Harvey Weinstein scandal: Judd Apatow says Hollywood enablers must stop playing along

Show Caption Hide Caption Weinstein, studios sued over alleged sexual misconduct Second actress files anonymous case claiming sexual harassment by movie producer Harvey Weinstein. Francis Maguire reports. Video provided by Reuters

Fallout continues for producer Harvey Weinstein who faces allegations of sexual assault and harassment by dozens of women as well as lawsuits.

The latest developments:

Judd Apatow: We have to change the mindset of the enablers

In a new interview with former U.S. attorney-turned-podcaster Preet Bharara published Thursday by WNYC, producer/director Judd Apatow addressed the sins of Harvey Weinstein and a number of other Hollywood men behaving badly — but he was more interested in addressing the mindset of enablers he says are worried they’ll never work again if they report it.

He recounted a conversation he had with an agent, who explained Weinstein’s method for getting women alone.

“He would go to a film festival,” Apatow explained. “He would say, ‘These are the women I want to meet.’ He would set appointments for the morning. At the last minute, he would cancel and move the appointments to the early evening. There would be multiple people there and they would meet this person at the restaurant downstairs and they’d say, ‘Harvey will be right down.' And one by one, people would have to leave to get to other appointments until there’s just one person and they would say, ‘Harvey would like to meet you upstairs.’ And then they were left alone.”

He asked, “Now who were those people involved in this process? There must have been assistants, development people, co-producers who were aware that he had a way of tricking these women into being alone with him in his room.”

He bottom-lined it, saying, “The problem with our industry is that those people are worried they’ll never work again if they’re the person who calls a prosecutor or the head of an agency or studio and says, ‘He’s harassing all these people.’ That’s what we have to change. We have to find a way to get the business manager who writes the check to the woman that Harvey Weinstein harassed or raped to say, ‘I won’t write that check. I’m not going to do that.’”

Apatow also praised Wonder Woman actress Gal Gadot, who threatened not to do the sequel if another accused power player, producer Brett Ratner, was involved, noting, “That’s really what it takes to take to change this business: People to say, ‘I will not work with that person.’”

'Wind River' filmmakers regain control of their movie from The Weinstein Company

The film Wind River, which had been seen as The Weinstein Company's lone awards-season contender, has been taken away from the studio.

It took weeks of wrangling by writer/director Taylor Sheridan and producers Matthew George and Basil Iwanyk, who began working to wrestle back control of the movie, which the studio acquired at this year's Cannes Film Festival and released in August.

The mystery, which earned Sheridan best-director honors at Cannes, stars Jeremy Renner and Elizabeth Olsen as federal investigators probing the killing of a girl on a Native American Reservation where sexual violence also takes place.

George told the AP, “We feel like (the film) was taken under false pretenses, especially if anyone knew what the guy at the head of this company was up to and given the subject matter of our film, it’s just horrendous. You should have never taken a film that is shining a light on the very subject that this guy is guilty of perpetrating.”

Sheridan recalled phoning the president and COO of The Weinstein Company, David Glasser and declaring, "'I'm going to make an offer to you and you're going to accept it because it's the right thing to do, and you'll get absolutely nothing back from it. But the one thing you will do is you'll allow this story to be told."

Glasser allowed the Weinstein name to be scrubbed from the project and agreed that neither Weinstein or his brother and studio co-founder Bob will profit from it.

Instead, the money will be given to the National Indigenous Women's Resource Center, a non-profit which aims to halt "gender-based violence in Indigenous communities," according to its website.

Contributing: The Associated Press

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