaved with colleagues in the past has caused a lot of pain, and I sincerely apologise for it. Though I’m trying to do better, I know I have a long way to go.”
Since, the following has come to light:
9 October, 2017: Weinstein has been forced out of the independent company he co-founded, following The New York Times investigation.”In light of new information about misconduct by Harvey Weinstein that has emerged in the past few days, the directors of The Weinstein Company – Robert Weinstein, Lance Maerov, Richard Koenigsberg and Tarak Ben Ammar – have determined, and have informed Harvey Weinstein, that his employment with The Weinstein Company is terminated, effective immediately.”
Image credit: Getty Images
9 October, 2017: Meryl Streep came forward to praise the heroic women who have spoken out, while confirming she knew nothing about the harassment – of previously referring to Weinstein as a ‘God’ at the 2012 Golden Globes. Sharing, “The behaviour [sic] is inexcusable, but the abuse of power familiar. Each brave voice that is raised, heard and credited by our watchdog media will ultimately change the game.”
Image credits: Getty Images
10 October, 2017: Gwyneth Paltrow speaks out about Harvey Weinstein, detailing alleged sexual harassment. Paltrow – who had just been hired to star in his Jane Austen adaptation, Emma – was summoned to his Peninsula Suite at age 22, during which he touched her and further requested she massage him. She shares, “I was a kid, I was signed up, I was petrified.” Upon detailing this, her then-boyfriend Brad Pitt confronted Weinstein, resulting in Weinstein threatening Paltrow not to tell anyone else what had happened or she would get fired.
Image credits: Getty Images
10 October, 2017: Angelina Jolie shares with The New York Times in an email, “I had a bad experience with Harvey Weinstein in my youth, and as a result, chose never to work with him again and warn others when they did. This behavior towards women in any field, any country is unacceptable.”
Other victims include: Ambra battilana, Lucia Evans, Asia Argento, Mira Sorvino, Emma de Caunes, Rosanna Arquette, Romols Garai, Liza Campbell, Katherine Kedall, Tomi-Anna Roberts, Judith Godreche, Dawn Dunning, Jessica Hynes, Louisette Geiss, Louise Godbold, Heather Graham, Zoe Brock and other anonymous reports.
From Hillary Clinton releasing a statement on Twitter, saying, “I was shocked and appalled by the revelations about Harvey Weinstein. The behavior described by women coming forward cannot be tolerated. Their courage and support of others is critical in helping to stop this kind of behavioUr.
To Barack and Michelle Obama, sharing, “Michelle and I have been disgusted by the recent reports about Harvey Weinstein. Any man who demeans and degrades women in such fashion needs to be condemned and held accountable, regardless if wealth or status. We should celebrate the courage of women who have come forward to tell these painful stories. And we all need to build a culture—including empowering out girls and teaching our boys decency and respect—so we can make such behavior less prevalent in the future.”
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Other influential figures have spoken up on the misconduct since, including Lena Dunham, Glenn Close, Brie Larson, America Ferrera, Christian Slater, Amber Tamblyn, Mark Ruffalo, Julianne Moore, George Clooney, Judd Apatow, Jessica Chastain, Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Olivia Wilde, Stephen Colbert, Jennifer Lawrence, Mindy Kaling, Jimmy Kimmel, Seth Meyers, Li-Manuel Miranda, Ben Affleck, Emma Watson, Rosie O’Donnell and Nicole Kidman.
October 11, 2017: Harvey Weinstein’s wife, Georgina Chapman, has announced she is leaving him in a statement, saying, “My heart breaks for all the women who have suffered tremendous pain because of these unforgivable actions.” Further adding, “I have chosen to leave my husband. Caring for my young children is my first priority and I ask the media for privacy at this time.”
October 12, 2017: Cara Delevingne reveals she is among the list of victims, taking to Instagram to detail her encounter with Harvey Weinstein. Delevingne shares an uncomfortable phone call and a later “audition” tape for Tulip Fever whereby the actress was asked to kiss another woman.
