EPISODE 4
“I Feel Sick All the Time”
Moonves spent Christmas with his wife and son in New York but was back in California for New Year’s, staying at his $28 million beach house in Malibu with “too much family,” as he lamented in a text to Dauer. Still, on New Year’s Eve Moonves found the time to drive into Los Angeles and have breakfast with Dauer at Art’s Delicatessen in Studio City, an industry hangout not far from the CBS studios.
Dauer still didn’t know exactly what had happened between Moonves and Bobbie Phillips, but Moonves flatly denied ever assaulting the actress. He acknowledged they’d engaged in oral sex in his office, but he insisted it was “consensual.” Dauer reassured him again that neither he nor Phillips was talking.
Dauer briefed Phillips on the meeting soon after and made the mistake of saying Moonves claimed their encounter was consensual. That set her off. It certainly didn’t sound to her like Moonves was trying to make amends or gain her forgiveness.
Later that day Moonves texted Dauer his gratitude: “I enjoyed seeing you. Happy New Year to you. I know you have my back. You are a good guy. Thank you.”
Still, Dauer, having gone to some lengths to get the autographed baseball to Charlie in time for Christmas, was disappointed that Moonves hadn’t even mentioned it.
“Did Charlie like the ball?” Dauer prodded.
“Sorry. He Loved it,” Moonves replied.
Shari was still angry about the December board meeting, but at least her fellow CBS directors seemed to recognize that something had to be done in the face of growing competitive threats. Maybe they could be persuaded to support a CBS-Viacom merger. Still, she was feeling drained from the Viacom battle, and she didn’t have the appetite for another boardroom fight. She wasn’t going to push a merger if Moonves opposed her.
Shari felt Moonves might be more candid with Rob Klieger rather than telling her what he thought she wanted to hear, so she asked Klieger to meet with Moonves and take his pulse. At the same time, Klieger felt maybe he could help close the widening gulf between Shari and the CBS chief executive.
Klieger showed up at Moonves’s office in Studio City on January 5. Moonves was wearing jeans and didn’t look at all pleased to see him. It probably didn’t help that Klieger had mistakenly shown up a week early—their meeting was on Moonves’s calendar for January 12. But now that he was there, they settled into a small conference room near Moonves’s office. Moonves folded his arms across his chest.
“Maybe it’s not my place to tell you this,” Klieger began, for he realized he was just a lawyer trying to advise one of the most successful executives in entertainment. He genuinely thought Moonves was a business genius. He could understand that he’d be wary of someone he thought of as Shari’s person, but he plunged ahead.
“Look, I know Shari has lots of ideas and thoughts about the business,” he said. “I have no idea whether some of them are good or bad. Perhaps some are bad.” He said he wasn’t there to tell Moonves to do whatever Shari wanted. “If you don’t think something’s a good idea, don’t do it. But why not make her feel like you care? Like you’re considering her views and you’re interested? Is that so hard?”
Klieger gave Moonves a few examples: If you’re going to appoint someone to a high-level position, ask her opinion. A new show? Tell her you’d value her input. Then do what you think is right.
“If she feels she’s part of the thinking and you’re not keeping her at arm’s length, you’ll have a much better relationship. You won’t have this constant fighting. It really does matter if you want to do the combination.”
Which led to the topic of the merger. Klieger said he didn’t know at this point if it was the right thing or not, but did Moonves support it?
“I’m not going to stand in the way,” he said.
“That’s not what she wants to hear,” Klieger responded.
Moonves said he hadn’t liked the way Shari stormed out of the last board meeting. And now she was complaining about his loyal and long-serving board member Gifford, even trying to get him off the board, over some minor incident at the Super Bowl.
Klieger stressed that he and Shari needed to get along. Shari didn’t want the merger unless Moonves was enthusiastically behind it. “If you’re reluctant, it won’t work,” he said. “Shari is becoming closer with Bob,” Klieger warned, referring to Viacom’s Bakish, who was proving a master at relationship management. Shari had an office at Viacom and Bakish was consulting her regularly. But Bakish wouldn’t be the one figuring how best to fit the companies together—Moonves would. “I have to have faith you can bring this together,” Klieger said. “Are you supportive?”
