Harvey Weinstein Is "Angry at the System"

It feels pretty safe to assume that if you were to ask people which celebrities they’d prefer to never hear from again, Harvey Weinstein would be on just about everyone’s list. And yet, here we are! On Tuesday, the disgraced movie producer/sex offender gave his first on-camera interview in eight years to conservative commentator Candace Owens, and it’s as infuriating as you probably expect it to be.

Weinstein spoke to Owens via video from Rikers Island prison, where he’s currently being held as he faces a retrial in New York for rape and sexual assault, and he doubled down on his assertion that he didn’t do anything criminal. (His 2022 conviction in a Los Angeles trial, for rape and sexual assault, still stands.) The 73-year-old conceded that he cheated on his wife but insisted that “justice has to know the difference between what is immoral and what is illegal.” (Rape and sexual assault are, last time I checked, still illegal.)

“I just wanted to say that I’m not angry, but I’m angry at the system,” Weinstein told Owens. “You know, my situation was transactional, you know, looking back at it.”

“I just want to say something very clearly: I believe women should be heard,” he added. “But I’m wrongfully convicted, you know what I mean? … Justice demands a clear, honest look at each case. And I am here for fairness and the truth.”

So, to recap: women should be heard, except for the 80-plus women who have said they were raped, assaulted or sexually harassed by him. Weinstein also spent a good chunk of the interview discussing his relationship with Gwyneth Paltrow, admitting that he “made a pass” at her, but insisting that their interactions were never physical.

“It’s a complete fabrication, you know, about my relationship with Gwyneth,” Weinstein said. “You know, I’m going to talk about it and just say that I had a meeting with her. … At the end of the meeting we had a glass of Champagne. As I was walking out the door, I said to her, ‘I’d love you to give me a massage.’ And she went [dismissively], ‘Yeah.’ And, you know, that was it. I didn’t put my hand on her. I didn’t touch her. I definitely made a pass, I guess. You know, you could call it that. But that was the sum total of that situation.”

Even if Weinstein’s recollection of the encounter is accurate, ending a business meeting by asking your colleague to give you a massage is very obviously a textbook example of sexual harassment. Weinstein’s acting like we should be patting him on the back for not raping or assaulting Paltrow. He doesn’t seem to have any grasp of the fact that workplace harassment — while perhaps not something that will necessarily land you in prison — is still illegal. One has to assume that his admission of the Paltrow interaction can’t help his case in his ongoing retrial.

You can read more of Weinstein’s interview with Owens — though why would you want to? — here.