Bob Weinstein, who cofounded the Weinstein Company with his brother Harvey, has opened up about his brother’s history of sexual assaults and the future of their company in a candid interview.
“I find myself in a waking nightmare,” Bob Weinstein told The Hollywood Reporter. “My brother has caused unconscionable suffering. As a father of three girls I say this with every bone in my body – I am heartbroken for the women that he has harmed.”
Bob Weinstein admitted that while he knew his brother was a notorious philanderer and cheater, he didn’t know the extent of Harvey’s actions.
“For me, I thought he was literally just going out there cheating in a pervasive way,” Bob Weinstein said. “It wasn’t like he even had a mistress. It was one after another and that I was aware of. But as far as being in a room and hearing the description in The New York Times? No way. No fucking way was I aware that that was the type of predator that he was. And the way he convinced people to do things? I thought they were all consensual situations.”
Even though Bob and Harvey are brothers, the younger Bob “divorced” himself from Harvey five years ago; they’d only spoken a handful of times to discuss business matters since that time.
“I divorced my brother five years ago. Literally. And those that know me personally in this company understood how I could not take being around him on any level,” Bob Weinstein said. “And certainly my daughters and my family knew it. I could not take his cheating, his lying and also his attitude toward everyone. I had to divorce myself to survive.”
Since the allegations against Harvey Weinstein were published by The New York Times and New Yorker, Bob – who had a hand in the Weinstein Company’s decision to sever its relationship with Harvey – has spoken to his brother twice. On both occasions, Harvey failed to express any remorse for his victims, instead focusing on who leaked details of the assaults to the press.
“It’s unbelievable that even to this moment he is more concerned with who sold him out,” Bob Weinstein said. “I don’t hear concern or contrition for the victims. And I want them to hear that. Harvey has no remorse whatsoever.”
Bob Weinstein added that he would personally write a letter to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to tell them to terminate Harvey’s membership. Bob Weinstein also told an anecdote about his friend Mira Sorvino, who shared her account of a Harvey Weinstein encounter to the New Yorker.
“I have been a personal friend of Mira for the last several years. We reconnected when I rented a house in Malibu,” Bob said. “Mira, her husband and her kids have come over and spent many hours together with us. But she never told me. And now I literally was texting with her, and she said, ‘Are you mad at me?’ And I said, ‘Mad at you? I’m so proud of you, but I feel sick that you had to hold that kind of thing in.’”
With everyone from Disney and Amazon to Lin-Manuel Miranda withdrawing from Weinstein Company projects in the aftermath of the scandal, Bob Weinstein vowed that the company bearing his last name would not be sold or stripped down for parts.
“I know they’re saying ‘Shut this company down.’ Well, they didn’t shut Fox News down, they didn’t shut NBC down,” Bob said. “My brother is the one that should pay with everything. And I mean literally – whether it’s criminal or otherwise – I will be supportive of all of that. But I don’t think the people that are the employees of this company or the company itself should pay.”
As for rumors that recent Los Angeles transplant Jay-Z was interested in purchasing Harvey Weinstein’s stake in the company, Bob Weinstein said, “I’d love nothing more than that, but as far as I know, that is not a fact.”