Moonves said he was. He’d get behind it.
His body language suggested otherwise. He looked glum. He clearly didn’t seem to appreciate any guidance from Klieger.
Klieger reported to Shari that Moonves said he wanted to move forward with the merger but didn’t seem all that enthusiastic.
Nonetheless, with Moonves seemingly on board, news leaked to The Wrap, and was quickly confirmed by CNBC, that “Viacom and CBS vice-chairwoman Shari Redstone are pursuing a merger of the two media companies that split more than a decade ago.”
In Toronto, Phillips couldn’t get Moonves off her mind. The more she thought about what Dauer had told her—that Moonves said their encounter was “consensual”—the angrier she got. She finally sent a Facebook message to Dauer on January 6:
I did not sleep as I am feeling anger that Moonves is not sorry—and is calling me a liar basically. He is not allowed to play the victim card here. I did not bring this up as you know. I simply responded that I believe in forgiveness and moving forward in life. But, I will not be made a victim again. . . . I am doing my best to be a positive, forgiving person in my life. None of us are perfect. However, this does not sit well. I will go meditate and try to find my peace.
The next day, Phillips watched the Golden Globe Awards on TV as Oprah Winfrey became the first black woman to receive the Cecil B. DeMille lifetime achievement award. Winfrey delivered a stirring acceptance speech that addressed the burgeoning #MeToo movement.
“What I know for sure is that speaking your truth is the most powerful tool we all have,” Winfrey said. “And I’m especially proud and inspired by all the women who have felt strong enough and empowered enough to speak up and share their personal stories.” She continued, “I want tonight to express gratitude to all the women who have endured years of abuse and assault, because they—like my mother—had children to feed and bills to pay and dreams to pursue. They’re the women whose names we’ll never know.”
“My God, this is me,” Phillips thought.
A few days later Dauer texted Moonves that Winfrey’s speech had “made the natives restless.” He added: “My hope is when she is working all this will go far far away.”
In London, the writer Janet Dulin Jones had lunch with a friend, a writer who was in town from Los Angeles. Naturally, Weinstein figured prominently in the conversation. Jones had been brooding about Moonves, who in some respects bothered her more than Weinstein. Weinstein had never pretended to be anything but a bully. The handsome and charming Moonves was still Hollywood’s golden boy.
Jones’s friend reminded her that years ago, when she had a meeting with Moonves, Jones had warned her to be sure to take her agent along with her. Back then the friend had wondered why. Jones hadn’t felt like telling the real story—she was still afraid of Moonves and his blunt warning not to talk. But now she told her friend the real story.
Back in 1985 Jones, then a recent graduate of Long Beach State working as a writer’s assistant, had just written her first treatment for a TV show. She’d taken her screenplay to a mentor, the writer Mike Marvin, who’d just scored with Six Pack, a movie starring country music star Kenny Rogers in his film debut.
Marvin and Moonves were close; both belonged to a men’s support group that met every Wednesday. So Marvin called Moonves, who agreed to meet Jones.
Jones rehearsed her pitch for her boyfriend. She bought a navy pants suit at Bullock’s department store even though she couldn’t afford it. She wore her best Italian leather loafers. She arrived at Moonves’s office at 4:30 p.m. carrying a stylish leather briefcase given to her by her writer friend Ann Marcus. (“Every writer needs a bag,” Marcus had told her.)
Jones noticed Moonves’s desk was filled with photos of his wife and children. Moonves offered her a glass of wine, which she declined—she wanted to be fully alert for the pitch. She and Moonves made small talk; she mentioned she’d interned at the Sundance Film Festival. She finally started talking about her story. About halfway through the pitch, Moonves stood up and moved toward the sofa where she was sitting. Was she speaking too softly? Jones wondered, so she raised her voice. Suddenly Moonves jumped on her, pushed her down, and tried to kiss her. It all happened with dizzying speed.
