Last week, a shocking New York Times exposé detailed decades of sexual abuse allegations against Harvey Weinstein, the Hollywood mogul who rose to power as head of Miramax Films and co-founded The Weinstein Company with his brother in 2005.
It certainly wasn’t the first time that Weinstein had been accused of sexual assault and harassment.
Charges leveled by female colleagues have made their way to the press in the past, and in 2015, actress Ashley Judd suggested she had been harassed by Weinstein.
But the NYT piece constituted the first time that a major outlet published all of the incriminating accounts of Weinstein’s misconduct in one place.
And the 64-year-old’s colleagues were rightfully appalled by what they read.
According to the Times, Weinstein has settled out of court with his accusers on at least eight separate occasions.
The piece revealed a number of appalling incidents, such as one in which Weinstein allegedly coerced a temporary employee who had been with his company for just one day into giving him a massage while he was naked.
The allegations go back nearly three decades, to the time when Weinstein made a name for himself as one of the architects of the 1990s indie film renaissance.
The Weinstein Company’s board of directors took swift and decisive action against the company’s founder.
Weinstein was suspended from TWC within minutes of when news of the allegations went public.
Now, the man was once considered to be among the most powerful names in Hollywood is no longer welcome in the offices of the of the company he helped to build.
“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,”
It’s a bold and necessary move that’s received widespread praise for the four men responsible.
A meeting with Weinstein that took place immediately following the publication of the Times piece reportedly devolved into a screaming match.
Weinstein issued a bizarre, rambling apology in response to the allegations, but it was far from enough to convince his fellow board members that he would be anything but a detriment to the company going forward.
Weinstein has yet to speak publicly about his termination.
We’ll have more on this developing story as further information becomes available.
