Harvey Weinstein pleads not guilty to new sex crime charge in New York
Harvey Weinstein has appeared in court over a new sex crime charge, accused of sexually assaulting a woman in a hotel in New York in 2006.
The new indictment against the disgraced producer was first announced last week, just days after he underwent emergency heart surgery at a hospital in Manhattan to remove fluid on his heart and lungs.
Prosecutors did not give further details at the time, but said new charges were not part of the case that led to his now-overturned landmark #MeToo conviction in 2020.
Appearing in court in Manhattan in a wheelchair on Wednesday, Weinstein pleaded not guilty to a new first-degree felony charge.
Pic: Jeenah Moon via AP
He wore a dark suit and a blue tie, with a large bandage on his right hand, and responded emphatically when asked for his plea. “Not guilty.”
Weinstein, 72, has always maintained that any sexual activity was consensual.
The new indictment accuses the former movie mogul of forcing a sex act on a woman at some point between 29 April and 6 May 2006, in a hotel in downtown Manhattan.
He is also charged with a criminal sexual act in the first degree and rape in the third degree, in relation to a previous New York State Supreme Court indictment, Manhattan’s district attorney Alvin Bragg Jr said. Weinstein has also pleaded not guilty to these charges.
“Thanks to this survivor who bravely came forward, Harvey Weinstein now stands indicted for an additional alleged violent sexual assault,” Mr Bragg said. “This investigation is ongoing. If you have been sexually assaulted, I assure you that our team of dedicated prosecutors, investigators, social workers, and many more stand at the ready to support you.”
No details about the accuser involved in the new charge have been released.
“She will be fully prepared to speak her truth at trial to hold Mr Weinstein accountable before a jury of his peers,” her lawyer, Lindsay Goldbrum, said in a statement.
Why was Weinstein’s original conviction overturned?
As well as this, Weinstein is also facing a retrial over his 2020 rape and sexual assault conviction, which was overturned by New York’s highest court in a landmark ruling in April.
The Court of Appeals ruled he did not get a fair trial as the judge who presided over the hearing had unfairly allowed testimony against him based on allegations that were not part of the case.
Weinstein had been serving a 23-year prison sentence at the time. Despite the conviction being overturned, he has remained in custody due to another conviction last year, for the rape of an actress in Los Angeles in 2013.
The retrial is scheduled to start on 12 November, subject to possible delay due to the new indictment.
Prosecutors have said they will seek to include the new charges into the retrial, but Weinstein’s lawyers say there should be a separate case.
Meanwhile, earlier in September, prosecutors in the UK dropped two charges of indecent assault brought in 2022, saying there was “no longer a realistic prospect of conviction”.
Once one of the most powerful people in Hollywood, Weinstein co-founded the film and television production companies Miramax and The Weinstein Company, and produced films such as the Oscar-winning Shakespeare In Love, Pulp Fiction, and The Crying Game.
A judge agreed last week to let Weinstein remain indefinitely in the prison ward at Bellevue Hospital instead of being transferred back to the infirmary ward at New York’s Rikers Island jail complex.
Kate Winslet says she never set out to become a director – but after reading her son’s first screenplay, she simply “couldn’t let it go”.
In 2023, Joe Anders, whose father is director Sam Mendes, signed up to a screenwriting course at the National Film and Television School.
His mother read one of his assignments and insisted it was worth making into a film – so they did.
Anders created a story around adult siblings who reunite around Christmastime to say goodbye to their dying mother.
Abiding by Mark Twain’s phrase “write what you know”, it was inspired by the death of Winslet’s mother Sally Bridgers-Winslet from ovarian cancer in 2017.
Helen Mirren (left) as June and Kate Winslet (right) as Julia in Goodbye June. Pic: Netflix
Speaking to Sky News, the Titanic actress says they learned “how to develop a completely new relationship” as colleagues”.
“I’m incredibly impressed by him and really proud of him, not least because he wrote this screenplay and started writing it when he was 19,” she says.
“But he had to adapt and learn very, very quickly that when you’re developing something, you take notes, you take feedback.
“Netflix became involved at some stage that they were also giving notes to, and then I was sort of playing the role of kind of protecting the project and also protecting him at the same time from things that, you know, may necessarily not have been useful, things that actually were great ideas.”
