False report led to ‘kill’ note
Harvey Weinstein wrote that Jennifer Aniston ‘‘should be killed’’ after reading a story claiming that he had sexually assaulted her, according to court documents unsealed yesterday.
He contemplated suicide, bemoaned that he had ‘‘lost’’ his family and ‘‘almost all my friends’’ and received an email from his brother Bob, who said he belonged in ‘‘hell’’ for what he had done.
The papers, unsealed before Weinstein’s sentencing for rape and sexual assault, offer potential insights into the film producer’s state of mind in the months after scores of women accused him of the offences for which he faces up to 29 years in prison.
The story about Aniston, with whom he worked on the 2005 film Derailed, was untrue: her representative said she had made no such accusation against the producer.
Bob Weinstein, the business partner with whom he founded Miramax and The Weinstein Company, was counting the other accusations. ‘‘Just read u been abusing women when u were in your twenties,’’ he wrote, on November 2, 2017, according to the New York Daily News. ‘‘Numbers are up to 82.’’
His brother suggested that he deserved a ‘‘lifetime achievement award’’ for ‘‘savagery and immorality’’ and said that any claim on his part that he was ‘‘trying to get better’’ would be ‘‘just another lie’’. He added: ‘‘I pray there is a real hell. That’s where u belong. I suppose being you, is its own hell, if u could feel it, but no chance. OJ didn’t kill Nicole Simpson and u had consensual sex with all those poor victimised women.’’
The files contain a draft statement apparently dating to December 2017, in which Weinstein wrote of his despair and said: ‘‘I have daughters that will not talk to me. I have lost my wife. I have lost the respect of my ex-wife and almost all of my friends. I’m alone. And I will be honest with you: I’m suicidal.’’
When the allegations emerged, Weinstein was said to have written to powerful executives asking for support. The newly unsealed files show that he appealed to Michael Bloomberg, the mayor of New York in 2002-13, and to Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, arguing that ‘‘a lot of the allegations are false’’. – The Times