“I went to a meeting with him in the lobby of a hotel with a director about an upcoming film. The director left the meeting and Harvey asked me to stay and chat with him. As soon as we were alone he began to brag about all the actresses he had slept with and how he had made their careers and spoke about other inappropriate things of a sexual nature. He then invited me to his room. I quickly declined and asked his assistant if my car was outside. She said it wasn’t and wouldn’t be for a bit and I should go to his room.”
“At that moment I felt very powerless and scared but didn’t want to act that way hoping that I was wrong about the situation. When I arrived I was relieved to find another woman in his room and thought immediately I was safe. He asked us to kiss and she began some sort of advances upon his direction,” Delevingne shares.
October 12, 2017: Ryan Gosling joins the women who have opened up about their sexual assault experiences with Harvey Weinstein, expressing “I want to add my voice of support for the women who have had the courage to speak out against Harvey Weinstein.”
Gosling further shared, “Like most people in Hollywood, I have worked with him and I’m deeply disappointed in myself for being so oblivious to these devastating experiences of sexual harassment and abuse. He is emblematic of a systemic problem. Men should stand with women and work together until there is a real accountability and change.”
October 13, 2017: Rose McGowan accusses Weinstein of sexual assault on Twitter, claiming Amazon Studios knew about it, however neglected to acknowledge it. McGowan further shares, “I told the head of your studio that HW raped me. Over & over I said it. He said it hadn’t been proved. I said I was the proof.”
Her final tweet stated, “stop funding rapists, alleged pedos and sexual harassers. I love @amazon but there is rot in Hollywood. Be the change you want to see in the world. Stand with truth. #ROSEARMY #Amazon.”
October 14, 2017: The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ board met in Los Angeles, voting to revoke Harvey Weinstein’s membership. The 54-member board decided to hold an emergency meeting after The New York Times case came to light.
Three options were available for the board to vote on: to do nothing at all, to revoke his membership or to take back the best-picture Oscar Weinstein won for Shakespeare in Love in 1999. The board of governors – including the likes of Tom Hanks, Steven Spielberg and Whoopi Goldberg – voted to revoke Weinstein’s lifetime membership.
The board shared their vote was to “immediately expel him from the Academy. We do so not simply to separate ourselves from someone who does not merit the respect of his colleagues but also to send a message that the era of willful ignorance and shameful complicity in sexually predatory behavior and workplace harassment in our industry is over. What’s at issue here is a deeply troubling problem that has no place in our society. The board continues to work to establish ethical standards of conduct that all Academy members will be expected to exemplify.”
October 15, 2017: Kate Winslet shares with the Los Angeles Times that she deliberately didn’t thank Harvey Weinstein in her Oscars acceptance speech, saying “That was deliberate. That was absolutely deliberate. I remember being told, ‘Make sure you thank Harvey if you win.’ And I remember turning around and saying, ‘No, I won’t. No, I won’t.’ And it was nothing to do with not being grateful. If people aren’t well-behaved, why would I thank him?”
“For my whole career, Harvey Weinstein, whenever I’ve bumped into him, he’d grab my arm and say, ‘Don’t forget who gave you your first movie.’ Like I owe him everything. Then later, with The Reader, same thing, ‘I’m going to get you that Oscar nomination, I’m going to get you a win, I’m going to win for you,” Winslet shares.
“But that’s how he operated. He was bullying and nasty. Going on a business level, he was always very, very hard to deal with — he was rude.”
October 22, 2017: Matt Damon has confirmed both he and fellow actor Ben Affleck knew about Gywneth Paltrow’s encounter with Harvey Weinstein. “I knew the story about Gwyneth [Paltrow] from Ben [Affleck] because he was with her after Brad [Pitt], so I knew that story. I never talked to Gwyneth about it – Ben told me,” Damon says. He continued, “When people say like, ‘Everybody knew,’ like, yeah, I knew he was an asshole,” Damon adds in the interview, which he gave to promote his new film with George Clooney titled Suburbicon. “I knew he was … a womaniser. I wouldn’t want to be married to the guy. But … the criminal sexual predation is not something that I ever thought … was going on. Absolutely not.”
October 22, 2017: George Clooney has spoken out about what he knew of the allegations against Harvey Weinstein and also opened up about Amal Clooney’s experience with sexual harassment. “The idea that this predator, this assaulter, was out there silencing women like that—it’s beyond infuriating,” he shared. He further added, “I will say that somebody knew and if there was a reporter that sat on a story for years and didn’t write it, I want to know why because I would have liked to know to these stories. And if there was a newspaper or a website that had this information that investigated it, I’d like to see how much ad money they got from Miramax or from the Weinstein Company.”
October 23, 2017: A number of models have come forward with their own stories of sexual harrassment by Weinstein, detailing lengths to which he went to be part of the fashion industry. Model Zoë Brock details her 1998 experience of meeting Weinstein in Cannes, which ended with her locked in a hotel bathroom terrified to come out after being harassed by a naked Weinstein. Further reports confirm that celebrities were bullied into wearing Marchesa (Weinstein’s wife, Georgina Chapma’s label), with casting director Julia Samersova sharing, “It was really that simple.”
November 7, 2017: The New York Times has published another report on Harvey Weinstein, titled Weinstein’s Complicity Machine and detailing his network of “enablers, silencers and spies” which allowed his predatory behaviour to continue for decades. The revelations include an account from two former assistants, Michelle Franklin and Sandeep Rehal, who were forced to fetch Weinstein penile injections for erectile dysfunction and deliver them to hotels before meetings with his victims and were also trained to brush off Weinstein’s wife, Marchesa designer Georgia Chapman.
Other assistants say Weinstein threatened them when they pushed back on being complicit in these hotel meetings. “This is Harvey Weinstein University,” he allegedly told Rehal, “and I decide if you graduate.” It is also alleged in the new report that some executives at both Miramax and The Weinstein Company knew about the allegations but did nothing, with his brother Bob allegedly involved in settlements to silence victims as far back as 1990. The New York Times says the predatory behaviour was even funded by Weinstein’s own corporate credit card – used to buy lingerie, flowers, bathrobes and more.
The report also names Hollywood agents who knew of the allegations too but did nothing or even continued to send their actresses to Weinstein’s hotel rooms – including allegations against CAA agent Lisa Grode. Also included in those who tried to keep the allegations quiet are members of the press, including the editor of the National Enquirer Dylan Howard, who allegedly tried to silence Rose McGowan, even getting one of his reporters to “collect hostile commentary about Ms. McGowan.” Chillingly, the report confirms Weinstein was making advances on victims as recently as September before the news finally broke with the first New York Times article the very next month. Read the new report in full here.
May 1, 2018: Harvey Weinstein is being sued by actress Ashley Judd for sexual harassment, defamation, intentional interference with prospective economic advantage and unfair competition. Judd was one of the first Hollywood faces to step forward with her own account of Harvey Weinstein’s abuse when she confirmed to the that twenty years ago, she was invited to the Peninsula Beverly Hills hotel for a breakfast meeting with the producer only to be sent to his room where he then approached her in a bathrobe, asking for a massage or for her to watch him shower.
According to , the actress has now filed a lawsuit against the producer as he interfered with her career, causing her to be passed over for a role in . This comes as an interview with filmmaker Peter Jackson saying he believes he was fed false information about the actress at the time of casting.
“The pathetic reality, however, was that Weinstein was retaliating against Ms. Judd for rejecting his sexual demands approximately one year earlier, when he cornered her in a hotel room under the guise of discussing business,” attorney Theodore Boutrous Jr. wrote. “A self-described ‘benevolent dictator’ who has bragged that ‘I can be scary,’ Weinstein used his power in the entertainment industry to damage Ms. Judd’s reputation and limit her ability to find work.”
In response, a representative for Weinstein stated that, “The most basic investigation of the facts will reveal that Mr. Weinstein neither defamed Ms. Judd nor ever interfered with Ms. Judd’s career, and instead not only championed her work but also repeatedly approved her casting for two of his movies over the next decade.”
May 25, 2018: Harvey Weinstein will reportedly turn himself in to police this morning, Friday, May 25, US time, to face sexual assault charges in New York. According to numerous reports, including one by Reuters, Weinstein was expected to be arrested on sexual assault charges following months of investigation by the Manhattan district attorney’s office. Weinstein’s spokesman, Juda Engelmayer, and his lawyer, Benjamin Brafman, both declined to comment on the reports their client will surrender to police.
Meanwhile, the total number of women who have come forward with complaints about Weinstein is now more than 70.
May 25, 2018: Harvey Weinstein has been formally charged with rape and sexual abuse in New York, after turning himself into local police on Friday. Weinstein was charged with two counts of rape and one count of a criminal sexual act.
Weinstein was released by police on a $1 million bail but has been instructed to wear a monitoring device and has also had to turn in his passport.
A grand jury will now decide if there is enough evidence to go to trial – Weinstein will appear in court on July 30 to hear the verdict on whether the trial will move forward.
May 31, 2018: Harvey Weinstein has been indicted in New York on charges of rape and a criminal sexual act. A grand jury voted to indict him, which means he has been formally charged, with rape in the first and third degrees, as well as a criminal sexual act in the first degree.
According to Reuters, Weinstein’s legal team said he intends to plead not guilty. If convicted he could face between five and 25 years in prison.
This latest ruling also confirms there is enough evidence to bring Weinstein to trial.
He remains out on $1 million bail.
June 4, 2018: Harvey Weinstein has been named in another class action lawsuit. Three women have formally accused Weinstein of sexual assault in a lawsuit filed at the US District Court for the Southern District of New York, saying he “isolated Plaintiffs and Class members in an attempt to engage in unwanted sexual conduct that took many forms: flashing, groping, fondling, harassing, battering, false imprisonment, sexual assault, attempted rape, and/or completed rape.”
June 6, 2018: Harvey Weinstein has pleaded not guilty to rape and criminal sex act charges in a hearing in New York. Weinstein appeared before a judge where he answered a series of questions before announcing he will plead not guilty to all charges and his legal team confirmed they plan to win the case before it goes to trial.
July 3, 2018: Harvey Weinstein has been charged with more sex crimes in New York. The new charges include an additional count of criminal sexual act in the first degree, pertaining to a sexual act against a third woman in 2006. He has also been charged with two counts of sexual assault.
Previously, he has been charged with rape in the first and third degrees, as well as criminal sexual act in the first degree, for acts against two women in 2013 and 2004, respectively.
These new charges mean Weinstein is facing a minimum of 10 years in prison, with the potential for him to get a life sentence. He continues to plead not guilty.
July 10, 2018: Harvey Weinstein has officially plead not guilty to the most recent sexual assault charges in a New York City courtroom.
September 10, 2019: Vanity Fair reports New York Times reporters, Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey, revealed in an interview on the Today show ahead of the debut of their book, She Said: Breaking the Sexual Harassment Story That Helped Ignite a Movement, that Gwyneth Paltrow was one of the first actors to help break the story.
“I think that many people will be surprised to discover that when so many other actresses were reluctant to get on the phone and scared to tell the truth about what they had experienced at his hands, that Gwyneth was actually one of the first people to get on the phone, and that she was determined to help this investigation — even when Harvey Weinstein showed up to a party at her house early and she was sort of forced to hide in the bathroom,” Vanity Fair reports Twohey said on the Today show.
September 16, 2019: In a new interview with Porter, Cara Delevingne revealed she had a disturbing interaction with Weinstein. During the iteration, Delevingne was reportedly told by Weinstein that she should hide her sexuality if she wanted a career in Hollywood.
“One of the first things Harvey Weinstein ever said to me was, ‘You will never make it in this industry as a gay woman—get a beard,’” she told the publication, per Vogue US. The star also added: “When I’d just started to audition for films, he was naming people [women] I’m friends with—famous people—and asking, ‘Have you slept with this person?’ I just thought: this is insane.”
This news comes almost two years after Delevingne took to Instagram to confirm that the movie producer attempted to coerce her into kissing another woman in a hotel room.