Unscripted, page 13
“I’d better not tell Manuela,” Marciano said.
* * *
—
Marciano went straight to Herzer with the explosive information, as Pilgrim knew he would. Herzer was stunned and furious, and no wonder: Holland had put everything they’d worked so hard for at risk. At the same time, what might be a catastrophe for Holland promised a huge windfall for her. After all, why should she share the anticipated inheritance from Sumner with Holland?
According to household staff members, Herzer ordered Holland to confess the affair to Sumner—and if she didn’t, Herzer would tell him.
News of Pilgrim’s startling disclosure reached Freedman late on Saturday morning when a hungover Pilgrim called to tell him he might have “made a mistake” the night before. He said he’d talked about Holland to Marciano at Wally’s, but was vague and evasive. He claimed, unconvincingly, that he hadn’t really told him anything. Freedman thought Pilgrim sounded like a child caught misbehaving by a parent. When he spoke to Shpall, she confirmed that Pilgrim had told Marciano all about his affair with Holland.
Freedman called Holland’s lawyers. It was a bad sign that no one returned his call.
Settlement talks collapsed. Freedman was incredulous. On what seemed a drunken impulse, Pilgrim had forfeited what promised to be a lifetime of financial security. And he’d cost Freedman a potential $4 million contingency fee.
* * *
—
The next day, Sunday, August 30, Holland, with the lawyer Patty Glaser at her side, confessed to Sumner. Though Holland asked for privacy, nurses and household staff witnessed the entire exchange. Holland described the affair as an “indiscretion” and told Sumner she “hoped for the same forgiveness and understanding that she had shown him during all his affairs.”
Holland apologized profusely and was in the process of begging Sumner’s forgiveness when Herzer could apparently no longer contain herself. She burst into the room and unleashed an onslaught of increasingly wild-eyed allegations: Holland was a prostitute and Pilgrim an ex-con. Pilgrim was the father of Holland’s baby. Holland and Pilgrim were plotting to kill Sumner.
Herzer demanded that Sumner throw Holland out immediately.
Faced with this barrage and presumably overwhelmed by feelings of betrayal, Sumner told Holland to leave but gave her two weeks to get out. Herzer cut the grace period to two days.
Forty-eight hours later, Holland and her daughter, Alexandra, were gone, decamping for the time being to the luxurious Montage Hotel in Beverly Hills.
EPISODE 2
“Operation Freedom”
On September 2 estate lawyer Leah Bishop met with Sumner to revise his legal documents. He eradicated Holland from his will. Herzer was now slated to get everything, which was more than twice as much as before—$50 million—plus the Beverly Park mansion, then valued at $20 million, for a total of $70 million. Herzer was designated Sumner’s sole health care proxy. (Sumner named Viacom chief Dauman as a backup.)
With Holland vanquished and Herzer in sole command of the Redstone household, the last thing Herzer wanted was any interference from Shari or her family. Just two days after Holland’s unceremonious exit, on September 3, Herzer walked into the room while Sumner was on the phone. After Octaviano told her he was talking to his granddaughter Kimberlee, Herzer angrily grabbed the receiver and hung up. Sumner started crying.
A week later Shari was scheduled to visit, but Herzer told Sumner he was too busy to see her and canceled the visit. Herzer asked Sumner’s doctor to write a letter advising him that contact with his family was a threat to his health. Octaviano overheard Herzer on the phone with Dauman, insisting that Shari not be allowed to discuss business matters with her father.
Herzer quickly consolidated her newfound power. She installed hidden cameras throughout the house, including in Sumner’s bedroom. She tightened her grip on the staff, banned any contact with Holland, and threatened to send one housekeeper to jail for suspected leaking. The staff was barred from reading the newspaper to Sumner or transmitting any information to him.
Herzer asked Keryn to move into the mansion full-time to help with Sumner’s care and gave Keryn access to her grandfather’s credit card to pay moving expenses and other charges. She also had Sumner create a $1 million trust fund for Keryn that allowed her to spend the income from the principal.
