When Kate Winslet won the lead actress Oscar for The Reader in 2009, she thanked 19 people by name along with many others in general.
She did not mention Harvey Weinstein, whose company financed and distributed the movie.
“That was absolutely deliberate,” Winslet said. “I remember being told. ‘Make sure you thank Harvey if you win.’ And I remember turning around and saying, ‘No I won’t. No I won’t.’ And it was nothing to do with not being grateful. If people aren’t well-behaved, why would I thank him?”
Winslet made her first movie, Peter Jackson’s psychological drama Heavenly Creatures, for Weinstein’s Miramax Films — a fact, Winslet says, that the disgraced producer brought up every time she saw him.
“For my whole career, Harvey Weinstein, whenever I’ve bumped into him, he’d grab my arm and say, ‘Don’t forget who gave you your first movie.’ Like I owe him everything. Then later, with The Reader, same thing, ‘I’m gonna get you that Oscar nomination, I’m gonna get you a win, I’m gonna win for you.’”
“But that’s how he operated,” Winslet continued. “He was bullying and nasty. Going on a business level, he was always very, very hard to deal with — he was rude. He used to call my female agent a [vulgar name for a woman].”
She said further: “This kind of treatment of any workplace is utterly unacceptable. And hopefully what will happen is that more women will feel compelled to come forward — these women are victims of crime by a man who was always impossible to deal with. I hope that Harvey Weinstein absolutely is punished within the fullest extent of the law should that be the case.”
Weinstein’s actions surrounding The Reader have long been seen as grievous on numerous counts.
The drama, in which Winslet played a woman hiding her past as a guard at a Nazi concentration camp, endured numerous delays during production. After director Stephen Daldry told Weinstein he couldn’t deliver the movie in time for the 2008 Oscar season, Weinstein — according to producer Scott Rudin (who took his name off the film in protest) — badgered producer Sydney Pollack on his deathbed.
Winslet does reveal one thing about the film that she believes has never been reported: Weinstein shut down The Reader with four days left on the production schedule.
“We still had a full four days of shooting of very key scenes that for me — as a person playing that part — were absolutely crucial to the story and to Stephen Daldry, they were as well,” Winslet says. “And Harvey just decided, ‘OK, we’re done. No more money. I’m pulling the plug.’ We had to stop and were sent home. That was it.
“And again, this is just on the business side of things, but he was always, always very, very, very unpleasant to deal with. Very.”
That was the last time Winslet worked with Weinstein.
