For a story all about Harvey Weinstein’s nightmarish pattern of sexual abuse and harassment against nearly 90 women, he’s only a tiny part of “She Said.” And that’s why the film is so successful.
It doesn’t even dare to show the face of the actor playing Weinstein – we hear his voice, but that’s about it. The focus of the new drama is instead on the journalists who broke the story and the survivors who came forward with stories of their own.
“To all of us, the story was not about Weinstein,” said Rebecca Lenkiewicz, the film’s screenwriter, on the red carpet of the Los Angeles premiere earlier this month. “He has had enough airtime, he’s done enough damage. It was about giving space and voice to the women involved from the start.”
Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey, the New York Times investigative reporters who unearthed decades of abuse, dozens of allegations and multiple settlements between Weinstein and his accusers, are portrayed by Zoe Kazan and Carey Mulligan, respectively. The film’s story is based on the book of the same name that Kantor and Twohey wrote about their experiences during the reporting process.
Kantor and Twohey’s Pulitzer Prize-winning work, which was published in a series of articles beginning on October 5, 2017, is often credited for helping to galvanize the #MeToo movement and spearheading worldwide discussions about harassment in the workplace.
The film, which opens in theaters Friday, follows classic newsroom procedurals in the sense that a lot of what the main characters do is send emails, make cold calls and even show up at the homes of potential interview subjects. “She Said” expands beyond other films that explore journalism, such as “All the President’s Men” and “Spotlight,” by giving space to the portrayals of real-life Weinstein survivors.
Kantor and Twohey listen to the harrowing stories of the survivors they interview throughout the movie, but there are no depictions of assault.
Director Maria Schrader guides the audience through the characters’ retelling of their abuse to Kantor and Twohey with intentionally dark shots of long hotel hallways, half-eaten room service and suites in complete disarray. The result is a chilling vision that underpins the fear and dread of the women they interviewed.
This choice is refreshing. It moves away from predecessors like “Bombshell,” which featured disturbing dramatizations of Roger Ailes’ sexual assault of women in the Fox News workplace. The scenes of assault in “Bombshell” are purposeful – you’re supposed to squirm in your seat and see Ailes as a monster. But viewers don’t need to see a dramatization of a heinous act to understand that it is heinous.
In the most haunting sequence of “She Said,” Schrader uses Weinstein’s real voice in a recording of him coercing model and actor Ambra Battilana Gutierrez to come into his hotel room. The recording comes from a 2015 New York Police Department sting operation where Gutierrez wore a wire following her allegations of Weinstein inappropriately touching her during a casting meeting. Gutierrez filed a police report, and the recording prompted the NYPD to investigate, but Weinstein was never charged.
We hear Gutierrez’s voice asking Weinstein to let her go and telling him “no” in as many different ways as she can, and we hear his incessant coercion and pleading, but we only see the long and ominous hallways of the Tribeca Grand Hotel. It’s gut-wrenching.
At the film’s L.A. premiere earlier this month, many of the women involved in making the film shared that they too were survivors of harassment and abuse. That cemented the decision to keep the spotlight on the women and avoid gratuitous reenactments of assault.
Actor Sarah Ann Masse, who plays reporter Emily Steel, is also a Weinstein survivor. She was one of the first women to come forward with her story publicly in 2017, and at the film’s premiere, she said she “never questioned” that she wanted to be a part of “She Said.”
“I was thrilled to know that this film was being made, and I was hopeful that they would be inclusive of survivors in the process,” Masse said. “I’ve dealt with my own career retaliation. Things have been difficult in the past few years, so to get this opportunity to be in this film was an obvious ‘yes’ for me. Yes, there were complicated emotions that go along with this part of my life, but I’ve always loved the saying ‘turn your broken heart into art.’”
Actor Angela Yeoh also spoke about how her experiences informed her performance. She said after she left an abusive relationship, she saw girls in public and thought, “I don’t want you ever to grow up feeling like you should put up with the abusive dynamics that countless women before you have put up with.”
Yeoh plays Rowena Chiu, a Weinstein survivor who will testify in his ongoing L.A. trial that began in October. Chiu, who was also at the premiere, weighed in on the #MeToo movement’s legacy five years later.
“I’m surprised that while this did start off as a film-industry story, it has blossomed and mushroomed beyond that,” Chiu said. “Toxicity in the tech industry, on Wall Street and in corporate America in general were exposed, so I think that shows that it’s a much more universal theme beyond just film and just Hollywood. Arguably, maybe the worst excesses were in Hollywood, but those excesses certainly spilled over to other industries.”
In a post-screening Q&A moderated by Dean Baquet, the former executive editor of the New York Times, he asked the panel of actors and filmmakers if someone like Weinstein could exist so openly in Hollywood today. Veteran actor Patricia Clarkson, who portrays New York Times editor Rebecca Corbett, didn’t miss a beat.
“Yes.”
“She Said” opens in theaters nationwide starting November 18.