Unscripted, page 28
Farrow suggested Jones speak to the actress Mira Sorvino, who’d been quoted by name in his Weinstein exposé and who’d volunteered to speak to other women worried about the consequences. Jones talked to her and came away thinking maybe it wouldn’t be so bad.
Still, she wasn’t ready to commit.
* * *
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At CBS Gil Schwartz was again hearing rumors about a New Yorker article. Schwartz mentioned them to the Vanity Fair reporter William Cohan and assured him that Farrow’s reporting would ultimately amount to nothing. He warned Cohan not to go down the same path. Periodically Moonves assured Schwartz there was nothing to be concerned about.
Now that Moonves and the independent directors had laid down the gauntlet with the lawsuit to strip Shari of control, any #MeToo issue with Moonves had naturally taken on new significance. On the one hand, Moonves’s willingness to launch a lawsuit had seemed to confirm his innocence: What chief executive in his right mind would go to war with a controlling shareholder knowing there was a risk that inappropriate sexual behavior would emerge? On the other hand, since Moonves’s continuation as chief executive was at the heart of the board’s decision, anything that put his status in question would have an enormous impact on both the litigation and the company’s future.
This wasn’t lost on Shari and her allies. She and Klieger were hearing more rumors about Moonves and women, as well as incidents involving other CBS executives. Some came from former employees of CBS itself, sources who asked to remain anonymous. They weren’t very specific, but there was enough to convince Shari and Klieger that a more thorough and professional investigation than Aiello’s half-hearted effort was needed.
On June 25, Shari and Klieger stepped up the pressure. They wrote to CBS’s chief legal officer, Lawrence Tu, asking him to appoint outside counsel to conduct an independent investigation into “allegations of harassment, bullying, and favoritism involving senior CBS management and employees.” The letter continued. “Although allegations and media reports of course do not constitute evidence that misconduct actually occurred, they also cannot lightly be dismissed. Yet, that appears to be what happened here.” Even though Shari had raised concerns with board members Minow and Gordon and asked for a board meeting to discuss them,
we understand that the only “investigation” undertaken with respect to those allegations was to ask Mr. Moonves, in substance, whether there was any truth to the allegations. Mr. Moonves’s denial of the allegations apparently constituted the beginning and end of the inquiry.
Our concerns regarding these matters have been heightened in light of additional alleged incidents of harassment by senior CBS executives, including Mr. Moonves, that have been reported to us in the weeks since CBS and the Special Committee filed suit. Because these incidents have been reported to us on a confidential basis, with obvious (and perhaps well founded) fear of reprisals, we are not comfortable disclosing specifics at this time. However, we are prepared to provide details subject to appropriate protections to independent outside counsel appointed by CBS so that counsel may follow up with the sources and otherwise investigate those and the other allegations that have been made.
We believe the concerns that we and others have raised must be addressed responsibly and fairly—especially at this watershed moment in time—and that a credible and thorough investigation is a fundamental issue of corporate governance and critical to restoring confidence in and preserving the culture of CBS going forward.
Tu responded a week later that outside investigations were already underway. The Proskauer law firm was examining Charlie Rose’s behavior and the news division more generally, and Weil Gotshal had interviewed senior management and the head of human resources and concluded no further investigation was warranted.
Tu ended by chastising Klieger and Shari for even raising the issue: “It should be uncontroversial that surfacing unsubstantiated allegations making insinuations of this sort can be extremely unfair to individuals and cause serious damage to CBS and its stockholders. The differences that currently exist between you and the non-NAI affiliated members of the Board cannot justify or excuse such unfairness or other actions inconsistent with the responsibilities of CBS Board Members.”