Winslet speaking to Sky News
Anders isn’t her only child to have got their start alongside their famous parent.
Mia Threapleton, who most recently starred in the Wes Anderson film The Phoenician Scheme, made her on-screen debut in the 2014 Winslet-led movie A Little Chaos.
They worked together again in the series I Am… which won Winslet a TV BAFTA award for best leading actress.
Goodbye June stars (L-R) Johnny Flynn, Andrea Riseborough, Timothy Spall, Kate Winslet and Fisayo Akinade, among others. Pic: Netflix
An actor’s director
Winslet has starred in some of the biggest films of all time, with Titanic, Avatar and Sense And Sensibility, to name a few.
She says it’s that experience in front of the camera that helped her tailor the on-set experience to help its actors explore their emotions and creativity.
“We know what works for us as actors from a director,” she says. “We know what does not work, and we also know what’s actively destructive and sometimes that can mean the environment, the working environment.
“Film sets are very busy places it can often be frantic, sometimes it’s hard to kind of follow what’s going on or what you’re doing next, and it mattered to me enormously that everybody always felt extremely safe, completely informed, and very free.”
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(L-R) Andrea Riseborough, Johnny Flynn, Kate Winslet and Timothy Spall in Goodbye June. Pic: Netflix
Winslet adds: “In this country, we’re not necessarily so good at processing, especially when it comes to talking about grief.
“And so hopefully through this film, which is also very funny, hopefully through this film, people might see something of themselves and connect with it in that way.”
Timothy Spall, next to co-star Toni Collette, says it is not surprising Winslet is such a good director
‘One of the greats’
Co-star Timothy Spall says “it’s not surprising she’s such a good director” – and calls her “one of the great actresses in the world.”
“I worked with her when she was 20. She was impressive then, just before she got Titanic… and she’s paid attention. She’s listened. She’s a great actress,” Spall says of Winslet.
“She knows how it works, and she helps other actors to do the best they can. And she’s all over the crew. She’s great with them. She’s paid attention in every department.”
Goodbye June is out on Netflix on 24 December
The Oscars will be streamed live on YouTube from 2029 after being broadcast on the ABC network for decades.
It means the annual film awards will be available to the video-sharing platform’s two billion users for free around the world in four years.
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced the deal with Google-owned YouTube on Wednesday, saying the streaming giant will have the exclusive global rights to the Hollywood awards from 2029 to 2033.
YouTube will effectively be the home to all things Oscars, including red-carpet coverage, the Governors Awards and the Oscar nominations announcement.
The Academy Awards ceremony has been broadcast by ABC for most of its history, but 2028 will be its last year showing the Oscars as they celebrate their 100th anniversary.
“The Oscars, including red carpet coverage, behind-the-scenes content, Governors Ball access, and more, will be available live and for free to over two billion viewers around the world on YouTube, and to YouTube TV subscribers in the United States,” an announcement on the Academy Awards’ website read.
“We are thrilled to enter into a multifaceted global partnership with YouTube to be the future home of the Oscars and our year-round academy programming,” said academy chief executive Bill Kramer and academy president Lynette Howell Taylor.
They said the new partnership with the platform “will allow us to expand access to the work of the academy to the largest worldwide audience possible”.
File pic: Reuters
‘Inspiring new generation of creativity and film lovers’
“The Oscars are one of our essential cultural institutions, honouring excellence in storytelling and artistry,” said YouTube chief executive Neal Mohan.
“Partnering with the academy to bring this celebration of art and entertainment to viewers all over the world will inspire a new generation of creativity and film lovers while staying true to the Oscars’ storied legacy.”
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The awards will be available with audio tracks in many languages, in addition to closed captioning.
Last year’s Academy Awards were watched by 19.7 million viewers on the Disney-owned ABC, a five-year high but far below the show’s biggest audience of 57 million in 1998.
The network has been the broadcast home to the Oscars for almost its entire history. NBC first televised the Oscars in 1953, but ABC picked up the rights in 1961.
Aside from a period between 1971 and 1975, when NBC again aired the show, the Oscars have been on ABC.
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