The informationas they stand immediately: convicted rapist and disgraced former Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein has been accused by almost 100 girls of assorted types of sexual misconduct, main to a few jury trials, a raft of convictions (plus one overturned convictiona procedural factor, not an innocence factor), a 23-year sentence for rape within the third diploma (in New York), a 16-year sentence for rape and different crimes (in California), and one other upcoming New York trial.
As of this writing, Weinstein has bounced round numerous prisons in New York and California and is at the moment being held at New York Metropolis’s infamous Rikers Island. He’s in his cell 23 hours a day. Two of his kids refuse to talk to him. His brother Bob has reduce ties with him. The one films he can watch are those he can hire on his prison-issued pill. He has quite a lot of illnesses, now together with bone marrow most cancers. He’s, by his personal admission, “dying right here.”
So, when The Hollywood Reporter’s editor-in-chief Maer Roshan went to see him in January for a 60-minute interviewthe longest the previous super-producer has given since his convictions, he inevitably puzzled simply how a lot reflection on and possession for his crimes Weinstein was keen to take. Seems, not a lot.
Within the interview, printed immediately, Weinstein provides each a glance inside his each day life (very totally different from the way it was a decade in the past, when he dominated Hollywood) and a glimpse into his personal ego (very a lot the identical, it appears). Most placing is that he maintains that he “didn’t assault” anybody.
By “anybody,” he means the almost 100 girls who’ve accused him of sexual misconduct in myriad types, together with rape.
Requested by Roshan if there’s “any a part of you that acknowledges that you simply wronged (your accusers),” and Weinstein was each resolute and seemingly delusional, enjoying off the convictions and accusations as him “going out” with the fallacious girls and being “pushy or overly seductive” with them.
“Did I make a cross at a few of these girls unsuccessfully? Did I overplay my hand? Sure,” Weinstein mentioned. “Was I pushy or overly seductive? Sure to all of that. Look, I ought to by no means have gone out with the folks I went out with. I used to be married to a incredible girl who had no concept what I used to be doing. I lied on a regular basis. I improperly used my workers to cover these items. However did I ever sexually assault a lady? No. I by no means did that.”
Later, Weinstein advised Roshan, “The factor I used to be doing fallacious was not sexual assault. It was dishonest on my spouse. I used to be determined to maintain that secret from her. I didn’t need Disney to search out out. I did the whole lot to guard myself from that type of scandal.”
When requested if he ever apologized to any of his accusers, Weinstein mentioned, “I apologized to them usually. You possibly can’t name them once you’re in a trial with them. However I’ll say it right here immediately: I apologize to these girls. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have been with them within the first place. I misled them.”
Roshan, to his credit score, then advised Weinstein that he was “undecided that’s a lot of an apology, actually. It feels like what you’re most regretful for is dishonest in your spouse. Are you sorry on your transgressions past that?” Weinstein answered, “I misled them. I cheated on each my wives. That’s immoral. However I didn’t assault them. That’s the large lie of all of this. I received’t apologize for one thing I didn’t do. I will probably be confirmed harmless. That I promise you.”
Weinstein will once more be in court docket on April 14, when he will probably be retried for rape.
You possibly can learn the total interview at The Hollywood Reporter.