Unscripted, page 11
Later that afternoon, Octaviano overheard a conversation between Sumner and Holland, with Herzer connected by speakerphone. Holland told Sumner that “his family did not love him” and “never even called,” Octaviano reported. Holland said Shari was suing her, which further upset Sumner (and wasn’t true). Herzer added that Shari was “mentally unstable.”
In this instance Sumner pushed back: “I know Shari cares,” Sumner insisted; Shari and her children were his family.
But Holland and Herzer prevailed. A letter sent that day to Shari and his grandchildren, signed by Sumner, read: “I want to be able to spend the rest of my life, however long that is, knowing that Sydney and Manuela will not be faced with litigation from my family at a time when they are grieving my passing.”
The letter continued. “I want to enjoy the rest of my time on earth with peace of mind. If you decline to sign a release agreement, I will be compelled, albeit with deep regret, to direct Sydney and Manuela not to allow you, Phyllis or your children to attend the funeral or in any way be involved in the burial arrangements.”
Shari was stunned. That was asking too much. She refused to sign the release. Negotiations to sell her stake in National Amusements came to an abrupt halt.
The next day Octaviano reported that Sumner was “very unstable” and “cries most of the time.”
That evening Sumner’s executive assistant in New York, Gloria Mazzeo, dispatched an email from Sumner to Brandon, Kimberlee, and Tyler: “Your mother has no respect for me. The letter I wrote to all three of you and your mother are my wishes, and they apply to all three of you, including you, Tyler. I want there to be no misunderstanding.”
Tyler couldn’t believe this really reflected his grandfather’s wishes, given Octaviano’s report of what happened that day: “Sydney wrote a note and made SMR [Sumner] approved it and Jeremy read it to Gloria and that Gloria needed to send it to Ma’am Shari, Brandon, Kim and you. I did not hear the whole thing but what I catches was that, ‘your Mom has no respect on me.’ ”
This was obviously a description of the email Mazzeo had transmitted.
On January 12, 2015, Tyler wrote to Bishop:
Now that the spin-off negotiations between National Amusements and my mother have concluded, it is apparent that Sydney and Manuela are prepared to ban the family from attending my grandfather’s funeral unless we sign releases.
Please be advised that my grandfather expressed his explicit wishes recently that his family must not be prevented from attending his funeral. Additionally, Sydney and Manuela have now blocked my siblings’ and my own telephone calls to my grandfather and have effectively prevented us from speaking with him. Instead, they lie to my grandfather that we do not call him or love him.
For thirty years, my siblings and I have had a wonderful, loving, and caring relationship with my grandfather, and we continue to love him dearly. Both the January 8th letter and the January 10th email, however, make it abundantly clear that Sydney and Manuela will continue to drive a wedge into that relationship and to abuse my grandfather until we agree to immunize them for their past and continuing misconduct.
Because I am prevented from calling my grandfather directly, please relay to him how much I love and care for him, and how I welcome the opportunity to speak and visit with him soon.
Almost immediately Holland had a copy of Tyler’s letter. She came out to the patio where Sumner was sitting with Octaviano brandishing it. She ordered him and the other nurses into the kitchen, but Octaviano heard her angrily read parts of the letter aloud to Sumner and call Tyler a liar. She complained his family was “ruining her life.”
For her part, Bishop wrote Tyler that “this letter did not come from Sydney and Manuela. I prepared it at Sumner’s direction. I met with him and went over it multiple times to confirm it was exactly what he wanted and he signed it. My only goal here is to carry out Sumner’s wishes.”
* * *
—
That same day, January 12, one of the nurses put through a call to Sumner from his granddaughter Kimberlee. Octaviano reported that it made Sumner “very happy and he told Kim repeatedly that she and her family can come visit him anytime soon.”
Holland, predictably, was furious when she found out. Of the Redstone grandchildren, Kimberlee seemed to annoy Holland the most. In texts to Pilgrim she called her “such a little spy,” a “manipulator,” and “her mother’s daughter.”
