【Secret Confessions (2025) Banana Cue Episode 41】

Shocking,Secret Confessions (2025) Banana Cue Episode 41 disturbing, heartbreaking, dispiriting -- yes, yes, yes, and ughhhh, yes.

Surprising? Not at all.

The New York Timespublished an impeccably sourced, thoroughly reported account Thursday detailing decades of systematic sexual harassment at the hands of independent film mogul Harvey Weinstein. The 65-year-old producer, financier, infamous holy terror with a trophy case full of Oscars -- six for Best Picture -- for three decades managed to keep his predatory ways under wraps with a staggering chain of payouts, denials, nondisclosure agreements and power plays.

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SEE ALSO: The indie film community has a sexual harassment problem and women are fighting back.

Well, it's all out there now, and it's a knee-buckling read.

Story after story of young women who were either his employees, cast in his movies or wanted to be, summoned to ostensibly professional meetings that turned out to be private, one-on-one encounters, often in posh hotel suites, that turned swiftly and aggressively sexual. Open suggestions for sexual favors, casual nudity, "coercive negotiation" for massages both giving and receiving ... it's horrifying.

For anyone who's been around Hollywood for any length of time, this is hardly out of left field

"I appreciate the way I’ve behaved with colleagues in the past has caused a lot of pain, and I sincerely apologize for it," Weinstein told the Times. "Though I’m trying to do better, I know I have a long way to go."

The report is so damning that after it was published, Weinstein immediately issued a separate, far longer apology without a whiff of denial. The statement, in attempting and failing to quote Jay-Z and vowing to take on the NRA (???) during a leave of absence from his company, was not without its own problems. Of course, then his lawyer turned around and announced intentions to sue the Times, saying the reporting is "saturated with false and defamatory statements" and promising that proceeds will go to women's organizations.

His response is a mess, to say the least.

SEE ALSO: Harvey Weinstein made up Jay-Z lyrics in worst sexual harassment response ever

Shocking, disturbing, heartbreaking, dispiriting. And for anyone who's been around Hollywood for any length of time, not out of left field. At all.

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Rumors have swirled around Weinstein for years. But given Hollywood's long legacy of leverage, where the choices seem to be 1) put up with it and look away, 2) report it, only to be confronted with a pile of hush money or 3) have your career tossed into the shredder, is it any wonder that it took a major newspaper's impeccable investigation to get this out into the open?

Ashley Judd during her appointment as UN Population Fund's (UNFPA) Goodwill Ambassador in 2016 in New York. Credit: Jemal Countess/Getty Images

The story leads off with Ashley Judd, who first relayed her tale to Varietyin 2015 without naming names. This time she is naming names, and is very much on the record:

... Weinstein invited Ashley Judd to the Peninsula Beverly Hills hotel for what the young actress expected to be a business breakfast meeting. Instead, he had her sent up to his room, where he appeared in a bathrobe and asked if he could give her a massage or she could watch him shower, she recalled in an interview.

“How do I get out of the room as fast as possible without alienating Harvey Weinstein?” Ms. Judd said she remembers thinking.

Judd is but one of nearly 20 women referenced in the report with a harrowing story to tell, each fitting a pattern over many years.

Temporary employee Emily Nestor got the same proposition Judd did, at the same hotel, as did an unnamed female assistant. Former employee Laura Madden told the TimesWeinstein prodded her for massages at hotels in the UK; same for Zelda Perkins, a London assistant. Italian model/actress Ambra Battilana called police after she said Weinstein groped her, reported in the tabloids at the time but quietly settled. Another eight women who weren't named told the Timeshe would appear nude, making them watch him bathe and asking for or initiating massages and other intimate contact. The actress Rose McGowan took a $100,000 settlement after a hotel-room incident at the Sundance Film Festival.

Anyone who does business with __ is complicit. And deep down you know you are even dirtier. Cleanse yourselves.

— rose mcgowan (@rosemcgowan) October 5, 2017

Other women corroborated their stories, or said they were used as liaisons to set up these private meetings. A young female executive who declined to be interviewed for the story, Lauren O'Connor, wrote a detailed memo to Weinstein Co. executives about the company namesake's behavior. After she took a settlement and left her post, a promised inquiry was never launched. Former employee Sallie Hodges told the Timesthat "that’s kind of the way things were."

Along the way, the Timessaid, at least eight settlements were paid, from $80,000 to $150,000.

"Women have been talking about Harvey amongst ourselves for a long time," Judd told the Times, and it’s simply beyond time to have the conversation publicly."

Always just behind the scenes, always an open secret. One that trickled out into the gears of the Hollywood rumor mill and never really went away.

There are other stories, attached to other moguls and movie-makers, that have persisted around town through the years. The veils are getting thinner, the victims are getting bolder and the power structure that protects predators is weakening with each new case.

Hollywood may be infamous for excusing this kind of abhorrent, opportunistic, and predatory behavior, but the culture is -- however slowly -- transforming.

There's more to this story than Harvey Weinstein.