Unscripted, page 34
The chief executive she anointed, Bob Bakish, warmly welcomed Shari’s ideas and involvement. Still, his tenure wasn’t without its issues. A former Viacom employee alleged that Bakish fondled her at a holiday party in 2016, a claim reported by the website The Information in 2020. With the accusation coming so soon after the Moonves scandal, both Shari and Klieger insisted the board hire an outside law firm and conduct an investigation. The board subsequently issued a statement that the company took any such allegation seriously, but the results of the investigation “did not support the allegation.” The company hasn’t released any details of the probe.
Though Sumner was no doubt an exceptionally difficult client, the years of constant litigation left Shari with an understandably jaded view of the legal profession, or at least some members of it, and its supposedly sacred obligation to put the client’s interest first. She found Leah Bishop’s claims that she had only carried out Sumner’s wishes to be especially galling. Whose interests had CBS’s chief legal counsel Lawrence Tu been serving when he repeatedly blocked her efforts to investigate the Moonves allegations? What could possibly explain Michael Aiello’s cursory investigation and subsequent exoneration of Moonves? Not to mention his support for the misguided lawsuit against the Redstones’ interests cooked up by Wachtell Lipton.
Nor had her experience bolstered her confidence in shareholder democracy. The Viacom and CBS boards of directors were dominated by allies of her father who, when they had to choose, cast their lot with their respective (male) chief executives and went to war with a (female) controlling shareholder. Even without any element of sexism, Shari had confronted a pervasive problem in American corporations, which is the way chief executives dominate the boards charged with overseeing them. The CBS and Viacom directors all purported to be acting on behalf of all shareholders, but how had shareholders benefited?
By most objective measures, Shari was proven right about the merger and her choice of Bakish as chief executive. During the two years he’d presided at Viacom, Bakish had brought the company back from the brink. Adopting a posture of humility, he managed to coax back the big cable operators, and he concluded a multiyear renewal deal with the rebellious Charter Communications. Viacom acquired Pluto TV and laid plans for its Paramount+ streaming service, combining the CBS All Access platform and Viacom’s streaming operations. In June 2021 Bakish announced that Pluto would reach $1 billion in revenue a year ahead of schedule. In February 2022 ViacomCBS indicated that a new era was at hand, renaming itself Paramount Global, with the studio’s iconic mountain peak as its logo. Gone was Sumner’s cherished but little-recognized Viacom name, not to mention CBS, a still-potent brand, but one dwindling in significance along with the other legacy networks.
That summer Paramount had a huge but distinctly old-media box office success in Top Gun: Maverick, the return of Tom Cruise in a sequel to his 1980s megahit Top Gun. The film opened exclusively in theaters, breathing new life into struggling theater chains (including National Amusements) before migrating midsummer to streaming (although it was available immediately on Paramount+ with a trial subscription).
Shari did her best to reform the male-centric culture she inherited, especially at CBS. In 2019 CBS named Susan Zirinsky president of CBS News, the first woman to lead the news division. (She stepped down in 2021 and was succeeded by coheads, one a woman.) Seven of thirteen ViacomCBS board members were women, including Shari and Linda Griego, the lone holdovers from the Moonves-era CBS board.
There’s no question that combining CBS and Viacom allowed the company to gain greater scale. But was it enough? While its streaming services had a better-than-expected 36 million subscribers in mid-2021, that was only big enough to rank sixth. ViacomCBS was far behind the leaders: Netflix (213 million), Amazon Prime (175 million), Disney+ (118 million), and Peacock (54 million).
Wall Street analysts were skeptical. And by the measure Sumner cared most about—the stock price—the merger had failed to stem the company’s decline. The combined market capitalization of Viacom and CBS was $30 billion when the merger was announced in 2019. By mid-June 2022 it was less than half that, just under $15 billion. It was up against competitors that were many times larger: Amazon (market capitalization of over $1 trillion), Netflix ($77 billion), and Walt Disney ($172 billion).