Holland told Sumner that Kimberlee was a liar.
“I love Kim,” Sumner responded.
Her whole family were liars, Holland insisted.
“No, they are not!” Sumner argued.
This back-and-forth went on for an hour, punctuated by yelling and crying episodes.
* * *
—
Octaviano duly reported these events to Tyler, who had been willing to at least discuss the possibility of litigation releases with Holland and Herzer. But he was disturbed by their demands for control over the funeral, their threats to exclude family members, and now these latest attempts to turn Sumner against his family. When he again complained to Bishop, she responded, “Sydney and Manuela are not banning anyone from Sumner’s funeral. Sumner has given this direction.”
If Sumner (or Holland and Herzer) thought threatening to exclude his daughter from his funeral would be persuasive, they were mistaken. It seemed to have the opposite effect. Shari told her children she’d refuse to “sign releases against the whores who will be grieving his loss” and that “there is absolutely nothing more to be said . . . EVER!!!!”
* * *
—
The ongoing pattern of abuse was too much for Octaviano. On January 29 he and several other staff members lodged the first of two complaints against Holland and Herzer with Los Angeles County Adult Protective Services. They also filed a separate complaint against Bishop, whom Octaviano deemed complicit in the abusive conduct.
Sumner’s nurse Jagiello joined in the complaints. “From my personal observations during my frequent 12-hour shifts, I was firmly convinced that Sydney and Manuela were emotionally and financially abusing Mr. Redstone,” he stated. “I further believed, and still believe today, that both Sydney and Manuela extorted Mr. Redstone by leading him to believe that if he did not keep them financially satisfied he would die alone because they were the only people who loved him.”
Like Octaviano, Jagiello also lodged a complaint against Bishop: “Based on the interactions I observed her having with Sydney and Manuela, I was concerned that she might be advancing their agenda rather than the interests of her client, Mr. Redstone.”
* * *
—
Through all of this turmoil, Sumner was not just a controlling shareholder—he was also the executive chairman of two major publicly traded companies. His base pay was $1.75 million at CBS and $2 million at Viacom.
Even though Sumner named the directors by virtue of his controlling shares, they owed all shareholders a fiduciary duty of care. On January 28 the CBS compensation committee met to consider what CBS should pay Sumner for the prior year, 2014. The committee had clearly spelled out Sumner’s duties as executive chairman: serving as “a sounding-board/counselor to [the] CEO on issues of strategic importance,” ensuring that “strategic plans are up-to-date” and “being executed on,” providing “effective communications with the Board,” and assisting “the Board in maintaining best governance practices.”
At the CBS annual meeting in May 2014, Sumner had had to be carried into the room in a chair, and at subsequent board meetings he attended by phone and usually said nothing other than “Hello, everyone.”
Yet the minutes of the compensation committee’s meeting reflect no discussion of Sumner’s condition or whether he in fact performed any of his specified duties. The committee recommended, and the full CBS board approved, a $9 million bonus, bringing Sumner’s pay that year to $10.75 million.
At Viacom, Dauman was presumably well aware of Sumner’s mental and physical limitations from his frequent visits. Yet Viacom paid Sumner even more—over $13 million for fiscal year 2014.
A few days after Jagiello and Octaviano lodged their complaints, two investigators from Adult Protective Services showed up at the Beverly Park entrance gate seeking access to Sumner. The entrance guard called the house, and a staff member there promptly informed Holland, who was out. She ordered the staff not to admit the investigators and insisted they make an appointment for a later day.
Once they were back in Los Angeles, Holland and Herzer met with Sumner. He was “upset,” in Jagiello’s recollection.
“I’m in trouble,” Sumner said. “Sydney and Manuela got me in trouble.”
Minutes later Robert Shapiro, the celebrity lawyer best known for his defense of O. J. Simpson, showed up at the mansion, evidently retained by Holland or Herzer or both. Bishop arrived soon after and all of them met with Sumner to rehearse him for an encounter with the investigators, who arrived later that day. All were present for Sumner’s interview, such as it was, in which Herzer maintained that Sumner denied being abused or pressured. Jagiello reported that the investigators stayed only briefly and spoke to none of the nurses or anyone on the household staff—even though the multiple complaints had been lodged by nurses. Nor did they reach out to anyone in Sumner’s family.
That was the end of any investigation.
By now Herzer and Holland must have been aware, or at least suspicious, that someone on the household or nursing staff was leaking information, despite the strict confidentiality agreements they’d signed. Octaviano warned Tyler in April that they were out to “catch the person that gives you guys informations. CAREFUL is the name of the game this time.”
“Yes, careful is key!” Tyler responded. “I don’t tell anybody anything about you or Jeremy. Thanks for the update and the warning.”
Jagiello kept reporting the latest developments to Tyler. Though his effort to enlist Adult Protective Services had gone nowhere, he was more determined than ever. “These women and their fucking cronies are going down!” he texted Tyler on May 14. “Can’t stand them and who they are and what they do. I want to vomit!”
EPISODE 9
“You Want to Go to War?”
When Vanity Fair reporter William Cohan first called Carl Folta, Viacom’s head of public relations did his best to prevent any article from happening. He wouldn’t allow Cohan to meet or speak to Sumner and urged Holland and Herzer not to participate.
The women hired their own public relations consultant, but defying her advice as well, each sat for on-the-record interviews and posed for full-length portraits by celebrity photographer Douglas Friedman.
The June 2015 issue of Vanity Fair appeared that May. As Folta had feared and predicted, Cohan’s article—“Endless Sumner”—was hardly flattering to Sumner, describing the ninety-one-year-old mogul as “clearly ailing.”
“I think he’s pretty out of it,” one (unnamed) source told Cohan. “He can’t speak, and I don’t know how much he knows what’s going on.”
Sumner’s old friend Robert Evans “can’t get off the phone fast enough” when asked about Sumner’s health, Cohan reported. “I really don’t want to talk about him,” Evans said.
The article went on, “A person who was visiting with Bob Evans recently broached the topic of Redstone’s health. ‘He looks like he’s dead,’ he told Evans, who is said to have replied, ‘Well, you should see him in person—he looks even worse.’ ”
By contrast, Holland and Herzer got the full star treatment. Herzer posed in the warmly lit Bemelmans Bar in Manhattan’s Carlyle Hotel (where Sumner had “gifted” her the apartment); Holland was photographed on a green velvet cushion in a manicured Pasadena garden. Herzer wore a clinging, shimmering sheath that barely concealed her breasts. Holland wore a more demure, all-white, full-length gown with one leg peeking through a slit.
In what the magazine billed as a “wide-ranging interview, her first ever about Redstone,” Holland stayed dutifully on message, implying without ever quite saying explicitly that she loved Sumner and theirs was a deeply romantic relationship. “Sumner is a very different and unusual person,” Holland told Cohan. “I’ve never noticed his age. Let me just start by saying that. If you ever saw the way he looked, he’s got this beautiful hair and has the most beautiful skin I’ve ever seen in my life, not one wrinkle on his face.”
Over breakfast with Cohan at the Carlyle, Herzer was far more revealing. “It’s such a fine line when you talk about money,” she told Cohan. Sumner “considers me family and my children family. I mean, that’s his whole thing. He’s like, ‘You’re my family.’ You don’t pick your family in life, but Sumner Redstone does. He just does. He wants who he wants in his life.”
Asked about her endorsement of Holland when she and Sumner started dating, Herzer seemed to distance herself: “I was like, ‘You know, this girl can’t be so bad,’ ” she said. “Do I know anything about her background? Nothing, and I don’t care, because why do I need to judge her? I’m not dating her.”
Cohan asked Herzer if Sumner was going to take care of Holland in his will.
“It would be almost disgusting if he didn’t do what everyone says he’s doing and going to do,” she answered. “I mean, five years of your life with a man every single day like that. I have to tell you, would she be there if he wasn’t doing something for her? Probably not. But does she love him? Absolutely. I don’t have a doubt in my mind.” But then she went on, “For her it’s a job almost, it’s a job.”
After the story ran, Sumner told Folta that everybody loved it.
Folta thought it was an embarrassment for all concerned, but all he said was, “It will be fine,” and “we’ll move on.”
* * *
—
Officially, Shari Redstone and her children had no comment on the Vanity Fair story. All Shari said for publication was “There is nothing more important to me than my family,” and added, “I’m not going to publicly comment on my father’s two current female companions or their impact on our family.”
The story could have been worse. Shari had earlier written in an email that the women and their allies “were all out to do a major trashing of me,” and Octaviano reported that Holland was rehearsing Sumner to say he “kicked Shari out of the house.” But lawyers persuaded Holland and Herzer not to needlessly provoke Shari, and the story didn’t include any quotes from Sumner about his daughter. (The allegation that he had kicked Shari out of the house “100 times” did appear but was attributed to an unnamed source “close to Holland and Herzer.”)
But Herzer’s attempts to establish herself and her children as Sumner’s “family” were infuriating to Shari. And Herzer’s comments that Holland saw her relationship with Sumner as a “job” underscored the family’s concern that both women were exploiting Shari’s father for monetary gain.
That concern was only heightened on June 22, when Sumner transferred an additional $10 million to Holland and Herzer and afterward seemed confused, repeatedly asking his nurse Octaviano what he’d just done and to whom he’d spoken at the bank.
In July he further upset Shari. In an email to Tyler, she reported, “Your grandfather says I will be chair over his dead body.”
* * *
—
In Arizona, Pilgrim was stunned by the Vanity Fair article. Holland had told him a “fluff piece” in the magazine was coming, but the public depiction of the extent and nature of Holland’s relationship with Sumner came as a shock. He read Holland’s fawning description of Sumner’s “beautiful hair” and “the most beautiful skin I’ve ever seen in my life” and felt jealous and betrayed.
His friends saw the story and needled him about it. It made him look like a “kept man,” he thought.
An angry Pilgrim called Holland. “What the fuck is this? I don’t understand, Sydney. I’m flying back and forth on private jets, you’re flying out here, buying me houses, you’re giving me the world. We’re supposed to have a fucking life and all Sedona, Arizona, knows about us. You got a country-club membership.” He went on, “My family and everybody wants to know what’s going on. Sydney, you’re posing in a fucking magazine taking pictures in Pasadena, that shows me a lot. The both of you look like high-class call girls. What’s going on?”
Holland insisted she’d only participated because if she didn’t, Shari would seize the narrative, characterizing her and Herzer as gold diggers or worse. It was all an effort to protect the inheritance she’d be sharing with Pilgrim. As for her relationship with Sumner, she sent Pilgrim videos of other women with Sumner at the mansion. How could she be in a romantic relationship with someone having sex with other women?
Pilgrim was mollified, up to a point. But he wondered: Was Holland “playing” him, manipulating him for sex the way she did Sumner for money? She always had a story.
* * *
—
With the Vanity Fair article still reverberating, Holland and Herzer hosted another birthday party for Sumner, incongruously dubbing this one a “passion to party.” There was little passion in evidence at the subdued affair on May 27. Originally slated for the Paramount studio lot, the venue had been abruptly shifted to the Vibrato Grill Jazz, a club owned by jazz trumpeter Herb Alpert and located in a Bel Air strip mall closer to Sumner’s home. It was hard for family members to imagine that Sumner wanted a party, let alone a dinner, given his feeding tube. But Holland and Herzer had insisted.
