After nearly two decades of being forced to remain silent due to a nondisclosure agreement she’d signed 20 years ago, Zelda Perkins is speaking out about her experience as Harvey Weinstein’s personal assistant.
In her first-ever interview since multiple allegations of sexual misconduct, assault and rape were first brought against the producer, Perkins told Newsnight that she was forced to resign and agree to a settlement totaling $168,000 after she accused Weinstein of attempting to rape her colleague. She says that during a trip to the Venice Film Festival in 1998, an anonymous colleague of hers approached her after the producer, who she calls a “repulsive monster” in the interview, had tried to rape her.
We’re live now on BBC Two with @maitlis who is speaking to Harvey Weinstein’s former assistant Zelda Perkins in her first TV interview – you can also watch online at https://t.co/F89eZK8FZc #newsnight pic.twitter.com/6L66HnemTE
— BBC Newsnight (@BBCNewsnight) December 19, 2017
“She was shaking, very distressed, and clearly in shock,” Perkins says in the interview. “She didn’t want anybody to know and was absolutely terrified of the consequences. I spoke with her and tried to calm her down before confronting Harvey face to face.”
Perkins’ story only becomes more appalling from there — she says that when she and the unnamed colleague tried to take legal action, they were informed by lawyers that, due to their lack of physical evidence, there wasn’t much that could be done. From there, both women resigned from the company and signed nondisclosure agreements that they were never allowed to have copies of and were only allowed to read under supervision.
“It’s not just distressing for me, but for lots of women who have not been able to own their past, and for many of them, their trauma,” Perkins told Newsnight. “Although the process I went through was legal, it was immoral.”
Perkins later calls for change regarding the laws that protected Weinstein from being outed by his many victims for years, saying, “You cannot have a legal document that protects a criminal. This isn’t someone who sold you a dodgy car.”
Watch her full interview below: