by Ronan Farrow
“Noah’s directive is very clear-cut,” he told me. “We can’t shoot this interview. We are pausing.”
I was at Jonathan’s place in West Hollywood. He walked over, agape. “To be clear, you’re ordering me to cancel this interview,” I told Greenberg.
There was a long silence. “It’s a pause,” he said.
“The interview is scheduled. You’re asking me to un-schedule it. How is that a pause?”
“Ronan,” he said, in a huff now. “You have to stop.”
“Do we know how long this pause is?” I asked. “Why exactly is NBC News ordering us to stop reporting?”
He sounded at sea.
“I—he—Harvey’s lawyers have made the argument that every employee is subject to a nondisclosure agreement,” he said. “And we can’t just go encouraging them to breach those.”
“Rich, that’s just not how legal exposure works. Conducting the interview doesn’t—”
“This is Noah’s decision,” he said. “I understand if you don’t like it, but I don’t think any of us is in a position to disagree with it.”
I paced the length of the apartment, debating the situation with Jonathan. Oppenheim’s suggestion that I bring the story to another outlet felt precarious. “He knows this is a scandal when it runs somewhere else, doesn’t he?” Jonathan pointed out. I wanted to keep fighting the ban on reporting. But if I did so, the dynamic might turn openly acrimonious, and the network might try to block me from taking the material out the door.
Jonathan proposed what I did next. I called Oppenheim and said I’d like to take him up on the offer to “go with God” to a print outlet, but presented it as something nonthreatening and friendly. I told him, truthfully, that I had preliminary interest from a print editor. I didn’t say which one. I suggested that NBC could continue to shoot my interviews and run a television version after I broke the story in print.
“I don’t want to sort of stand in the way of you proceeding with something. My instinct is it sounds like a reasonable proposal,” Oppenheim said. He sounded overcome with relief. “Let me take ten minutes and take a breath, and I’ll come back to you.”
As promised, ten minutes later, he texted saying that sounded fine. I asked if I could still have an NBC crew in the next interview, with Canosa. I pointed out that it wouldn’t obligate him to air it, it would just preserve the option. “Unfortunately,” he replied, “We can’t move forward with anything for NBC until the review is complete.”
Within twenty-four hours, Oppenheim would meet with Corvo and the producers working under him and halt the review. One of the producers told the group that Nestor was “not ready to be outed.” Nestor, who had already told me she’d go on the record if I needed it, denied saying anything of the kind. Corvo, at one point, argued that the reporting was insufficiently visual and wouldn’t make for good television.
Greenberg then gave McHugh a final order to stop taking calls about the story. “You are to stand down,” he said. McHugh thought of all the times Weinstein had successfully quashed the story in the past, and replied, “We are letting him win.”
With no news organization behind the story, I had no one to consult about security, and no protection if Weinstein decided to sue me personally. I called Foley-Mendelssohn. “He’s obviously already threatened NBC,” I said, “I know the story’s the important thing, but I’m trying to figure out how exposed I am here.”
“Send me everything you have,” she said. “We can start a conversation about this.”
“But your gut is I keep these interviews going, without a news outlet behind me?”
She considered this.
“I don’t know the specific legal risks here. But I don’t think you should cancel things. You never stop reporting.”
Foley-Mendelssohn offered to introduce me to The New Yorker’s lawyer, Fabio Bertoni. Rendering legal advice, even informal legal advice, to someone the magazine hadn’t taken on as a writer was outside of standard operating procedure. But Foley-Mendelssohn sensed how far out on a limb I was.
As I waited for word from Remnick, I sent Foley-Mendelssohn too many nervous texts, letting her know I was proceeding with reporting calls, reading the tea leaves of her responses for any trace of further commitment.