Guests included the usual suspects—Moonves and Dauman, of course, as well as Milken, Evans, and Lansing—but not celebrities like Tom Cruise or Al Gore. Keryn Redstone represented the family; Shari and her children weren’t invited. Tyler had made plans to show up anyway, when suddenly a last-minute invitation arrived via fax.
In this instance Sumner pushed back: “I know Shari cares,” Sumner insisted; Shari and her children were his family.
But Holland and Herzer prevailed. A letter sent that day to Shari and his grandchildren, signed by Sumner, read: “I want to be able to spend the rest of my life, however long that is, knowing that Sydney and Manuela will not be faced with litigation from my family at a time when they are grieving my passing.”
The letter continued. “I want to enjoy the rest of my time on earth with peace of mind. If you decline to sign a release agreement, I will be compelled, albeit with deep regret, to direct Sydney and Manuela not to allow you, Phyllis or your children to attend the funeral or in any way be involved in the burial arrangements.”
Shari was stunned. That was asking too much. She refused to sign the release. Negotiations to sell her stake in National Amusements came to an abrupt halt.
The next day Octaviano reported that Sumner was “very unstable” and “cries most of the time.”
That evening Sumner’s executive assistant in New York, Gloria Mazzeo, dispatched an email from Sumner to Brandon, Kimberlee, and Tyler: “Your mother has no respect for me. The letter I wrote to all three of you and your mother are my wishes, and they apply to all three of you, including you, Tyler. I want there to be no misunderstanding.”
Tyler couldn’t believe this really reflected his grandfather’s wishes, given Octaviano’s report of what happened that day: “Sydney wrote a note and made SMR [Sumner] approved it and Jeremy read it to Gloria and that Gloria needed to send it to Ma’am Shari, Brandon, Kim and you. I did not hear the whole thing but what I catches was that, ‘your Mom has no respect on me.’ ”
This was obviously a description of the email Mazzeo had transmitted.
On January 12, 2015, Tyler wrote to Bishop:
Now that the spin-off negotiations between National Amusements and my mother have concluded, it is apparent that Sydney and Manuela are prepared to ban the family from attending my grandfather’s funeral unless we sign releases.
Please be advised that my grandfather expressed his explicit wishes recently that his family must not be prevented from attending his funeral. Additionally, Sydney and Manuela have now blocked my siblings’ and my own telephone calls to my grandfather and have effectively prevented us from speaking with him. Instead, they lie to my grandfather that we do not call him or love him.
For thirty years, my siblings and I have had a wonderful, loving, and caring relationship with my grandfather, and we continue to love him dearly. Both the January 8th letter and the January 10th email, however, make it abundantly clear that Sydney and Manuela will continue to drive a wedge into that relationship and to abuse my grandfather until we agree to immunize them for their past and continuing misconduct.
Because I am prevented from calling my grandfather directly, please relay to him how much I love and care for him, and how I welcome the opportunity to speak and visit with him soon.
Almost immediately Holland had a copy of Tyler’s letter. She came out to the patio where Sumner was sitting with Octaviano brandishing it. She ordered him and the other nurses into the kitchen, but Octaviano heard her angrily read parts of the letter aloud to Sumner and call Tyler a liar. She complained his family was “ruining her life.”
For her part, Bishop wrote Tyler that “this letter did not come from Sydney and Manuela. I prepared it at Sumner’s direction. I met with him and went over it multiple times to confirm it was exactly what he wanted and he signed it. My only goal here is to carry out Sumner’s wishes.”
* * *
—
That same day, January 12, one of the nurses put through a call to Sumner from his granddaughter Kimberlee. Octaviano reported that it made Sumner “very happy and he told Kim repeatedly that she and her family can come visit him anytime soon.”
Holland, predictably, was furious when she found out. Of the Redstone grandchildren, Kimberlee seemed to annoy Holland the most. In texts to Pilgrim she called her “such a little spy,” a “manipulator,” and “her mother’s daughter.”
Holland told Sumner that Kimberlee was a liar.
“I love Kim,” Sumner responded.
