Human trash-bag Harvey Weinstein managed to fly under the radar for years as a serial sex offender in the film industry, until the #MeToo movement finally shot him down.

When the sexual harassment scandal broke, actresses like Ashley Judd, Uma Thurman and other big Hollywood stars came forward to tell their stories.

Despite being one of Weinstein’s biggest success stories, Gwyneth Paltrow didn’t feature prominently in the headlines until much later than some of her counterparts.

It’s now been revealed, in Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey’s upcoming book, She Said: Breaking the Sexual Harassment Story That Helped Ignite a Movement, that Paltrow was instrumental in taking Weinstein down.

Here’s Vanity Fair:

“Gwyneth Paltrow is one of Harvey’s biggest stars, and he had really kind of presented himself as kind of a godfather to her over the years,” Twohey told Savannah Guthrie on Monday…

“I think that many people will be surprised to discover that when so many other actresses were reluctant to get on the phone and scared to tell the truth about what they had experienced at his hands, that Gwyneth was actually one of the first people to get on the phone, and that she was determined to help this investigation—even when Harvey Weinstein showed up to a party at her house early and she was sort of forced to hide in the bathroom.”

As Twohey explained, Paltrow called them at that point. “I think Harvey Weinstein was extremely aware and extremely scared of what the implications would be if is biggest star actually ended up going on the record,” Twohey said.

Weinstein has offered a response to the upcoming book that perfectly highlights how much of a scumbag he really is:

In response to NBC’s request for comment, Weinstein offered a statement that reads, in part: “‘She Says’ is all you need to know to appreciate that this book contains one sided allegations without having adequately investigated the facts of each situation. There is very different side to every story.”

I’m sure he justified his behaviour to himself in all sorts of sick ways.

Kantor and Twohey also explained how difficult it was for them to find sources for the story early on in their investigation—not only due to the various machinations and nondisclosure agreements that protected Weinstein, but also because neither of them had a Hollywood background at that time.

“Even trying to figure out how to reach these famous actresses was kind of an investigation unto itself,” Kantor said. “We couldn’t call their publicists; we couldn’t call their agents. So even if we managed to get Ashley Judd, Gwyneth Paltrow on the phone, which we did, we had to figure out how to say in that first minute, ‘Here’s an argument for trusting us; here’s an argument for telling us a really private story.’”

They managed to gain the trust of the women that they interviewed by offering a way for them to tell their stories in a constructive way.

During a later Today interview alongside Kantor and Twohey, Judd—who went on the record for the first Times story about Weinstein—recalled how she felt on the day the exposé was scheduled to publish. “I was unafraid of him, and I was very comfortable with the power of these two, and their investigative reporting, and the power of the New York Times,” she said. “It’s a venerable institution, and their legal team had vetted their reporting. And I knew that it was all going to be okay. It was time.”

It certainly was time.

You can watch an interview with Kantor and Twohey on PBS News, about their book and Weinstein, here:

[source:vanityfair]