Actors Carey Mulligan and Zoe Kazan have been cast as New York Times reporters Megan Twohey and Jodi Kantor, who brought down Harvey Weinstein with their expose in 2017, Deadline reported. The film, titled She Said is based on the book of the same title She Said: Breaking the Sexual Harassment Story That Helped Ignite a Movement.
According to the report, the film will begin production this summer and will be directed by Unorthodox director Maria Schrader from a script by Oscar-winner Rebecca Lenkiewicz.
In 2018, Annapurna Pictures and Plan B Entertainment came together to buy the rights to She Said under their co-production deal. Oscar nominee Megan Ellison will executive produce for Annapurna with Sue Naegle while Oscar winners Brad Pitt, Dede Gardner, and Jeremy Kleiner will produce for Plan B.
This is the first time Mulligan and Kazan will appear on-screen together.
She Said will tell the story of how Twohey and Kantor worked with editor Rebecca Corbett to break the story of Weinstein’s sexual misconduct and backdoor deals made to intimidate and silence scores of women.
However, after the news of the casting was announced, survivors Sarah Ann Masse and Elizabeth urged the production houses to hire the actual survivors for She Said as many of them have been out of work. Masse urged the makers to have survivors as consultants on the script.
Dear @AnnapurnaPics,
I know you support survivors. Do the right thing & hire Weinstein survivors for “She Said”. No films should profit off our stories without our involvement, especially while so many of us have been retaliated against for coming forward. @hiresurvivors https://t.co/9HQmMfoodU— Sarah Ann Masse – She/Her (@SarahAnnMasse) June 7, 2021
Me too. Where’s the commitment to survivors in this announcement? To hire them? The use of survivor stories and adjacency to us while enhancing the reputation of non-survivors… is grotesque and common.
— Elizabeth (@MediaLizzy) June 7, 2021
More than 80 women accused Weinstein of sexual misconduct since October 2017, following which he was dismissed from Miramax, the production company he had co-founded with his brother Bob Weinstein, and expelled from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science. After nearly two years of allegations of serial sexual harassment, in February 2020, Weinstein was convicted of rape and other sex crimes.
Following a trial at the Manhattan Supreme Court, Weinstein was sentenced to 23 years of imprisonment for mainly two cases- for committing a first-degree criminal sexual act when he forcibly performed oral sex on production assistant Mimi Haleyi in 2006, and the other for committing third-degree rape where he attacked aspiring actor Jessica Mann at a hotel room in Manhattan in 2013.
Weinstein continues to plead not guilty, claiming that any kind of sexual activity was consensual.