Her whole family were liars, Holland insisted.
“No, they are not!” Sumner argued.
This back-and-forth went on for an hour, punctuated by yelling and crying episodes.
* * *
—
Octaviano duly reported these events to Tyler, who had been willing to at least discuss the possibility of litigation releases with Holland and Herzer. But he was disturbed by their demands for control over the funeral, their threats to exclude family members, and now these latest attempts to turn Sumner against his family. When he again complained to Bishop, she responded, “Sydney and Manuela are not banning anyone from Sumner’s funeral. Sumner has given this direction.”
If Sumner (or Holland and Herzer) thought threatening to exclude his daughter from his funeral would be persuasive, they were mistaken. It seemed to have the opposite effect. Shari told her children she’d refuse to “sign releases against the whores who will be grieving his loss” and that “there is absolutely nothing more to be said . . . EVER!!!!”
* * *
—
The ongoing pattern of abuse was too much for Octaviano. On January 29 he and several other staff members lodged the first of two complaints against Holland and Herzer with Los Angeles County Adult Protective Services. They also filed a separate complaint against Bishop, whom Octaviano deemed complicit in the abusive conduct.
Sumner’s nurse Jagiello joined in the complaints. “From my personal observations during my frequent 12-hour shifts, I was firmly convinced that Sydney and Manuela were emotionally and financially abusing Mr. Redstone,” he stated. “I further believed, and still believe today, that both Sydney and Manuela extorted Mr. Redstone by leading him to believe that if he did not keep them financially satisfied he would die alone because they were the only people who loved him.”
Like Octaviano, Jagiello also lodged a complaint against Bishop: “Based on the interactions I observed her having with Sydney and Manuela, I was concerned that she might be advancing their agenda rather than the interests of her client, Mr. Redstone.”
* * *
—
Through all of this turmoil, Sumner was not just a controlling shareholder—he was also the executive chairman of two major publicly traded companies. His base pay was $1.75 million at CBS and $2 million at Viacom.
Even though Sumner named the directors by virtue of his controlling shares, they owed all shareholders a fiduciary duty of care. On January 28 the CBS compensation committee met to consider what CBS should pay Sumner for the prior year, 2014. The committee had clearly spelled out Sumner’s duties as executive chairman: serving as “a sounding-board/counselor to [the] CEO on issues of strategic importance,” ensuring that “strategic plans are up-to-date” and “being executed on,” providing “effective communications with the Board,” and assisting “the Board in maintaining best governance practices.”
At the CBS annual meeting in May 2014, Sumner had had to be carried into the room in a chair, and at subsequent board meetings he attended by phone and usually said nothing other than “Hello, everyone.”
Yet the minutes of the compensation committee’s meeting reflect no discussion of Sumner’s condition or whether he in fact performed any of his specified duties. The committee recommended, and the full CBS board approved, a $9 million bonus, bringing Sumner’s pay that year to $10.75 million.
At Viacom, Dauman was presumably well aware of Sumner’s mental and physical limitations from his frequent visits. Yet Viacom paid Sumner even more—over $13 million for fiscal year 2014.
A few days after Jagiello and Octaviano lodged their complaints, two investigators from Adult Protective Services showed up at the Beverly Park entrance gate seeking access to Sumner. The entrance guard called the house, and a staff member there promptly informed Holland, who was out. She ordered the staff not to admit the investigators and insisted they make an appointment for a later day.
Once they were back in Los Angeles, Holland and Herzer met with Sumner. He was “upset,” in Jagiello’s recollection.
“I’m in trouble,” Sumner said. “Sydney and Manuela got me in trouble.”
Minutes later Robert Shapiro, the celebrity lawyer best known for his defense of O. J. Simpson, showed up at the mansion, evidently retained by Holland or Herzer or both. Bishop arrived soon after and all of them met with Sumner to rehearse him for an encounter with the investigators, who arrived later that day. All were present for Sumner’s interview, such as it was, in which Herzer maintained that Sumner denied being abused or pressured. Jagiello reported that the investigators stayed only briefly and spoke to none of the nurses or anyone on the household staff—even though the multiple complaints had been lodged by nurses. Nor did they reach out to anyone in Sumner’s family.