While its competitors seized the opportunities presented by the digital revolution, Viacom and CBS lost precious years to their internal struggles. It’s safe to say that the intracompany warfare prior to 2018 delivered the worst possible outcome—neither a merger of CBS and Viacom nor a sale to someone else.
Since the merger, Shari has said she’d sell the company at the right price. Rumors swirled briefly after she was spotted at 2021’s Sun Valley conference (where she no longer needed someone like Moonves to show her around) talking to possible suitor Brian Roberts, the chief executive of Comcast. But nothing immediately came of it. Rather than megadeals, she has said she would prefer to focus on joint ventures, expanding Paramount Global’s reach while preserving Redstone family control.
Shari was also running the Sumner M. Redstone Charitable Foundation, focusing on education and efforts to combat anti-Semitism and other forms of discrimination by reaching children at an early age.
For most of the pandemic she worked from her house in Connecticut, located just steps from the beach on Long Island Sound. She sometimes found herself getting just three to four hours of sleep a night, but she managed to take her young grandchildren to the movies—they watched Paramount’s PAW Patrol (which both streamed on Paramount+ and was a box office success in August 2021) at a National Amusements multiplex in Westchester County (where Shari checked out the candy display).
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It’s not clear to what extent Sumner himself understood or was able to savor his daughter’s success. Peter Bart, the former longtime editor of Variety, who was close to Sumner, was granted a rare visit in 2019. “His withered hand signaled a greeting, or the semblance of one,” Bart reported in a column for Deadline Hollywood. “His eyes flickered weakly, but his effort at conversation was reduced to a grunt, mixed with an occasional scream of rage and frustration over his limitations.” Sumner was bedridden, being fed intravenously, and “a team of nurses and conservators stand by for needed assistance,” Bart observed.
On the morning of October 11, 2020, Sumner’s nurse called Shari from Beverly Park to tell her she thought the end was near.
Shari told the nurse to put warmers on Sumner’s hands and to hold him. She kept the phone line open so her father could hear her talk, even if he wasn’t conscious. She imagined him saying, “What the fuck are you talking about? I’m not going anywhere.” But “just in case,” she said, “here’s what you need to know.”
Over the next several hours she reviewed his life’s accomplishments. She promised to take care of the family and to nurture the business empire he’d created. “It will be here forever,” she assured him. “I love you,” she said over and over.
Finally the nurse told her that Sumner had quietly stopped breathing. Shari screamed.
Sumner was ninety-seven. National Amusements announced his death, describing him as “the self-made businessman, philanthropist and World War II veteran who built one of the largest collections of media assets in the world.”
Despite their late-in-life reconciliation, Shari could never be certain she’d gained her father’s approval given his impaired faculties. Just after Sumner died, she reached out to Tad Jankowski, her father’s former teaching assistant, friend, and longtime business colleague, for reassurance. Had she done the right thing? she asked, citing Dauman’s ouster and firing Moonves. Would her father have approved? Had he really loved her?
What could he say? Jankowski emphasized that Sumner had loved a fight and loved to win. Shari had never given up. She’d proven her mettle. Her father would have “loved and respected that,” he assured her. He would be proud of her.
Sumner’s remains were flown to Boston. Shari, Tyler, and Kimberlee accompanied the hearse to the family plot at Sharon Memorial Park that Holland and Herzer had tried to get their hands on. (Brandon was in Israel, but participated using FaceTime.) Sumner’s son Brent and his family were absent. Due to the pandemic, no one else was present except for Shari’s ex-husband, Rabbi Korff, who conducted the burial ceremony.
The gathering was so intimate Shari felt no need to restrain her emotions. She knelt so close to the grave her children worried she might fall in. Between bouts of crying, she told her father everything she’d ever wanted to say to him.
Finally she stopped. “Is there anything else?” she asked.