Then, her mission apparently accomplished, Herzer took off for Paris and the premiere of Knock Knock, an erotic thriller starring Keanu Reeves, Herzer’s latest “infatuation.” The film made its debut at the American Film Festival in Deauville, France, on September 5 to mixed reviews (a “giddily sadistic black comedy,” per The New York Times). While Herzer was away, her brother Carlos moved in and stood guard.
One week, while the Beverly Park mansion was being fumigated, Herzer took Sumner to a Malibu beach house she’d rented on his behalf, even though, according to Jagiello, it was being used as a “party house” by Herzer’s children. (Sumner, of course, paid the rent.) Once they arrived, Herzer occupied the master bedroom suite with a sweeping view of the ocean. Sumner was relegated to a small guest room at the back of the house, within earshot of the busy Pacific Coast Highway. A nurse complained that the room’s small dimensions made it difficult for Sumner to maneuver in his wheelchair.
However close they may once have been, Sumner didn’t love Herzer the way he had Holland. “He appeared to care far less for Manuela,” Octaviano observed.
Nor did Herzer participate in any sex with him. Herzer complained that Sumner was “fixated on sex on a daily basis.” He asked repeatedly to see Terry Holbrook, the former Oilers cheerleader whom he’d been dating in 2010 before meeting Holland and who later got monthly cash retainers for providing sexual services, Herzer later alleged. With her long brunette hair, Holbrook bore a striking resemblance to Holland and thus must have posed an especially potent threat to replace Holland in Sumner’s affections and even in his estate plans.
That was not about to happen. Herzer gave the staff strict orders to prevent any contact between Sumner and Holbrook. When Sumner asked for Holbrook, Octaviano and other staff members told him she was sick, she was out of town, or that she couldn’t be located when, in fact, she was nearby and willing to visit him. After Sumner asked Jagiello to send Holbrook flowers, Herzer countermanded the order but told him to tell Sumner that the flowers had been sent. When Sumner asked his nurses to dial Holbrook in his presence so he could get on the phone and speak to her, Herzer instead dialed her own number, handed the phone to Sumner, and had him leave a message when no one answered.
“Manuela told me and the other nurses that she did not want Mr. Redstone seeing Terry,” Jagiello stated. As a result, “I was lying to Mr. Redstone on an almost daily basis at Manuela’s direction.”
In place of Holbrook, Herzer arranged for visits by Heidi MacKinney, a brunette who also bore some resemblance to Holland. Unlike Holbrook, MacKinney posed no threat to Herzer; though she had gone on a few dates with Sumner before he met Holland, she now worked for Herzer as a personal assistant while caring for her special-needs child. She’d been a character witness for Herzer years earlier when Herzer was in a bitter custody battle with her ex-husband.
Still, it must have come as something of a shock that her job as Herzer’s personal assistant included ministering to the sexual appetites of a ninety-two-year-old man. In a sworn affidavit, MacKinney said she visited Sumner five times after Holland left, or about once a week, and tried to “engage” sexually with him. Jagiello, his nurse, was always present and orchestrated the encounters, “directing me and telling me what sex acts to perform,” she said. But during her visit on October 2, Sumner was “completely unresponsive,” she asserted, and she vowed not to return.
And Holland was by no means entirely out of the picture. Sumner was clearly still enamored of her—he talked about her constantly and seemed obsessed by her relationship with Pilgrim. Holland herself had every intention of returning to her rightful place at the mansion, and likely in his estate plan as well. As she put it, she “tried her best to show Redstone her remorse.” She sent him letters, cards, flowers, and notes, but she never got a response. When she tried to phone, his line had been disconnected and the number changed. Holland explored the possibility of suing Herzer, but her lawyer talked her out of it.
Finally Holland tried an end run by having her lawyer send a letter intended for Sumner to Leah Bishop, with a request to hand-deliver it to Sumner. “I am beyond sorry that I hurt you,” the letter began. “I am so sad that I was not allowed to say goodbye and I want nothing from you, but to see you. . . . I beg of you to consider letting Alexandra and I visit. She is such a beautiful little girl. . . . She reminds me of you and how resilient you are and how you never give up.”