That prompted a blistering reply from Klieger on July 9:
At the outset, Ms. Redstone and I reject your thinly-veiled suggestion that we raised the concerns set forth in our letter as a reaction to the decision by CBS management and certain of its directors to sue its controlling stockholder. Both Ms. Redstone and I have been raising concerns about alleged harassment and bullying for more than six months, long before we had any idea that CBS management or members of its Board viewed themselves as “adverse” to the controlling stockholder and its representatives. We raised those concerns then, as we do now, out of our unwavering commitment to fulfill our obligations as fiduciaries and to act in the best interests of the company and its shareholders. The timing of our request for an independent investigation stems from the company’s regrettable failure to act on those concerns.
It had come as news to Klieger that there even was a Proskauer-led investigation, and he asked to speak to the lawyers involved. As for Weil Gotshal’s investigation, Klieger said that simply asking Moonves and accepting his denial “does not even qualify as an investigation, much less the type of independent investigation that any company, public or private, would be expected to undertake in response to alleged misconduct by senior executives. It is truly astounding that the members of the Nominating and Governance Committee believe they adequately discharged their fiduciary obligations through such an obviously perfunctory inquiry.”
Tu didn’t respond.
* * *
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Shari and Klieger’s letter pushing for a more thorough investigation of Moonves obviously made Bobbie Phillips’s ongoing silence all the more important. Since the previous December, when Dauer had first contacted him, nearly all their interactions had been initiated by Dauer. But now Moonves reached out to Dauer, suggesting they meet again at Art’s Delicatessen in Studio City on Friday, July 13. “See you then,” Dauer responded.
At their lunch Moonves reiterated that his sexual encounter with Phillips had been consensual—“I was never a predator, I was a player” was how he put it. But he again poured on the remorse, saying he wanted to make amends and was still looking for a part for Phillips.
“Well, it’s been eight months and you haven’t gotten her anything,” Dauer responded. “She’s been very patient, and she’d like something to happen.” He added, “She’s getting angry.”
The following week Moonves called Peter Golden, the head of casting, to see if there was anything shooting in Toronto, because there was an actress there he wanted Golden to consider. At first Golden said no, but then he realized Blood & Treasure was casting in Toronto and much of it was being shot in Montreal. “Who’s the actress?” Golden asked Moonves.
“Bobbie Phillips,” Moonves answered, a name that, so far as Golden was concerned, came out of the blue. Moonves confided in Golden that he was facing a #MeToo situation. (Moonves said that Golden “understood this was a woman who was potentially making an accusation,” although “I didn’t get into specifics.”)
Golden looked into Blood & Treasure and spotted the role of Erica—“a big, friendly woman clad in overalls,” the casting breakdown specified. It was a relatively small part that paid $1,500 for a day’s shooting. Golden thought it might be perfect for Phillips and called Taylor Elmore, the show’s executive producer.
* * *
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Just six days later, on July 19, CBS communications vice president Chris Ender, a twenty-two-year veteran at the company who worked for Gil Schwartz, returned from a meeting to find a message from Sean Lavery, a fact-checker at The New Yorker.
The long-rumored—and dreaded—call had come.
EPISODE 3
“What the Hell Are You Doing?”
Sean Lavery initially didn’t tell Ender a whole lot, just that The New Yorker was reporting six incidents involving Moonves and women. He identified by name four of the women in the story—the actress Illeana Douglas, “J.D. Jones” (for fact-checking purposes, Jones had agreed to be identified by her first initials), Christine Peters (Sumner Redstone’s old flame), and a television writer, Dinah Kirgo.
One of the purported victims, a former child star, was identified only by her first name, “Kimberly.” The other was an actress who had played a police officer on a long-running CBS show.
Ender went to his boss, Schwartz, who called in Dana McClintock, the head of corporate communications in New York. Ender lived in California and handled the entertainment side of the company; an exposé involving the chief executive was way above his pay grade and would ordinarily have been handled by Schwartz himself or McClintock. But who would want to handle such a hot potato? Schwartz told Ender to do it, since he’d already started dealing with Lavery.