Her daughter reminded her that Sumner had asked that Frank Sinatra’s recording of “My Way” be played at his funeral. Shari had always cringed on the many occasions Sumner had insisted on listening to it. But now she asked Kim to pull up the lyrics on her phone. Shari began singing:
And now the end is here
And so I face that final curtain
She struggled through the five verses, each ending with the refrain:
I did it my way.
Sumner Redstone at the 1993 MTV Music Video Awards with his wife, Phyllis; his daughter, Shari; Shari’s children, Tyler, Brandon, and Kimberlee; and, to Sumner’s right, singer-songwriter Michael Stipe, of R.E.M. Absent was Sumner’s increasingly estranged son, Brent. Phyllis’s appearances at Sumner’s side were largely ceremonial; she threatened to divorce him for infidelity that same year and followed through in 2002.
Talk show host Larry King interviewed Sumner at the 2009 Milken Institute in Los Angeles. Sumner claimed to have reversed the aging process and told the audience he had the vital statistics—and sex life—of a twenty-year-old.
Malia Andelin with Sumner and CBS chief executive Les Moonves at the premiere of a CBS film in 2010. Andelin was working as a flight attendant on the company jet when Sumner became obsessed with her. He sent her a jewel-encrusted handbag with a note: “I’m a panther and I’m going to pounce.” Andelin later accused him of using Viacom and CBS resources to follow and spy on her.
After Sumner became infatuated with singer Heather Naylor (center, surrounded by other members of the Electric Barbarellas), he pressured CBS chief executive Les Moonves in 2011 to put the rock group on the network and got MTV executives to launch a reality-TV series about them. A subsequent lawsuit involving Naylor upended Sumner’s estate planning and succession plans.
Shari’s growing family surrounded Sumner at his induction into the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2012, a measure of his status as a still-potent Hollywood mogul. (Shari’s daughter, Kimberlee, is on Shari’s right; her son-in-law, Jason Ostheimer, and her sons, Brandon and Tyler, are on her left.) By now Sumner was openly at war with Shari, totally estranged from his son, Brent, and bestowing millions of dollars on a succession of young mistresses and female companions.
Sumner and his live-in companion Sydney Holland attended a 2013 gala honoring famed director Martin Scorsese with Les Moonves and his wife, the CBS host Julie Chen. After Sumner and Holland were introduced by Patti Stanger, on reality-TV’s The Millionaire Matchmaker, and after what Holland said was an idyllic courtship that culminated in a nine-carat diamond ring, Holland moved into Sumner’s mansion. She was soon in his estate plan as well.
Holland and Sumner’s former flame Manuela Herzer flanked Sumner at a 2013 gala given by UCLA to honor Al Gore, a recipient of Sumner’s charitable largesse. While the house staff considered Holland to be Sumner’s “live-in girlfriend,” Herzer, too, moved into the mansion. She and Holland were soon plotting to gain control over Sumner’s fortune and media empire.
George Pilgrim was photographed for “Hunks in Trunks,” a Cosmopolitan magazine All About Men feature, in 1996. When Sydney Holland met Pilgrim at the pool deck of the Peninsula Beverly Hills years later, he still had the dark blond hair and chiseled abs of the soap opera star he’d once been.
Pilgrim and Holland outside the private jet Holland used to commute between Sumner’s mansion and the lavish house in Sedona, Arizona, that she bought to share with Pilgrim. Despite Stanger’s warnings that Sumner would never tolerate infidelity, Pilgrim and Holland traded passionate text messages, were soon engaged, and began calling themselves husband and wife. Pilgrim donated sperm so they could conceive a child.
Holland and Herzer at a Hammer Museum gala in 2013, as they cemented their hold over Sumner and emerged into the celebrity spotlight. “The both of you look like high-class call girls,” an angry Pilgrim told Holland after provocative photos of the pair appeared in Vanity Fair. Herzer later joined the Hammer Museum’s board as she and Holland restyled themselves as “renowned” philanthropists.
