Disgraced Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein has given an interview from prison in which he attacked Gwyneth Paltrow and discussed feeling in “danger” when confronted by fellow inmates.
Weinstein is jailed on Rikers Island, a prison complex in New York City’s East River.
The film producer has been accused of misconduct by more than 80 women following the bombshell 2017 New York Times investigation that detailed numerous harassment allegations against him and propelled the #MeToo movement.
Highlights
- Harvey Weinstein targeted Gwyneth Paltrow in a prison interview, accusing the actress of making a "big deal over nothing."
- Paltrow and other accusers detailed Weinstein’s inappropriate behavior, sparking the #MeToo movement.
- Weinstein described feeling endangered and isolated in Rikers Island, revealing he was punched by an inmate.
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Among the women who accused Weinstein was Gwyneth Paltrow. The actress claimed that, when she was 22, the movie mogul invited her to his hotel suite for a work meeting but, once they got there, he placed his hands on her without her consent and proposed a massage.
Speaking with The Hollywood Reporter, Weinstein insisted that Paltrow made “a big deal over nothing.”
“I walked out of a nice meeting with her and said, ‘How about a massage?’ And she just went, ‘No, I don’t think so.’ I got the message. I never put my hands on her,” he claimed in the interview, published Tuesday (March 10).
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Weinstein said Paltrow told her then-boyfriend, Brad Pitt, about the encounter. “Brad Pitt came to me and said, ‘Don’t do anything like that with my girl.’ I said ‘Don’t worry, Brad. I got it.’
“But then Gwyneth goes on Howard Stern and The New York Times and makes a big deal about it all. She knows that nothing happened,” the 73-year-old claimed.
“This person who was a friend, who owes her career to me, just stabs me in the back.”
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The Hollywood executive was sentenced to 16 years in prison after being convicted in California in 2022 on charges that he r*ped an actress in a Beverly Hills hotel.
In June 2025, Weinstein was found guilty of one count of a criminal s*x act related to a 2006 incident in which he forced himself on TV production assistant Miriam Haley.
The father of five has maintained his innocence and accused the women who have come forward with allegations against him of wanting to be “part of the club.”
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“Rose McGowan, Rosanna Arquette, Gwyneth Paltrow, Angelina Jolie — they just exaggerated,” Weinstein said, adding that he will one day be exonerated. “They wanted to be victims. They wanted to be part of the club. And they destroyed me.”
Paltrow told the Times that when she was harassed by Weinstein, she had just been cast as the lead in Emma and was afraid of losing her role.
"I was a kid, I was signed up, I was petrified," she recalled.
Image credits: Gwyneth Paltrow
Paltrow added that Weinstein called her after their encounter and screamed at her for telling her boyfriend and close friends about it. She noted, “I was expected to keep the secret.”
After she decided to publicly reveal the episode in 2017, the Oscar-winning actress thought it would be “cataclysmic” for her.
“Throughout the investigation, I didn’t know if I’d go on the record. But during the course of my many conversations with Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey of The New York Times, I started to understand the depth, breadth and darkness of what had actually transpired, which I did not know.
"And once I did, I thought: ‘I have no choice here, I have to say something.’”
Image credits: Gwyneth Paltrow
Paltrow said she’s glad that she decided to go public with the allegations, even if it felt “really scary.”
The Shakespeare in Love star, who worked with Weinstein several times until the early 2000s, said she felt like she had to suppress her feelings until she eventually distanced herself from the producer.
She described his behavior as unpredictable, explaining that he was alternately “generous and championing” and “punitive and bullying.”
Image credits: Mistress of Pemberley
Similarly, Angelina Jolie told the Times in the 2017 exposé—published one week after the initial #MeToo investigation—that in the late 1990s, Weinstein made unwanted advances on her in a hotel room, which she rejected.
Weinstein’s predatory behavior was a Hollywood open secret. When Seth MacFarlane announced Oscar nominees in 2013, he joked, “Congratulations! You five ladies no longer have to pretend to be attracted to Harvey Weinstein.”
Image credits: Mistress of Pemberley
Elsewhere in the interview, the jailed Miramax founder described his experience at Rikers, a maximum-security prison, as an isolating “hell.”
“I just speak to the guards. And the nurses. That’s the extent of my socializing here,” Weinstein said. “There’s no socializing in my wing. Because it’s Rikers Island and it’s hell.”
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Weinstein said he is “begging” to go back to state prison, where he was able to see his friends and watch TV with fellow inmates.
The NY native shared that one inmate at Rikers punched him in the face when he asked whether he was done using a phone.
“I fell on the floor, bleeding everywhere,” he described. “I was hurt really badly. The cops asked me who had done it, but I couldn’t say. You can’t be a rat. That’s the law of the jungle.”
Image credits: Netflix
Moreover, he said he stays away from fellow inmates because he feels like he’s “under siege” whenever he goes to the yard and it’s “too dangerous” for him.
“They come up and say, ‘Weinstein, give me some money.’ ‘Weinstein, give me your lawyer.’ ‘Weinstein, do this.’ ‘Weinstein, do that.’ I’m constantly threatened and derided.”