The painstaking work to expose Harvey Weinstein comes to the big screen in the first trailer for She Said, the film adaptation of the book by New York Times reporters Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey.
The duo, who won a Pulitzer prize (along with The New Yorker’s Ronan Farrow) for their 2017 investigation into the sexual predation by the formerly untouchable film producer, helped ignite the #MeToo movement and several subsequent investigations into abuses of power.
The film, from Unothordox director Maria Schrader and adapted for the screen by Ida and Colette writer Rebecca Lenkiewicz, depicts the months-long investigation by Kantor (Zoe Kazan) and Twohey (Carey Mulligan), who “together broke one of the most important stories in a generation”, according to the official synopsis by Universal Pictures. It tells “a story that helped propel the #MeToo movement, shattered decades of silence around the subject of sexual assault in Hollywood and altered American culture forever”.
Nearly two years following the series of stories in the Times and The New Yorker were published, Weinstein was sentenced to 23 years in prison on charges of sexual assault and third-degree rape. He is set to stand trial in Los Angeles for rape and sexual assault charges in October.
The trailer depicts Kantor’s first foray into the story, her partnership with Twohey, and the reporters’ efforts to break the culture of silence around Weinstein’s victims, many bound by NDAs not to speak of their experience.
Mulligan has been nominated for two Oscars, for An Education and Promising Young Woman. She will next be seen opposite Adam Sandler in Spaceman and Bradley Cooper in the Leonard Bernstein biopic Maestro.
She Said also stars Patricia ClarksonAndre Braugher and Samantha Morton. It will premiere on 18 November before a predicted premiere at a fall film festival.