I did, as promised, hear from Fabio Bertoni. He had previously worked at American Lawyer magazine and HarperCollins, fending off precisely the kind of threats to publication that I was confronting. When I explained NBC’s insistence on halting reporting, supposedly due to concerns about legal exposure, he seemed genuinely at a loss. “The exposure happens when you run the story,” he said. “It would be extremely unusual to see any legal action over unpublished reporting.” When I told him the argument had been tortious interference, he was even more confused. He made the same point I’d tried to make in my own conversations with the network: a significant portion of all political and business reporting would be impossible if news organizations looked askance at talking to employees with nondisclosure agreements. My early experiences at The New Yorker felt like those videos where lab animals walk on grass for the first time.
“So do I keep going, even knowing he’s actively threatening?” I asked.
“Here’s the thing,” Bertoni said. “It’s easy for people to make scary legal threats. It’s another thing entirely to act on them.”
I’d promised Canosa I’d put her on camera, and I didn’t want to spook her by changing that plan. And so I set about trying to hire a crew myself. McHugh—ordered not to help with the shoot but still bent on doing so, because he was just that kind of guy—sent me name after name. The Monday in late August chosen for the interview coincided with a rare total eclipse of the sun. Most of the freelance crews we contacted were busy shooting the eclipse from ideal vantage points in places like Wyoming. For the few still in town, there was a further wrinkle: almost everyone had worked on Weinstein productions or stood to in the future. I finally found a shooter named Ulli Bonnekamp. Either because he knew I was doing it alone or because he could sense it was a subject matter worth caring about, he gave me a reasonable rate.
I asked Canosa if she’d be more comfortable shooting in a hotel room, and she said being back at Jonathan’s place, where she’d bonded with the dog, suited her fine. As the syzygy commenced, the crew and I got to work retrofitting the house in West Hollywood. We carted around sandbags and tripods, and taped blackout cloth over the windows, and generally did not treat Jonathan’s furniture with great compassion.
Midafternoon, a text came in from Oppenheim. “Just to reiterate in writing, any further reporting you’re doing, including today’s interview, is not on behalf of or with the blessing of NBC. That needs to be clear not only to you, but anyone you make speak with.”
“You know my view,” I wrote back. “But I understand and am honoring this.”
When Canosa arrived, I was honest with her about the uncertainty of the story’s future. I told her the interview still had value. That I’d go to the mat to make it public somewhere. She didn’t balk, and that evening, we started rolling. The interview was devastating. “He creates the situation in which your silence will benefit you more than speaking out will,” Canosa said of Weinstein.
“And for any news outlet grappling with the decision of whether this is an important story, whether your allegation is serious enough, credible enough,” I asked, “what would you say to them?”
“If you don’t run with this, if you don’t move forward with this and expose him, you’re on the wrong side of history,” she said. “He’s going to be exposed. It benefits you to do it and not wait till he is and everyone knows you were sitting on information that could have prevented other women going through it, for potentially years to come.”
CHAPTER 32:
HURRICANE
All through those last weeks of August, what would eventually become a Category 4 hurricane bore down on the Gulf of Mexico. As Emily Nestor and I sat down at a coffee shop in Brentwood, scenes of
devastation flickered on a television in the corner. Since Nestor had told me she was open to showing her face if NBC wanted it, she hadn’t evinced any signs of backing down. But I also hadn’t told her that the story’s institutional support had dissipated, and that going on the record now meant a print fact-checking process.
“I’m asking you if you’ll still put your name on this,” I said. I told her that I was going to send my draft to The New Yorker, and that the magazine would decide whether to take on the story based on it. I told her every name still counted.
“I’ve had a lot of time to think about this,” she said. I studied the worried face of this stranger I’d asked to upend her life, then jerked around for months. She was quiet for a moment, then said, “I’m going to do it.”
I raced out of the coffee shop to put the finishing touches on the draft. Here is how it described the reporting The New Yorker would be considering, that NBC News had sent away:
In the course of a nine month investigation, five women alleged to me directly that Harvey Weinstein committed multiple acts of sexual harassment and abuse. The allegations range from inappropriate sexual propositions directed at employees, to groping and touching of the kind confessed to in the NYPD tape, to two claims of rape. The allegations span nearly twenty years. Many of the women worked for Weinstein, and all of their claims involved ostensibly professional meetings, which they claim Weinstein used to lure them to hotels where they experienced unwanted sexual advances. In at least three cases, Weinstein used large financial settlements with strict nondisclosure agreements to prevent criminal proceedings and public revelation.
Sixteen former and current executives and assistants at Weinstein’s companies corroborated those allegations, saying they witnessed unwanted sexual advances, inappropriate touching, and a pattern that included Weinstein using company resources to set up sexual liaisons of the type described in the allegations.
I sent the draft to Foley-Mendelssohn. On a muted TV in Jonathan’s living room, Hurricane Harvey wreaked havoc.
Back at 30 Rockefeller Plaza, the calls kept coming in from Weinstein and his intermediaries. One afternoon, Lanny Davis received a request from Weinstein much like the ones Boies was fielding. Davis was in a meeting between Weinstein’s team and the New York Times focused on the allegations that Weinstein had misused funds raised for amfAR, The Foundation for AIDS Research.
Afterward, Weinstein told Davis, “I just talked to someone at NBC. Would you go over there and find out the status of the story?”
“Harvey,” Davis replied, “I told you I’m not involved in this women’s issue.”
“All I’m asking is for you to go over and meet someone in the lobby and ask what’s the status on the story,” Weinstein said.
“If I’m gonna do this, I want someone else with me,” Davis replied.
At this, Weinstein sounded nervous. “Why do you want that?” he asked.
“Because I’m not supposed to be doing this issue, and I want someone to be available to confirm exactly the words I used.”
Weinstein, a little huffy, said that was fine, and Davis, joined by a Weinstein Company employee, headed to 30 Rock. At the marble visitors’ desk, Davis said he was there for Noah Oppenheim.
“Mr. Oppenheim knows I’m coming,” he told the assistant working the desk. Later, NBC would say that Davis ambushed Oppenheim. Of that claim, Davis told me, “This is a rare exception to my usual reluctance to use the word ‘lie.’ I’m absolutely certain someone knew that was a deliberate misrepresentation.”
What is not in dispute is that, a few minutes later, Oppenheim came down. The Weinstein Company employee Davis had brought with him watched from a short distance away.
“What is the status of the Ronan Farrow story on Harvey?” Davis asked.
Oppenheim answered quickly. “Oh, he’s no longer working on the story,” he said. “He’s not working for us.” The way he said it made Davis wonder if I’d been fired altogether.
It was September 5 and still hot when I headed back to The New Yorker. In the elevator up, I did a little sign of the cross, almost involuntarily. Remnick and Foley-Mendelssohn, along with Bertoni, the lawyer, Dorothy Wickenden, an executive editor, and Natalie Raabe, the magazine’s head of communications, sat opposite me at the table in Remnick’s conference room. I had no idea what Remnick would say.
“I think everyone’s aware of the story,” he said. “But why don’t you update us.”
I ran through much the same summary from the top of the draft, culminating in how the interview with Canosa had fallen into place. I mentioned the ongoing pressure on sources, the calls they were getting.
“Are these sources willing to stand by what they’ve told you in court?” Bertoni asked. “Can you see if they’ll do that?”
I told Bertoni that I’d already put the question to several major sources, and that they’d said yes.
The rhythm of the conversation picked up: Remnick and Bertoni took turns asking questions about specific pieces of reporting and the evidence that backed them up. Did I have the messages from Reiter, the executive who acknowledged to Nestor the pattern of misconduct? I did. Was Gutierrez willing to show us her contract? She was. Foley-Mendelssohn, by then intimately familiar with the story, chimed in periodically, reminding them of the existence of a secondary source here, a document there.
Later, several people in that room would reach for the same adjectives to describe me: sad, desperate, trying to preempt pushback at every turn. It was, one said, like I was defending a dissertation.