When Ender called Lavery back, it was evening on the East Coast. Farrow joined the call. He and Lavery went over the story in detail, working from a rough draft. Ender took copious notes. The call lasted about two hours. By the end Ender was dazed.
He duly reported everything to Schwartz, who immediately called Moonves.
Moonves’s initial reaction was shock—he didn’t remember any of the purported encounters. He was still convinced Shari was behind the accounts—a theory he pushed on anyone who would listen, although he cited no evidence to back it up. Moonves and CBS began a frantic effort to find out more. As Moonves recalled, “We were scrambling.”
Schwartz swung into action. He notified a few board members and enlisted Tu. CBS hired an outside lawyer, James W. Quinn, the former head of litigation at Weil Gotshal, to oversee the effort. They brought in Matthew Hiltzik, a lawyer and crisis public-relations consultant. Schwartz put together an elaborate spreadsheet with the names, dates, places, and other facts as they emerged, along with a mounting list of errors in The New Yorker’s account.
Using the incomplete facts supplied by The New Yorker, Moonves tried to identify the unnamed women in the story, though he turned out to be wrong about “Kimberly”—he thought she was the former child star Kim Richards, one of the “Real Housewives of Beverly Hills,” but it was a different Kimberly altogether. So of course he had no memory of ever meeting her.
He guessed right about the actress on the police series—she was someone he thought of as an old friend. She’d attended a big CBS gala in 2003, so Moonves thought she could hardly argue he’d retaliated against her for an incident that supposedly happened in 1995.
* * *
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The next day Dauer sent Golden, the casting director, copies of Bobbie Phillips’s résumé and demo reel. Golden forwarded them to the producer, Taylor, with the message: “Love for you to consider her for Erica, let me know.”
Golden briefed Moonves, who responded, “Good.”
Later that day Dauer got a text from a number he didn’t recognize: “Marv: this is Billy [Bowers], Les Moonves’ assistant. You can text this phone if need be. Les is going to call you now from this number.”
Dauer figured Moonves was calling about a role for Phillips, which finally seemed to be happening. Dauer was watching his hometown baseball team, the Minnesota Twins, on TV when Moonves reached him. But Moonves wasn’t calling him with good news about Phillips. Instead, he was terse and sounded stressed. Moonves asked Dauer to delete all their text messages, adding that he was asking all his friends to do the same thing. (A spokesman for Moonves denied he asked him to delete messages.)
Dauer wondered what that was all about. He hung up and went back to watching the game. He never deleted the messages.
When Dauer used the new number to text Moonves the next day, it was Bowers who answered: “Just tell me the message and I’ll pass it along to him”—the kind of brush-off generations of Hollywood assistants have been trained to deliver. “Why can’t I talk to him?” Dauer pleaded. “If Leslie is free—I’d like to talk to him,” Dauer texted.
There was no response.
That week Moonves promoted Bowers to a new job—with a raise—as a director in CBS’s unscripted department.
* * *
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On July 24, five days after The New Yorker approached CBS, Mike Marvin’s publicists got an email from Sean Lavery, asking if he’d talk to Farrow. He didn’t say what about, except that it “occurred while he worked at Fox in the 80s,” the email said.
The prospect made Marvin nervous. Back when he and Moonves were close friends and participating in the men’s support group, Marvin was the successful screenwriter with a hit movie, and Moonves was a struggling young executive. Since then Marvin had never had another film as big as Six Pack. His writing career had withered, while Moonves ascended to the top echelon of Hollywood’s most powerful executives.
Marvin was now touring as a singer and an acoustic guitar player in the Kingston Trio, the group that helped ignite the folk music craze with its 1958 hit “Tom Dooley” and, after being revived with new members, was playing to audiences of aging baby boomers. Marvin was the only member of the reconstituted group with any tie to an original member: he was a cousin to founder Nick Reynolds.