Viacom chief executive Philippe Dauman, at right, and his eventual successor, Bob Bakish, left, flank the singer/songwriter legend Bono backstage at a 2008 MTV awards ceremony. At the time Dauman was so close to Sumner that he was considered his surrogate son, much to Shari’s dismay. But that changed abruptly after Dauman tried to sell a stake in Sumner’s cherished but underperforming Paramount studio. By contrast, Bakish proved a master at relationship management, forging a close bond with Shari.
Redstone lawyer Rob Klieger speaks at a 2016 hearing in a packed Boston courtroom, where he defended the Redstones’ efforts to oust Dauman and his allies and addressed an ailing Sumner’s mental capacity.
Shari Redstone and her son Brandon Korff arrive with her attorney, Elizabeth Burnett, at Los Angeles Superior Court in 2016. Manuela Herzer launched the suit in an effort to regain her influence and inheritance after Sumner ejected both her and Holland from his mansion. Herzer’s suit went off the rails when Sumner testified using colorful profanity: “I hate her.”
The actress Bobbie Phillips at the People’s Choice awards in 1996, a year after she experienced a traumatic encounter with Les Moonves, then the powerful president of Warner Bros. Television. Phillips told her manager, Marv Dauer, that she never wanted to see or work with Moonves again.
Marv Dauer at his Los Angeles home in 2018. As the #MeToo movement gained traction, Dauer used his newfound leverage with Moonves to resuscitate his flagging career. But, Moonves warned him, “If Bobbie talks, I’m finished.”
Les Moonves with CBS This Morning cohost and talk show star Charlie Rose. When Rose was fired in November 2017 after he admitted he had “behaved insensitively” around women, Moonves assured the CBS board that the company had procedures in place, and said publicly, “It’s important that a company’s culture will not allow for this.”
Les Moonves in 2018. Moonves agonized over the decision to go to war with Shari and the Redstone family, especially given the secrets in his past. “She will come after me big time,” he texted his chief operating officer. “She will be enraged.”
Shari and her father pictured in 2012, Shari’s public smile masking their often tense relationship. After Sumner died in 2020, Shari asked Sumner’s longtime confidant and protégé Tad Jankowski if her father had really loved her. Jankowski reassured her that she’d never given up the fight and she’d proven her mettle. Her father would have “loved and respected that.”
Acknowledgments
There were many people who made this book possible, including colleagues at The New York Times who contributed to the work that inspired it. David Enrich was our editor throughout our reporting on Les Moonves and CBS, including “ ‘If Bobbie Talks, I’m Finished’ ” and other stories that ran in the paper in 2018. He’s the perfect combination of exacting and fun. David was the first to suggest we had the makings of a book and acted as a sounding board throughout the process. We’re extremely grateful for his time, perceptive feedback, and good judgment.
Our fellow Times reporter Ellen Gabler contributed invaluable reporting to “ ‘If Bobbie Talks’ ” and was on the Moonves case from the earliest days of the #MeToo movement. Nick Summers, then-editor of the Sunday edition of The New York Times, came up with the “Bobbie” headline and steered the story into the paper.
The story would likely not have happened without Jim Windolf, then the Times’s media editor, whose direction early on led to a key source. David McCraw, the Times’s lawyer with an editor’s eye, helped us navigate legal issues and bulletproofed our work. The intrepid Times researchers Alain Delaquérière, Doris Burke, and Susan Beachy contributed to our stories, and Susan Beachy also worked with us on our book, helping us to track down the most elusive of sources and court records.
We would also like to thank the Times’s business editor Ellen Pollock, who supported our reporting and was enthusiastic about the results. The top leadership of the Times backed our reporting over the years, helping to challenge and elevate it, and allowed us to take time off to write this book. Deputy Managing Editor Matthew Purdy was especially inspiring and encouraging. We are grateful to be part of the Times’s mission, and to be surrounded by such an array of thoughtful, talented, and committed journalists.
