Harvey Weinstein: Key moments in the Los Angeles trial of the disgraced film producer
Harvey Weinstein had been charged with raping and sexually assaulting two women and committing sexual battery against two others.
After a month of evidence from 44 witnesses in Los Angeles, a jury has found Weinstein guilty of one count of rape.
He was found not guilty of sexual battery by restraint of another woman.
The jury was also unable to reach verdicts on allegations linked to two other women.
Currently two years into a 23-year sentence for previous convictions on rape and sexual assault charges in New York, Weinstein was held in jail throughout his latest trial.
The Los Angeles trial was widely viewed as symbolic – but it assumed greater significance in light of the producer being granted permission to appeal against his New York convictions.
The 70-year-old was charged with crimes against four of the witnesses who testified.
Three of the women – a model, a model/actress, and a massage therapist – gave evidence anonymously.
Filmmaker Jennifer Siebel Newsom, the wife of California governor Gavin Newsom, waived her right to anonymity.
The jury were unable to reach verdicts on charges relating to Newsom.
Four other women who are not involved with the charges also told the court that Weinstein sexually assaulted them.
Here are the key moments from the trial:
The defence
Weinstein’s lawyer told the trial that the prosecution case relied entirely on asking them to trust women whose evidence showed they were untrustworthy.
In his closing arguments, Alan Jackson said: “‘Take my word for it’. Five words that sum up the entirety of the prosecution’s case.”
Weinstein’s lawyer Alan Jackson argued the prosecution case was ‘smoke and mirrors’. Pic: AP
Everything else prosecutors presented “was smoke and mirrors”, he argued.
Mr Jackson urged jurors to look past the drama and emotion of the testimony of the four women, and focus on the factual evidence.
He said jurors were being asked to “believe us because we’re mad, believe us because we cried”, adding: “Well fury does not make fact. And tears do not make truth.”
Mr Jackson said the stories of two women who Weinstein was alleged to have sexually assaulted on consecutive days in 2013 “simply never happened”.
The defence lawyer also said the alleged rape and assault of the other two women in 2005 and 2010 were “100% consensual” encounters that the women engaged in for the sake of career advancement that they later became “desperate to relabel” as non-consensual.
“These were women with whom Harvey had transactional relationships and transactional sex,” he said.
Mr Jackson argued that the women were willing to exchange sex for favours or status when the incidents happened in 2005 and 2010, but after the #MeToo explosion around Weinstein with stories in the New York Times and the New Yorker in 2017, they were regretful.
“They played the game. They hate it now, unequivocally,” he said. “But what about then? What about before the 2017 dogpile started on Mr Weinstein?”
He stressed the importance of the judge’s instruction, that if jurors found any significant thing a witness said was untrue, they should consider disbelieving everything the witness said.
The prosecution
Prosecutors, closing their case, branded Weinstein a “predator” and a “degenerate rapist”.
Deputy district attorney Marlene Martinez emphasised the similarities between his accusers’ testimony.
“They all describe the same conduct by the same man,” she said.
After arranging to meet with a woman at a hotel he would find a way to get them to his suite where he would then go from “charming and complimentary to aggressive and demanding”.
Ms Martinez said: “For this predator, hotels were his trap.
“Confined within those walls, victims were not able to run from his hulking mass.
“People were not able to hear their screams, they were not able to see them cower.”
She urged jurors to complete Weinstein’s fall from grace by convicting him in California.
She said: “It is time for the defendant’s reign of terror to end.
“It is time for the kingmaker to be brought to justice.”
Prosecutors branded Weinstein a ‘predator’ and a ‘degenerate rapist’
‘I was kind of hysterical through tears’
The first of Weinstein’s accusers, a model and actress who was in LA for a film festival at the time she was raped by the producer in 2013, told the court he knocked on her hotel room door and she let him in.
She said Weinstein forced her to perform oral sex on her hotel bed. “I was kind of hysterical through tears,” she said. “I kept saying ‘no, no, no’.”
She said she physically feared Weinstein, who outweighed her by 100 pounds or more, and considered running or hitting or biting him.
She said by the time Weinstein took her into the bathroom to rape her, she had stopped physically resisting, though still objected verbally. “I would just freeze, like my body wouldn’t listen.”
He was found guilty of three counts, including rape.
Woman testifies for second time
Just one woman who gave evidence during the New York trial has testified in LA. The model, who was aspiring to be a screenwriter, had set up a meeting with Weinstein about a script she was working on in 2013, the court heard.
