well in 1998 I left the New Yorker to go and work with Harvey Weinstein as a
partner to launch a new magazine called Talk magazine of course looking back
could I have chosen a worse partner than Harvey Weinstein but what one forgets
it's easy to forget is that the Harvey Weinstein I went to work work with was
the Harvey Weinstein who had just done the English Patient Shakespeare in Love
you know my beautiful laundrette all of these wonderful movies where he had done
something that I much admired which is to take quality and actually make it
force it to have the kind of commercial attention that normally quality just
simply cannot win for itself and that I thought was a very exciting idea because
having edited The New Yorker and turned it around I knew how difficult it is to
make quality commercial so I thought was the appeal going to work for Harvey and
of course the Harvey who asked me to go and work for him again was super
charming super persuasive super you know full of promises second but within days
of going to work with him I knew I've made a most colossal mistake because the
Harvey that you saw back at that seedy office in Tribeca was just a completely
different human being to the one that was out there being charming and
offering you the world he was such a gross bully I had never seen people
treated like the way Harvey treated people I just have never seen it you
know because in the end publishing is quite a gentlemanly
profession compared to what I was seeing with Harvey Weinstein I mean new you
know people could get angry or could get you know irritated whatever I've never
seen people balled up profanity shouted humiliating I I just had never seen it
so it was I was sort of shell-shocked when I went to some first meetings with
Harvey and I saw the way he treated his staff now he didn't ever sexually harass
me I was not the kind of target that he was interested in I mean he likes of 22
year old actresses and so on and so I was just not ever a target but he did
increasingly bully me and it was very very unsettling
because I I found it you know both wounding and also just destabilizing and
he he knocked me off my game in a sense by being so volatile that I never knew
what he was going to say when I picked up the phone and of course in the end he
just pulled the plug on it as well which was very very unsettling and
upsetting to me at the time and you know was a it was a brutal experience quite
honestly to work for Harvey Weinstein not that I didn't learn things cuz I did
because he is the master promoter and I saw how good he was at that but it was
at a price that everybody paid that was of course not worth it well what I
learned from working with Harvey was first of all you had to be very careful
who you work for or work with honestly I didn't do enough due diligence at all on
the real Harvey I think if I've made six phone calls to people who actually had
worked with him inside his business I would have not taken that job
unfortunately I didn't I believed the hype if you like Oh perhaps I wanted to
believe that I don't know so first of all you have to be extremely careful who
you go to work with and secondly I think that you have to set such strong
parameters of what you will and won't take I mean I if I regret one thing
about going to work with Harvey it was that I just didn't immediately walk out
on I saw what it was like but I'd given up my big job as a New Yorker I had
staked my claim I was gonna start a new company it was a very hard thing to do
but that is something that I think you have to do I think you have to say I
made a colossal mistake coming to work here and I'm going to just right now
draw a line in the sand and say that I simply can't take that but you know to
do that you have to have the financial security to be willing to do that and
it's an easier said than done thing to do so most of it it's about taking care
and being very careful who you work with and really check out people's reputation
and ask the right questions it's like what is he like when things go wrong you
know does he have a temper what does he like about meetings do they for instance
one of the things that was so awful as a young mother which I was at the time
was that he was scheduled a meeting for five o'clock and then he wouldn't he'd
have you sit there outside his door till 6:30 and then the meeting would go on
until 8:00 and I just refused that is an area where I just drew a lot in the
sound and I did I said I have children I get home to have dinner with them I am
NOT gonna take these meetings and one area where I one was I said I don't ever
take a meeting with Harvey until after 3:30 and after 3:30 because he's just so
incredibly selfish about just making you sit there which is part of his power
play and I wasn't going to do it anymore because my children were that was a
non-negotiable for me and I think if I'd done more of that it might have been
better
you