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Weinstein鈥檚 former assistant breaks NDA after 20 years of silence - YouTube
Channel: CBC News: The National
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[Adrienne Arsenault] Rowena Chiu is finally stepping into the light.
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She wanted to before but couldn't
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and she's still taking a chance.
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What happened that made you decide it's okay to talk
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Well, I think it was a very very long journey to speak today.
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It's another breaking of my NDA which is still technically illegal.
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So it is still frightening but I think as well as the legal repercussions
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the personal repercussions to me were very powerful as a silencer.
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[Adrienne] This is a woman with the story of a time that broke her life.
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Daughter of Chinese immigrants.
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Graduate of Oxford University who fresh out of school landed a dream job in the 90s at Miramax
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as an assistant to Harvey Weinstein.
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It was supposed to be the great beginning.
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[Adrienne] You have a dream.
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[Chiu] That's right.
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[Adrienne] And you get this huge job.
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You must have been thrilled?
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Yes, absolutely I was thrilled.
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I appreciated the opportunity to travel.
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Some of the work would focus around traveling with Harvey to various European film festivals.
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So overall it was an exciting position to kind of --
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I felt like at a young age we would have a say.
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We would you know be influencing the next films that Miramax funded.
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Now, working for Harvey specifically it was rumored to be very difficult.
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We knew that he had a legendary temper.
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We knew that he was a difficult person to deal with.
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I certainly didn't go into the job thinking he's a serial rapist.
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Were there any concrete tips though about how to sort of physically protect yourself from him.
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Well there had been rumors of course about you know --
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To wear more clothes around Harvey Weinstein.
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I wore two pairs of tights as a response to those kind of jokes.
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And I thought well it won't do any harm if I've got extra layers of clothing on.
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And if something terrible were to happen it may buy me some time.
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[Adrienne] That according to Chiu was a sadly wise call.
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1998, the Venice Film Festival.
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Chiu is assigned the night shifts with Weinstein.
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The more senior assistant Zelda Perkins takes the early shifts.
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Perkins had warned Chiu about Weinstein but both women thought all would be okay.
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She tells us it wasn't okay.
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Typically the evening shifts were pretty difficult because I would be alone with Harvey.
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Zelda would not be in the room and so there would definitely be requests for inappropriate
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sexual contact during that time.
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You know there is very much a sense that he would combine work that we were doing
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on the scripts with more personal questions and inappropriate requests really.
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So you know one minute he'd be asking me my view on a certain film script
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and whether or not I thought it was a great story
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and how strong the characterization was
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and then the next minute he'd be asking for a massage and so on.
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[Adrienne] Is there relevance to your ethnicity
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and your background in your interactions with Harvey?
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Did he make that an issue?
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He mentioned how he liked Chinese girls because they were discreet
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and he would say that in public.
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But then in private you know that would be twisted around to be --
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He d had never had a Chinese girl and that he wanted to try and this kind of thing.
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Because the subtext is really
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I like your discretion because you're not going to complain about me.
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Whatever I do to you.
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That's a threat.
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[Rowena] It's a dangerous subtext I think .
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Can I ask you and again you don't have to tell me
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but can I ask you what what happened on what is arguably the night?
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We talked a bit about scripts.
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We spent some time discussing you know he engaged in some flattery
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about how I graduated with a degree in English literature from Oxford
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which he very much like to allude to also.
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He asked me a bit about my boyfriend.
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He asked me how long we'd been together
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and whether he was my first boyfriend and so on.
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And so I guess the conversation segued into the personal very quickly.
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He asked me for a massage.
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He had taken his clothes off so he was naked.
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So he requested a massage from me which I was reluctant to give him.
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He asked me to take off some of my layers of clothing.
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Saying that it was warm in the hotel room or that I'd feel more comfortable.
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If I took off more clothes and so
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in that way it was almost an assiduous you know gradual path towards
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asking for more and more overt sexual favors.
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And so it from there it led to him pinning me against the bed
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and asking for just one thrust and saying just one thrust and it will all be over.
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Oh my god, your head must have been swimming.
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It was a pretty terrifying experience.