She described Weinstein as a “monster”, and said he led her into a bathroom, quickly took off his suit and got briefly in the shower, then stepped out and blocked her from leaving.
“I was disgusted,” she said. “I had never seen a big guy like that naked.”
She said she backed up against a sink and turned away from him. He then unzipped her dress and groped her with one hand as he masturbated with the other, the court heard.
The jury did not reach a verdict on this count.
Masseuse tells court ‘I was in shock’
A massage therapist accused Weinstein of sexually assaulting her in 2010, when she was 28, after he hired her to go to his hotel room for a treatment.
When she was in the bathroom washing her hands following the massage, she said Weinstein entered, blocked the door, and began masturbating in front of her.
She began to cry as she told the court: “I was terrified.” Weinstein blocked the door and pushed her against a wall and groped her breasts before finishing, the court heard.
“I was in shock. I felt frozen, I felt paralysed,” she said.
The jury found Weinstein not guilty of sexual battery.
Filmmaker cries as she tells of alleged rape
Jennifer Siebel Newsom. Pic: AP
In an emotional testimony, Ms Siebel Newsom, 48, told the court she was 31 when she was allegedly attacked by Weinstein during what she thought was a business meeting to try to build her career in 2005.
Spending two-and-a-half hours on the witness stand, she was in tears as she told the court she found herself unexpectedly alone with the Hollywood mogul in a hotel suite.
Asked to describe her feelings after Weinstein allegedly emerged from the bathroom in a robe and began groping her while he masturbated, she said: “Horror! Horror! I’m trembling. I’m like a rock, I’m frigid. This is my worst nightmare.”
Ms Siebel Newsom said she told Weinstein that “this was not why I came here” as she physically tried to back away.
The jury did not reach verdicts on these counts.
Entertainment
Eddie Redmayne says preparing for The Day of the Jackal role almost ended in off-set disaster
Eddie Redmayne says he nearly ended up in hot water off-set whilst filming new Sky Atlantic show The Day of the Jackal.
Speaking to Sky News about the challenges of modernising Frederick Forsyth’s acclaimed novel, the Oscar-winning actor said it took months of intensive preparation to play a character that assumes a range of different ages and nationalities.
“What’s interesting about the Jackal is in some ways he is an actor and this whole series was a kind of actor’s playground,” he explained.
“I am a sucker for process… so it was languages, it was prosthetics, different costumes… and then all the gun work as well… I had about three or four months prepping, and it was pretty fun.”
From the first episode, the actor was required to casually be able to construct a gun out of the internal workings of a wheelie case. While he’d already been given advanced weapons training, his eagerness to take props home to practice could have nearly ended in his arrest.
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Eddie Redmayne’s kids want him to play a ‘goodie’.
“There is a moment at which the Jackal constructs this rifle…it is a beautiful bit of prop design…and I’m a really shoddy prop actor, so in Budapest, I asked the prop master if I could take home this case with me to work on it in the hotel,” he said.
“I was in the midst of eating some goulash and I suddenly went ‘Argh’ as I realised that I had left this gigantic sniper’s rifle – and the hotel was basically the equivalent of Trafalgar Square – pointing out a window and it was about to be the turndown service.
The Jackal getting out of one of his disguises. Pic: Sky UK
Pic: Sky UK/ Carnival Film & Television Limited 2024
“I remember running down the corridor and the person that works in the hotel pushing down the towels [trolley] and some extra little toiletries and I just barged through the door and deconstructed this thing… otherwise that could have been a moment because it looked pretty persuasive.”
Keep up with all the latest news from the UK and around the world by following Sky News
Keeping the action mostly contained onscreen, the star acknowledges it is a risky gamble to attempt a modern reboot of a much-loved classic.
He explained: “I loved it since I was a kid and so when the scripts arrived in my inbox there was definitely a moment of trepidation.”
Lashana Lynch plays an intelligence officer hunting down the Jackal. Pic: Sky UK
Forsyth’s acclaimed novel has had many lives since it came out in the early 70s, but the 1973 film version is how most people will remember the cat and mouse thriller, including its leading man.
“The original film was very much a binary sense of good and evil,” Redmayne said.
“We live in a world now, certainly in social media, in which things dictate that there is a right and a wrong and the grey territory is harder to navigate, I suppose… the series makes some sort of gestures towards that.”
