Weinstein’s Former Assistant Breaks Silence, Makes Damning Claim About Disney

Zelda Perkins, a former assistant to Harvey Weinstein, has broken her silence about her alarming experience with Weinstein at Miramax in the 1990s and, in the process, made a damning claim about Miramax and the Walt Disney Company, which she says turned a blind eye to an alleged rape.

In an interview with BBC, the first that she’s given since the Weinstein allegations came to light, Perkins said that while she worked as Weinstein’s assistant at Miramax one of her co-workers came to her “extremely distressed” and told her that Weinstein had tried to rape her during the 1998 Venice Film Festival.

“We were at the Venice Film Festival and he tried to rape [a fellow employee],” Perkins told the BBC’s Emily Maitlis this week. “She was extremely distressed,” Perkins said of her co-worker. “Clearly in shock. Didn’t want anybody else to know. Absolutely terrified of the consequences, what would happen.”

Perkins said she was so alarmed by the accusation that she stormed into a meeting to confront her boss. Sensing how “angry” she was, she said, Weinstein abruptly followed her out of the room.

“For me to have broken into a meeting like that was very unusual, and he didn’t question me,” she said. “He got up and came with me straight away and came with me because he knew why I was so angry and how serious I was.”

Weinstein, who Perkins describes as a “master manipulator,” adamantly denied the allegations — as he has of all nonconsensual sexual allegations — swearing “on the life of his wife and children” that nothing happened, a vow Perkins said had become his “get out of jail card.”

Perkins said she reported the rape allegation to her female supervisor at Miramax and was told to get a lawyer. She says she “naively” assumed that Disney, which owned Miramax from 1993 to 2010, would be “horrified” by the accusation and “fire Harvey” or at least “help us with the proceedings,” but the company failed to act.

The two women resigned from the company and Perkins took legal action.

“The lawyers made very clear that we didn’t have many options because we hadn’t gone to police when we were in Venice,” she said. “We had no physical evidence, and ultimately it would be two under-25-year-old women’s words against Harvey Weinstein, Miramax Film Corporation, and essentially the Disney company. The only way we could get Miramax to the table was by making a monetary request.”

Perkins ended up agreeing to a settlement of $200,000 in October 1998 that required her to sign a non-disclosure agreement. Perkins told the BBC that she now regrets having agreed to remain silent.

“[T]he only thing I had to try to prevent Harvey’s behavior was to create an agreement that was as binding to him and difficult for him as it was going to be for me,” she explained. The agreement required him to attend therapy and said he was to be dismissed from the company if someone else made a claim, said Perkins.

Earlier in the interview, Perkins described Harvey as both a “repulsive monster” but also an extremely charismatic man, who was a “master manipulator” of those around him.

“Harvey is now everyone sees as this sort of repulsive monster, which he was and is on one hand,” she said. “But what I think is interesting and what is maybe not brought forward is that he was also an extremely exciting, brilliant, stimulating person to be around. He was a master manipulator and his needs changed very quickly. And you never knew whether you were his confidant or whether you were going to be screamed at.”

Watch the full interview here.