Holland continued. “Sumner, just know that I will love you forever and always, not a day goes by without me thinking of what we shared. Please Sumner, have Leah arrange for us to see each other. Love Always, Sydney.”
Bishop brought the letter to the mansion in early October. Jagiello was there when she arrived, and he recalled that Herzer “grabbed” the letter from Bishop and started to read it to Sumner.
But after just a few words of this seemingly heartfelt apology, Herzer abruptly broke off, folded the letter, and told Sumner she’d finish reading it to him later.
Later that day Herzer rejoined Sumner with what purported to be Holland’s letter and read it aloud in its entirety.
“I did not lie to you everyone else is lying,” the letter began. “I never had an affair with that man. . . . It’s not true people are just trying to break us up. . . . You have to believe me I never lied to you. I don’t know who he is. . . . Don’t understand why you don’t believe me and you believe everyone else.”
It was readily apparent to Jagiello, who was at Sumner’s side for both readings, that this missive bore no resemblance to the one Herzer had earlier started to read, which was never seen or heard again. Nothing about this letter sounded like Holland. It also strained credulity that Holland would now assert she “never had an affair with that man” and “I don’t know who he is” when Holland, with her lawyer present, had already confessed the affair with Pilgrim and begged Sumner’s forgiveness. Herzer turned the contradiction to her advantage, telling Sumner, “You can’t believe her.”
Sumner asked Herzer to read the letter aloud again. Herzer handed it to Jagiello to read and walked out.
The next day Sumner told Jagiello he wanted to hear the letter a third time. The nurse couldn’t find it, so he went upstairs to Herzer’s room to get a copy. When he entered, Herzer, one of her daughters, and Keryn were huddled over a laptop computer, apparently composing yet another letter. “I waited about 10 minutes while Manuela finished the letter,” Jagiello recalled. Herzer “then handed it to me and told me to go read it to Mr. Redstone, which I reluctantly did.”
The constant deception took a toll on the nurses and staff. While Holland could be temperamental and demanding, she was also often considerate and understanding. By contrast, Herzer was “exceptionally domineering,” as Jagiello put it. Pilgrim’s nickname for her—“Pitbull”—had stuck for good reason. Octaviano acknowledged that “it would be fair to say” that he hated Herzer.
Within weeks of Holland’s departure, Jagiello, Octaviano, and Sumner’s driver, Isileli Tuanaki, with the tacit encouragement of Tyler, began planning a palace coup. On September 18 Jagiello texted Tyler: “Thanks for talking last night. Seal team commence operation freedom today! FYI! I will keep you posted.” He added, “Let’s hope this goes well.”
As for Sumner, “Once he knows the truth, he is going to be livid!” Jagiello texted Tyler.
EPISODE 3
“I Never Thought I’d See You Again”
It was probably just as well that Herzer had removed the stock screens from Sumner’s view, for by October 2015 Viacom stock had plunged roughly 40 percent from its peak the prior year. In part this reflected a decline in the stock of most media companies, especially those owning cable channels, as cord-cutting and streaming entered Americans’ vocabulary. The cable companies’ long stranglehold on viewers began to give way to competition from the internet and streaming companies like Netflix and Amazon. Hit series like House of Cards, The Crown, and Transparent racked up Emmy nominations and put them in direct competition with traditional content creators.
That year, Netflix spent nearly $5 billion on original programming, launching an arms race that few competitors could match. But Viacom had fared much worse than other entertainment companies, and increasingly, Hollywood, Wall Street—and Shari Redstone—blamed Dauman.
Dauman, the consummate deal lawyer, had ascended to the top of Viacom promising more of the transformative acquisitions that had made the company what it was under Sumner. Instead, he spent $15 billion buying back stock, standing passively by while rival Disney bought Marvel and Lucasfilm, owners of the Avengers and Star Wars franchises, before paying $1 billion for a minority stake in a streaming service.