That was the end of any investigation.
By now Herzer and Holland must have been aware, or at least suspicious, that someone on the household or nursing staff was leaking information, despite the strict confidentiality agreements they’d signed. Octaviano warned Tyler in April that they were out to “catch the person that gives you guys informations. CAREFUL is the name of the game this time.”
“Yes, careful is key!” Tyler responded. “I don’t tell anybody anything about you or Jeremy. Thanks for the update and the warning.”
Jagiello kept reporting the latest developments to Tyler. Though his effort to enlist Adult Protective Services had gone nowhere, he was more determined than ever. “These women and their fucking cronies are going down!” he texted Tyler on May 14. “Can’t stand them and who they are and what they do. I want to vomit!”
EPISODE 9
“You Want to Go to War?”
When Vanity Fair reporter William Cohan first called Carl Folta, Viacom’s head of public relations did his best to prevent any article from happening. He wouldn’t allow Cohan to meet or speak to Sumner and urged Holland and Herzer not to participate.
The women hired their own public relations consultant, but defying her advice as well, each sat for on-the-record interviews and posed for full-length portraits by celebrity photographer Douglas Friedman.
The June 2015 issue of Vanity Fair appeared that May. As Folta had feared and predicted, Cohan’s article—“Endless Sumner”—was hardly flattering to Sumner, describing the ninety-one-year-old mogul as “clearly ailing.”
“I think he’s pretty out of it,” one (unnamed) source told Cohan. “He can’t speak, and I don’t know how much he knows what’s going on.”
Sumner’s old friend Robert Evans “can’t get off the phone fast enough” when asked about Sumner’s health, Cohan reported. “I really don’t want to talk about him,” Evans said.
The article went on, “A person who was visiting with Bob Evans recently broached the topic of Redstone’s health. ‘He looks like he’s dead,’ he told Evans, who is said to have replied, ‘Well, you should see him in person—he looks even worse.’ ”
By contrast, Holland and Herzer got the full star treatment. Herzer posed in the warmly lit Bemelmans Bar in Manhattan’s Carlyle Hotel (where Sumner had “gifted” her the apartment); Holland was photographed on a green velvet cushion in a manicured Pasadena garden. Herzer wore a clinging, shimmering sheath that barely concealed her breasts. Holland wore a more demure, all-white, full-length gown with one leg peeking through a slit.
In what the magazine billed as a “wide-ranging interview, her first ever about Redstone,” Holland stayed dutifully on message, implying without ever quite saying explicitly that she loved Sumner and theirs was a deeply romantic relationship. “Sumner is a very different and unusual person,” Holland told Cohan. “I’ve never noticed his age. Let me just start by saying that. If you ever saw the way he looked, he’s got this beautiful hair and has the most beautiful skin I’ve ever seen in my life, not one wrinkle on his face.”
Over breakfast with Cohan at the Carlyle, Herzer was far more revealing. “It’s such a fine line when you talk about money,” she told Cohan. Sumner “considers me family and my children family. I mean, that’s his whole thing. He’s like, ‘You’re my family.’ You don’t pick your family in life, but Sumner Redstone does. He just does. He wants who he wants in his life.”
Asked about her endorsement of Holland when she and Sumner started dating, Herzer seemed to distance herself: “I was like, ‘You know, this girl can’t be so bad,’ ” she said. “Do I know anything about her background? Nothing, and I don’t care, because why do I need to judge her? I’m not dating her.”
Cohan asked Herzer if Sumner was going to take care of Holland in his will.
“It would be almost disgusting if he didn’t do what everyone says he’s doing and going to do,” she answered. “I mean, five years of your life with a man every single day like that. I have to tell you, would she be there if he wasn’t doing something for her? Probably not. But does she love him? Absolutely. I don’t have a doubt in my mind.” But then she went on, “For her it’s a job almost, it’s a job.”