Redmayne alongside co-star Ursula Cobero. Pic: Sky UK/ Carnival Film & Television Ltd 2024
In the 10-part TV Sky Atlantic series, viewers will see that the Jackal is still an elite assassin carrying out a seemingly impossible hit. But, in this version, James Bond star Lashana Lynch plays an intelligence officer hunting him down.
The show takes in the rise of right-wing extremism, tech megalomaniacs and themes of assassination.
With the attempt on the life of Donald Trump, and a terrifying cycle of violence and assassination in the Middle East, there is something that feels eerily prescient about the timing of the modern reboot.
“What the series does [show] is that there’s ambiguity in everyone and I feel that that’s kind of where we’re at slightly in the world,” Redmayne said.
The Day Of The Jackal cast at the London premiere. Pic: PA
Read more:
Eddie Redmayne says his dad told him not to ‘screw up’ role
The film opening the conversation about sex work
For the actor, the final pulse-raising moment will be finding out what fans and his family make of the drama, not that he’ll be tuning in personally.
“Truth be told, nothing would pain me more than watching myself on screen, so I won’t be doing that… but I will be encouraging my family to watch it… it was my dad’s favourite film,” he said.
The Day of the Jackal is out on Sky Atlantic and NOW on 7 November.
It’s easy to see why Anora, the film currently creating a lot of awards buzz, is being described as a modern day Pretty Woman.
It tells the story of a young woman, a sex worker, who ends up falling in love with a very rich man; this time round, he’s the son of a Russian oligarch.
But the similarities end there. More than 30 years on from Richard Gere and Julia Roberts’ famous Hollywood ending, Anora takes the sugar-coating away from the realities of sex work.
Mikey Madison stars as Anora. Pic: Neon/Augusta Quirk
It is one of those rare films that has already impressed critics – taking the biggest prize at this year’s Cannes Film Festival and now leading the nominations at the Gotham Awards – but will also appeal to a wider audience looking for something fun and smart, too.
It is the latest story from writer-director Sean Baker, a filmmaker who often focuses on marginalised people and has covered sex work in several of his previous works, from a retired porn star in Red Rocket to a transgender sex worker in Tangerine, and a character who solicits sex work online in The Florida Project.
Anora took home the biggest prize at the Cannes Film Festival earlier this year. Pic: Neon
The theme was never intentional, he tells Sky News, but after discovering more about the industry he realised he wanted to tell these stories.
“I never imagined me making five films in a row focused on sex work,” he says. “It just happened to be that when I started doing research on the first one, I met sex workers, became friends with sex workers, and discovered that there were a million stories to be told in that world. And each one can be individual and very different, being that there’s so many aspects of sex work, so one led to the next.
“I don’t know if it will continue, I’m not sure, it has to happen organically though – I’d never want it to be a shtick of mine, you know, I want it to be something I’m inspired to do and there has to be a reason behind it.”
Pic: Neon
‘The sex work community is amazing’
Mikey Madison, who plays the lead character Anora – or Ani for short – is now tipped for best actress nominations come awards season next year.
She says she immersed herself in the world of her character when preparing for the role.
“I think that I went into the research not with much knowledge about sex work, and so I was able to learn a lot and educate myself in a way that I don’t know I would have if it weren’t for this film,” she says. “I’m so grateful to have that experience because the sex work community is amazing and I’ve made so many incredible friends.”
But that wasn’t the only prep Madison had to do. She’s listed in the credits as helping to choreograph her character’s dances, and she also had to learn Russian – though admits she’s out of practise again now.
“My Duolingo app has been bothering me trying to get me back into it. I think I just haven’t had a chance to practise any of it, but on the last handful of days of shooting, I was able to listen to pretty full conversations and understand what they were talking about. And at this point, I think it’s gone, but maybe I’ll be able to redevelop it.”
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When Anora competed at Cannes in May it won the Palme d’Or, the top prize for the best feature film.
Baker says the win was far more than just a tick off his bucket list.
“I think it was the bucket list! I mean, that was it,” he says. “It’s been incredible, it really has been, and I really didn’t expect it – we were just so happy to be in competition at Cannes, and next thing you know we’re at the awards ceremony, and next thing you know I’m up on stage and George Lucas is handing me the Palme d’Or.”
“So, yeah, it’s life changing.”
Anora is out in cinemas in the UK today
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