Gwyneth’s secret war on Weinstein
For years, the showbiz world has asked why she stayed silent about the man who helped her win an Oscar — but once made advances to her. Now, a new book reveals the extraordinary truth
Gwyneth Paltrow was in full hollywood gush mode in an interview about her starring role in Shakespeare In love and the wonderful producer who had made it all happen for her.
‘I have to say, harvey weinstein’s known as a tough guy, but that man is extraordinary,’ she trilled, apparently unprompted. ‘I feel like I could only make movies at Miramax [his production studio] and be completely happy.’
Fast forward to this February and the 20th anniversary of the release of the film and Paltrow was sounding very different about the now disgraced hollywood mogul who had propelled her to oscar-winning stardom.
‘he was a bully. I never had a problem standing up to him,’ she said. ‘I wasn’t scared of him. I also felt for a period of time, I was the consumer face of Miramax, and I felt it was my duty to push back against him. we had a lot of fights.’
weinstein and Paltrow, the actress dubbed the ‘First lady of Miramax’, have certainly had a complicated and opaque relationship.
now a new book on the weinstein sex abuse scandal has shed a revealing light on one of the closest and most successful produceractor partnerships for decades.
She Said, a book by the new york times reporters who first exposed weinstein’s alleged sexual misconduct, has answered an abiding question about why Paltrow — who probably knew weinstein better than any actress — did nothing to bring him to book. In fact, she did. one of the first hollywood figures to answer the investigators’ pleas for help, the actress worked behind the scenes to contact stars the journalists had difficulty reaching as they searched for victims.
Paltrow has since revealed how, when she was 22, weinstein made an unwanted sexual advance to her and how her furious boyfriend, Brad Pitt, threatened the portly film mogul with extreme violence if he did it again.
However, in revealing what the actress was doing behind the scenes to undermine her old mentor — even as she continued to profess friendship with him — the authors of She Said: Breaking the Sexual harassment Story that helped Ignite a Movement, have opened a wound for weinstein.
within hours of the revelations about Paltrow’s role, his spokesman mocked Paltrow’s claims that she had been one of his victims and had — like so many others — kept quiet out of fear for her career.
‘Gwyneth Paltrow comes from hollywood royalty,’ said the spokesman. ‘her father was a top producer, her mother a famous actor, her godfather is Steven Spielberg.
‘She didn’t need to make movies with harvey weinstein; she wanted to, and she won top awards and was the top paid female actor for nearly a decade, with weinstein. her narrative of her job being at stake is just gratuitous.’
two days later, emails were leaked to the media appearing to show that, amid claims that she and weinstein stopped working together in 2003, they continued to be friends and he occasionally offered her film roles.
In 2007, she asked weinstein to the premiere of a film made by her brother, Jake. two years later, other emails revealed, she met weinstein at his Manhattan office.
after he praised her performance in the film Country Strong, Paltrow used her old pet name for him in her appreciative reply.
‘thanks Bomber. that means a lot,’ she wrote. ‘I put everything I had into that performance. I’m glad you liked it.’
Sources close to Paltrow claimed weinstein was simply trying to distract attention from the issue of his sexual harassment of women.
an insider said:’ there’s just nothing in these emails and his statement. It just seems so desperate.’
Still, the unearthing of such correspondence is not just an attempt to undermine Paltrow’s account but an indication of weinstein’s anger towards an actress who once called him ‘Uncle harvey’.
‘I think harvey was hurt by it,’ said weinstein’s spokesman of Paltrow’s secret collaboration with the new york times team. he stressed that weinstein, 67, admits that ‘a long time ago he made a pass at Gwyneth’, adding: ‘She turned him down and she had Brad Pitt say “Don’t do it again”, and after that they had a great working relationship.’
a source close to Paltrow insists it was ‘more than just a pass’ and she had felt ‘very uncomfortable’ and ‘deeply upset’.
weinstein’s spokesman goes further, accusing Paltrow of being part of a ‘pile-on’ by ex friends.
he added: ‘For all the talk of harvey weinstein blackballing women who said “no” to him, you have Gwyneth Paltrow who said “no” to him, and he turned around and helped her become on of the biggest stars in hollywood. he takes vengeance or he doesn’t take vengeance — which one is it?’ of course it could be both. weinstein allegedly reserved his ugliest behaviour for his most vulnerable victims, such as ingenue actresses. he might have decided that with her impeccable tinseltown connections and a famous boyfriend ready to knock his block off, Paltrow was best left alone.
the disgraced film mogul, who has denied all allegations of nonconsensual sex, awaits trial in new york in January on charges of rape and other sex crimes against two women. Paltrow, now 46, is not involved in that trial nor in a civil case against weinstein.
long before the scandal broke, weinstein presented himself as a nurturer of young female acting talent. he was known to act as an uncle figure to four actresses — nicole Kidman, Brits Julia ormond and tara Fitzgerald, and Paltrow. all appeared in his films but Paltrow remains the only one who has accused him of sexual misconduct.