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She says it was a lot to handle.
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At the first chance she describes having a quiet urgent word with Zelda Perkins
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to tell her what happened.
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In fact I think we both cried.
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Zelda went to confront Harvey right away
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which I think was an incredibly brave thing to do.
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I mean I don't think many people in her position at 25 and as Harvey's assistant
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would have the courage to go down and to speak to him right away
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when he's at lunch with such high-profile people.
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The women had a plan.
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Back in London they would sound the alarm with the company
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hoping Weinstein would be rebuked.
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Forced to undergo counseling.
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Maybe rules would be put in place for working with women.
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But they say the lawyers were just interested in something different.
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Compensation for silence.
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The non-disclosure agreement they signed haunts them still.
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How would you characterize the silence they were seeking?
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How sweeping was it?
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Absolute, absolute.
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We were told that this period of our lives would have to be considered a black hole.
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We could in the lightest possible terms refer to the fact that we had worked for Harvey Weinstein
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but we weren't to go into any detail about the nature of that work
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or what happens subsequent to that work
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or the fact that there was an NDA
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or the fact that there was any settlement money.
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None of that was to be referred to.
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In fact it felt so onerous that Zelda and I implicitly made a pact
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that we wouldn't speak to one another and we didn't after the journey in the taxi
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away from the law firm once we'd signed the NDA.
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The next time I heard from Zelda was October 2017.
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And we'd signed that agreement in October 1998.
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So it's almost 20 years.
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Yeah, 19 years to the month that we had not spoken to one another.
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Did you know when you parted in that taxi that you wouldn't talk?
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I think there was a clear sense that we wouldn't remain in each other's lives
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because we talked about how difficult it was not to refer to this period of our lives.
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But what's it like to lose the one person who stood beside you the whole time?
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I think it was incredibly difficult.
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But not just that I had lost the only colleague that I could talk to about it
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but an inability to speak to anyone in my personal life about really quite a traumatic event
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meant really it wasn't possible to process it.
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I'm wondering how much a secret like this weighs.
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Clearly a great deal because I found it an impossible burden to bear really.
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And it came to a point where I tried to kill myself a couple of times.
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And I really felt I was never gonna get away from the secret .
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You are calm, almost matter-of-fact about what happened
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and where does that calm come from?
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I think being British and being Chinese it means that I'm not necessarily too transparent
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but I think that sounding calm doesn't necessarily mean it wasn't a very frightening experience.
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So was the screaming inside your head?
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There is screaming inside my head from --
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At the time of the assaults, absolutely.
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I still feel powerless.
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Zelda and I are now in our mid 40s and yet there's still no remedy in the legal world
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or that doesn't appear to be a remedy available to us in the legal world.
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Who knows what will happen with the criminal trial
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but you know telling a story in the media
publicly isn't necessarily an easy fix
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to everything that has taken place.
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Time.
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The effort of journalists to find them the launch of the Me Too movement.
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All of this collided to bring the two
women back together again.
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I'd like to say that Zelda and Rowena are here tonight and speaking
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in active violation of this NDA and this settlement.
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They found the voices both choosing to break their NDAs.
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It all might intimidate some back into the shadow.
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But not Rowena Chiu, not anymore.
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How did Harvey Weinstein respond to you telling your story?
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His lawyer issued a statement saying that Harvey Weinstein and I had engaged
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in a six-month physical consensual relationship
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and the Harvey was looking for ways to take legal action against me for breaking my NDA.
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Is it worth it for you?
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We'll see, I'm on a long journey.
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I am encouraged by the voices that lift me up from other victims
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but also from people who are silent even to this day.
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And they feel like I in some way speak for them.
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I won't know the long-term repercussions
of speaking out for a long time to come.
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But I so far have no regrets.
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And it's wonderful to meet you Rowena.
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Lovely to meet you too.
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Thank you very very much.
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We appreciate that.
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we asked Weinstein's lawyers to respond
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to Rowena choose allegations and we
finally received this statement from his
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public relations company quote neither
mr. Weinstein nor his representatives
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will be making any comments on these
matters I hope you can remain objective
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