I thought of the meeting weeks before, when Oppenheim had first killed the story. I studied the faces across from me, trying to decide how to convey the stakes. Wickenden, a veteran of decades in the magazine business, said gently, “You’ve been working on this a long time, haven’t you?”
I thought, again, of Sciorra’s voice; of Gutierrez, flinching as the recording of Weinstein played; of Nestor, making her decision. “I know there’s a chance of litigation here,” I said. “I know bringing the story here would mean more reviewing, more fact-checking. I just think there’s enough here that it deserves that chance.”
A silence across the room, a few glances exchanged.
“Alright,” said Remnick, without drama, in a scene from a different movie. “You’ll work with Deirdre. No guarantees until this is fact-checked.”
Remnick was thoughtful, restrained. He had published Seymour Hersh’s contentious national security reporting on Afghanistan and Pakistan, and Lawrence Wright’s investigation into the Church of Scientology. But this would be a new and specific kind of challenge. “We do this straight down the middle,” he said. “Just the facts.”
Not long after, at the Loews Regency hotel on Park Avenue, Harvey Weinstein met with an actress, then retired to a corner with a familiar companion: Dylan Howard, of the National Enquirer. By then, Howard and Weinstein were spending more time together. Often, Howard told colleagues trying to reach him, “I’m with Harvey.” Howard produced several thick manila folders. He and Weinstein spent the following hours scrutinizing their contents, heads bowed in hushed conversation. At one point, one of Weinstein’s assistants walked over to the two men’s table to inform Weinstein that he had an incoming call. Weinstein scrambled to cover up the documents. “What the fuck are you doing back here?!” he shouted. Howard offered a sympathetic glance. Later he whispered to the assistant, “Not jealous of your job!”
Howard’s focus on Weinstein’s opponents had continued. So had his interest in Matt Lauer, a figure the Enquirer had long circled. Since Howard had examined the “kill file” of unpublished reporting about Lauer, the Enquirer had run three negative stories about the Today show anchor. A fourth would arrive shortly after the meeting with Weinstein at the Loews Regency. The stories were preoccupied with Lauer’s infidelity, particularly at work. “NBC Gives Sleazy Lauer One More Chance,” read one headline. “Hey Matt, That’s Not Your Wife!” read another.
CHAPTER 33:
By then, Weinstein was acting frantically, deploying his usual mix of intimidation and influence in the media. Howard’s boss, David Pecker of American Media Inc., had long been a close ally, but started appearing more frequently in Weinstein’s emails. “Dear David, I just tried you,” Weinstein wrote late that September. “Are you available for a call now?” Pecker responded, “I am in Saudi Arabia on business.” Later, Weinstein proposed an alliance to purchase Rolling Stone magazine for Pecker to add to his media empire and run behind the scenes. Pecker at first demurred, then acceded. “I can reduce costs and bring the profits to $10mm…. If you want it you can own 52% for $45mm. I would be happy to do all the back office for you and be responsible for the magazine print and digital operations.”
Weinstein amplified his outreach to NBC, too. There were emails and calls to Deborah Turness, Oppenheim’s predecessor, who was now in charge of international content. Weinstein proposed cutting a deal with Turness around a documentary he was making about Clinton. “Your Hillary doc series sounds absolutely stunning,” Turness wrote. “I am here and would commit to turning our platforms into dedicated ‘Hillary channels’ for several nights!”
Late that month, Weinstein sent an email to Ron Meyer, the veteran head of Universal Studios and still, at the time, vice chairman of NBCUniversal. “Dear Ron,” he wrote. “I wanted to talk to you about Universal doing our home video and VOD—we’re talking to your guys and I think it’s always good to have a word from the top.” Meyer replied, “I would love to make this work.” Emails from the Weinstein Company’s COO, David Glasser, show the proposed deal coalescing. A term sheet was drafted, then submitted to the company’s senior management for approval. Glasser’s team began discussing the finer points with two home entertainment executives at NBCUniversal. “I look forward to us being in business together,” Meyer wrote soon after. “As I told you, if there is anything but a yes please let me know.” The deal never went ahead.