Confronted with an industry in upheaval, Dauman played defense, clinging to what Viacom already had. As a lawyer, his first instinct seemed to be to go to court. Years prior, Viacom had sued Google in a self-destructive and ultimately failed effort to keep Viacom content off YouTube, which Google had recently acquired. When Shari asked Thomas Dooley, Dauman’s chief operating officer, for an explanation, he predicted YouTube would be out of business in a year. (YouTube revenue hit $7 billion in the second quarter of 2021, more than that of CBS and Viacom combined.)
Working primarily out of Viacom headquarters in New York’s Times Square, Dauman never seemed to fit comfortably in the entertainment business, where personal relationships are crucial. Early in his tenure he gratuitously alienated Hollywood royalty Steven Spielberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg, and David Geffen—the troika that founded DreamWorks, which Paramount had acquired in 2005 and then run into the ground. He had gotten rid of Judy McGrath, the popular longtime head of MTV. MTV’s ratings had since plunged due to a lack of new hits and a youth exodus to the internet. He didn’t cultivate talent and seemed to have little interest in celebrities. His tone-deaf comments were blamed for the departures of Comedy Central stars Jon Stewart, John Oliver, and Stephen Colbert, all of whom went on to spectacular careers elsewhere.
When Shari asked Dauman for an explanation for the loss of Stewart, Dauman seemed unconcerned. He asserted Stewart was too much of a “prima donna.” But “that’s our job,” Shari countered. “At CBS we deal with prima donnas all the time.” (A spokesman for Dauman denied he made any such remark. But accounts of the exchange circulated widely inside Viacom.)
Dauman’s relations with cable operators—Viacom’s biggest customers—were, if anything, worse. Dauman prided himself on his dealmaking skills, and he’d aggressively squeezed the cable operators for higher fees to carry Viacom programming. He’d succeeded up to a point, and higher affiliate fees were the main driver of Viacom’s stock price, apart from buybacks. But Dauman still acted like the hard-nosed mergers and acquisitions lawyer he’d once been.
Successful M&A deals are, by definition, one-time negotiations. If Dauman alienated his opponents, it hardly mattered. But Viacom had to deal with the cable operators repeatedly. In October 2014, when Viacom demanded a 50 percent increase despite declining viewership, internet service provider Suddenlink dropped Viacom’s channels rather than meet the demands. Sixty small cable companies did the same.
Worse, Charter Communications, the country’s second-largest cable operator (where Sumner’s archrival John Malone was a board member), was threatening to follow suit. The loss of Charter, some top executives feared, might send Viacom into a death spiral.
Morale sank at Viacom. As former MTV executive Jason Hirschhorn told Vanity Fair in 2016, “When you don’t like your C.E.O., when you don’t hear from him, when you read all these terrible things, when your friends get fired, when you don’t get the bonuses, when the stock has dropped . . . and you have a guy that doesn’t even talk about the programming . . .”
Nor did Dauman do anything to court Shari or even treat her with much respect. As potential heirs to her father’s empire, they were, of course, rivals. It was galling to her that her father would name Dauman his health care proxy rather than his own daughter. Worse, in order to maintain his access to Sumner, Dauman had aligned himself with Holland and Herzer in what Shari deemed no less than an attempt to destroy her family. Her animosity toward him had roots that went far deeper than just business.
Exasperated, Shari finally asked Dauman alone to her recently renovated apartment at the Pierre. She gave him a tour and ordered drinks and canapés before settling in the study overlooking Central Park. She’d been such a gracious host, he was unprepared for what came next: “You and I both know you’re completely unsuited to be chief executive of Viacom,” Shari said, laying her cards on the table.
“I respectfully disagree,” Dauman answered.
He realized she was asking him to resign as chief executive. Someday he’d step aside, he told her, but now wasn’t the right time. The company was at an “inflection point” and needed continuity of leadership.
Sumner was blind to criticism of Dauman, even when it came from his daughter. To counter the drumbeat of bad publicity and speculation about Dauman’s future, Sumner issued a statement on October 6: “Philippe is my long-time friend and partner. He continues to have my unequivocal support and trust, which he has earned over our many years together.” The statement continued, “We are both long-term thinkers and I am more confident than ever that he is on the right track.”