She bumped into weinstein in a lift at the toronto Film Festival aged 21. within months, he’d cast her in two movies, including the starring role in an adaptation of Jane austen’s emma.
Shortly before filming, he summoned her to his suite at the Peninsula Beverly hills hotel to discuss work. ‘I bounced up there, I’m sort of like a golden retriever, all happy to see harvey,’ said Paltrow.
the meeting started normally but then weinstein tried to massage her, asking her to join him in the bedroom where they could ‘exchange massages’. Paltrow says she was ‘very shaken by the whole thing’ as she had regarded ‘Uncle harvey’ as her mentor. She
says she excused herself, but ‘not so he would feel he had done something wrong’.
Weinstein was livid after she told Brad Pitt, who confronted him at the opening of Hamlet on Broadway. Weinstein later ‘screamed at me for a long time,’ she said. ‘It was brutal.’
She believed his threats that he would ruin her career. ‘I was nothing, I was a kid, I was signed up. I was petrified, I thought he was going to fire me,’ she recalled.
Paltrow says she tried to make peace with Weinstein. As they made more films together — including Shakespeare In love (for which she won an oscar), the talented Mr Ripley and Sliding Doors — she admits feeling the incident was all part of the ‘casting couch’ system.
When she became pregnant with her first child with husband Chris Martin, the singer in rock band Coldplay, she says she distanced herself from Weinstein.
However, their relationship rekindled in 2016 when Weinstein’s mother died and Paltrow wrote him a brief condolence email. She was ‘shocked’ when he read it out at the funeral.
When he rang her afterwards, she assumed he wanted to thank her but he soon got to the point. A u.S. magazine was investigating his treatment of women and he wanted to ensure she would remain silent, according to the book.
He assured her: ‘I just want to protect the people who did say “Yes.” ’
Paltrow refused to speak to the magazine and the story never ran, but she made it clear she would not keep silent for ever. the New York times team admit they’d never expected Paltrow to help them, given how close she’d been to Weinstein and how much she owed him. ‘they had been photographed together many times, a laughing fatherdaughter pair,’ they explain. So when they started to put out feelers in Hollywood in June 2017, they were surprised when Paltrow was one of the first to respond.
they say she played ‘a much more active role than anybody’s ever known’ in bringing down Weinstein. She was ‘scared to go on the record but became an early, crucial source, sharing her account of sexual harassment and trying to recruit other actresses to speak’.
Beginning in the autumn of 2017, says the book, Paltrow ‘spent many hours on the phone’ with women who had been harassed or assaulted by Weinstein. Some later went public with their allegations. others said they felt they could never speak out because they had succumbed to him.
She kept in contact with the Press investigators. So, what explained Paltrow’s sudden hardening towards Weinstein? As she revealed through tears at a meeting with other alleged victims at her home in January, ‘by far the hardest part’ was learning he had routinely invoked her name as an inducement to his victims.
His promise that he could do the same for others’ careers as he’d done for Paltrow carried the clear implication that she had yielded to him. (Weinstein denies ever claiming he slept with her).
Paltrow — who has referred to the false claim as an ‘assault weapon’ — told the women she felt ‘like a tool in coercion of rape’ and ‘culpable in some way, even though it’s completely illogical’.
AltHougH she had told the journalists about Weinstein’s sexual overtures towards her, she conceded she had reservations about turning on someone who had been ‘the most important man of my career’.
the journalists made their final appeal on the day in october 2017 when the story was going to press. Paltrow was filming an Avengers superheroes movie in Atlanta and felt so sick with anxiety she was barely able to get through her scenes. She asked co-star, Michelle Pfeiffer, for advice on whether to go on record but still refused.
the investigators were mystified when Weinstein, asked to comment on the allegations, kept demanding to know if Paltrow had spoken to them.
‘However scared Paltrow was of going on the record, he seemed much more fearful,’ they write in She Said.
they believe he feared what other women would do if it emerged he’d been lying about Paltrow yielding to his advances.
Along with Angelina Jolie — who claimed Weinstein made ‘unwanted advances’ — Paltrow eventually went on the record in a follow-up piece five days later.
‘this way of treating women ends now,’ she explained.
Her tortured relationship with Weinstein was also over.