Like so many people, Marvin could still use a favor from Moonves: he was hoping to arrange an appearance for the trio on CBS This Morning. He knew an unflattering comment about Moonves in The New Yorker would be the end of that.
At the same time, Marvin harbored considerable resentment toward Moonves. Years earlier, Marvin had helped the television writer Anthony Zuiker, then working as a tram driver in Las Vegas, polish a movie script Zuiker had written, which became the 1999 crime thriller The Runner. After that Marvin had encouraged Zuiker to create and produce the CBS megahit CSI, for which Marvin had never gotten so much as a thank-you from Moonves, let alone any writing assignments. Moonves had pretty much dropped Marvin after the men’s group broke up.
So Marvin called Lavery. One of the first things Marvin said was “As soon as I read about Weinstein, I knew I’d get this call about Leslie.” Still, he wasn’t exactly an enthusiastic source. Marvin seemed skeptical of the whole #MeToo movement. He wanted to know if there were other women in the story. Lavery told him there were six. Finally Marvin agreed to go on the record. He confirmed that Jones had been upset when she called him after the meeting with Moonves; hysterical was the word he used. But Marvin couldn’t remember what she’d told him about the meeting.
Marvin thought there were also some troubling errors in Lavery’s account. The fact-checker said Marvin had confronted Moonves by pushing him at a barbecue. He had confronted Moonves, but there was no pushing. It had happened during a meeting of the men’s group, not a barbecue, when Marvin asked Moonves what the hell had happened and Moonves had started yelling at him.
And Jones’s timing was wrong. If Jones was wrong about those things, she might be wrong about other things, too. Marvin figured Moonves had come on to Jones, but he had trouble believing Moonves would have actually assaulted her.
* * *
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Moonves, too, was trying to fact-check what he’d learned about The New Yorker story. He was especially baffled by the Janet Dulin Jones incident. He had no memory of her. Nor did he remember Mike Marvin. He didn’t remember any meeting Marvin had set up or an instance where Marvin had confronted him.
Moonves looked up a photograph of Marvin, and it jogged his memory—they’d both been in the men’s support group organized by Dick Rosetti, a producer who’d hired Moonves at Fox. Moonves still had Rosetti’s cell number but hadn’t used it in years.
Rosetti, now working in real estate after a stint at Playboy Enterprises, was at his desk in Pacific Palisades when Moonves called.
“Hi, Dick,” Moonves said. No one had called Rosetti “Dick” in ages. He now went by “Richard.”
Like Marvin, Rosetti resented that Moonves had dropped him once he was powerful. He’d never asked him to lunch or offered to help when he could have used it.
“How you been?” Moonves asked casually. Rosetti wondered why he was calling.
“Can you tell me something?” Moonves went on. “Who’s Mike Marvin?”
Rosetti laughed in disbelief. “Mike Marvin was in our support group,” Rosetti said. “Mike was in pictures with us. You know Mike.”
“Oh, yeah, Mike Marvin, yeah, yeah,” Moonves replied unconvincingly.
Rosetti had a hunch this call from out of the blue had something to do with #MeToo. He had heard the rumors about Moonves. “What’s the matter?” Rosetti asked.
Moonves explained that Marvin had told Ronan Farrow that he’d introduced Moonves to a woman and Moonves had sexually assaulted her. Marvin had confronted him afterward and there’d supposedly been some kind of shoving match at a social event.
Rosetti was shocked. He and Marvin had remained friends since the support-group days, but he didn’t remember anything like this.
“Jeez, I’m sorry, Les. What do you want me to do?” he asked.
“I need Mike’s number,” Moonves replied. Rosetti offered to call Marvin first.
“Well, get back to me,” Moonves said.
Rosetti immediately called Marvin. He couldn’t believe his old friend had talked to a reporter, let alone accused Moonves of sexual assault, something that was at best hearsay. Rosetti might no longer have been close friends with Moonves, but the last thing he wanted was to have one of the most powerful men in Hollywood angry at him.