After the story ran, Sumner told Folta that everybody loved it.
Folta thought it was an embarrassment for all concerned, but all he said was, “It will be fine,” and “we’ll move on.”
* * *
—
Officially, Shari Redstone and her children had no comment on the Vanity Fair story. All Shari said for publication was “There is nothing more important to me than my family,” and added, “I’m not going to publicly comment on my father’s two current female companions or their impact on our family.”
The story could have been worse. Shari had earlier written in an email that the women and their allies “were all out to do a major trashing of me,” and Octaviano reported that Holland was rehearsing Sumner to say he “kicked Shari out of the house.” But lawyers persuaded Holland and Herzer not to needlessly provoke Shari, and the story didn’t include any quotes from Sumner about his daughter. (The allegation that he had kicked Shari out of the house “100 times” did appear but was attributed to an unnamed source “close to Holland and Herzer.”)
But Herzer’s attempts to establish herself and her children as Sumner’s “family” were infuriating to Shari. And Herzer’s comments that Holland saw her relationship with Sumner as a “job” underscored the family’s concern that both women were exploiting Shari’s father for monetary gain.
That concern was only heightened on June 22, when Sumner transferred an additional $10 million to Holland and Herzer and afterward seemed confused, repeatedly asking his nurse Octaviano what he’d just done and to whom he’d spoken at the bank.
In July he further upset Shari. In an email to Tyler, she reported, “Your grandfather says I will be chair over his dead body.”
* * *
—
In Arizona, Pilgrim was stunned by the Vanity Fair article. Holland had told him a “fluff piece” in the magazine was coming, but the public depiction of the extent and nature of Holland’s relationship with Sumner came as a shock. He read Holland’s fawning description of Sumner’s “beautiful hair” and “the most beautiful skin I’ve ever seen in my life” and felt jealous and betrayed.
His friends saw the story and needled him about it. It made him look like a “kept man,” he thought.
An angry Pilgrim called Holland. “What the fuck is this? I don’t understand, Sydney. I’m flying back and forth on private jets, you’re flying out here, buying me houses, you’re giving me the world. We’re supposed to have a fucking life and all Sedona, Arizona, knows about us. You got a country-club membership.” He went on, “My family and everybody wants to know what’s going on. Sydney, you’re posing in a fucking magazine taking pictures in Pasadena, that shows me a lot. The both of you look like high-class call girls. What’s going on?”
Holland insisted she’d only participated because if she didn’t, Shari would seize the narrative, characterizing her and Herzer as gold diggers or worse. It was all an effort to protect the inheritance she’d be sharing with Pilgrim. As for her relationship with Sumner, she sent Pilgrim videos of other women with Sumner at the mansion. How could she be in a romantic relationship with someone having sex with other women?
Pilgrim was mollified, up to a point. But he wondered: Was Holland “playing” him, manipulating him for sex the way she did Sumner for money? She always had a story.
* * *
—
With the Vanity Fair article still reverberating, Holland and Herzer hosted another birthday party for Sumner, incongruously dubbing this one a “passion to party.” There was little passion in evidence at the subdued affair on May 27. Originally slated for the Paramount studio lot, the venue had been abruptly shifted to the Vibrato Grill Jazz, a club owned by jazz trumpeter Herb Alpert and located in a Bel Air strip mall closer to Sumner’s home. It was hard for family members to imagine that Sumner wanted a party, let alone a dinner, given his feeding tube. But Holland and Herzer had insisted.
Guests included the usual suspects—Moonves and Dauman, of course, as well as Milken, Evans, and Lansing—but not celebrities like Tom Cruise or Al Gore. Keryn Redstone represented the family; Shari and her children weren’t invited. Tyler had made plans to show up anyway, when suddenly a last-minute invitation arrived via fax.