Jones cried out, struggled, and managed to push him away. Moonves moved to the other end of the sofa. “What do you think you’re doing?” she asked, flabbergasted.
“I was hitting on you. I wanted a kiss,” he said matter-of-factly.
She got up, shoved her papers into her bag, and headed for the door.
“Oh, come on, it’s nothing,” he said. “We’re friends here. Sit down.”
When she reached the door, it was locked. She started to panic. She said she’d scream if he didn’t open it.
Moonves pushed a button behind his desk and the door opened.
Jones was so shaken she wasn’t sure she could drive, but she made it to a friend’s house in West Hollywood. She explained what had happened. It took her thirty minutes to calm down. She and her friend called her boyfriend and told him the story. They all agreed she was lucky she hadn’t been raped. Should she report what had happened? Her friend and boyfriend both warned her that would end her career.
The next day Jones called Marvin, who’d set up the meeting. She didn’t get into the details but told him Moonves had been “way out of line” and had done something inappropriate.
“I’m so sorry,” Marvin told her. “He said he wasn’t doing that anymore.”
“What?” Jones asked, startled.
“He has a bit of a reputation for coming on to women.” Marvin said he’d talk to Moonves about it.
When Jones finished the story, her friend hardly knew what to say. “God, what a jerk,” she finally said.
But what could Jones do? Moonves was far more powerful than Harvey Weinstein had ever been. It was one thing for stars like Angelina Jolie or Gwyneth Paltrow to accuse Weinstein. Who would be interested in hearing from a little-known writer like Janet Jones?
The 2018 Consumer Electronics Show opened in Las Vegas on January 9, and Shari Redstone was one of the few prominent women in attendance for the annual tech showcase. All the keynote speakers were men. That didn’t stop the buzz about sexual harassment in both Silicon Valley and Hollywood. Shari got asked about it at every turn, and one name kept coming up: Les Moonves. Specifically, that Ronan Farrow was on his trail, working on a big New Yorker exposé.
Shari again reached out to Minow, who was teaching at the University of Hawaii that week. Shari emailed her that “there is a lot of noise here at CES,” specifically that Farrow was doing a #MeToo story on Moonves for The New Yorker. She said she didn’t know anything more specific and hadn’t heard any names of alleged victims.
Shari had also heard something about Moonves and Joe Ianniello at a meeting in Las Vegas, where both were wearing bathrobes—now a potent symbol of the #MeToo movement given both Weinstein’s and Charlie Rose’s propensity to confront women while wearing an open bathrobe. Again, Shari had few details.
This time Minow called another board member, Charles Gifford. He was skeptical. He told Minow that Shari was once again trying to undermine Moonves. For all he knew, Shari herself might be behind the rumors—or even planting a story with Farrow.
But Minow said it didn’t matter. Whatever was happening, the board had a “duty” to investigate, she insisted. Gifford said he’d consult with Gordon.
Board member Linda Griego had also heard that something about Moonves was about to break. Gil Schwartz, too, had heard that Farrow was working on a big piece. One reporter told him Shari had all but handed Farrow what he needed. Schwartz told Moonves, who was eager to blame Shari.
Schwartz continued to aggressively defend his boss. When he learned a reporter had been making calls about the #MeToo rumors, he pre-emptively attacked, writing on January 24: “You guys are fucking despicable,” and later: “All you’re doing is flailing around and digging up worthless trash. It’s pathetic. This is a human being you’re dealing with. I hope in the craven rush to not be beaten you don’t forget that you ostensibly have standards to publish. There have never been ANY settlements or complaints. No NDAs to find. Have some fucking ethics. Find a real story.”
Meanwhile Dauer was keeping the heat on Moonves, reporting more calls from the media—even one from the Times to Phillips’s husband’s hair salon in Toronto.
“I feel sick all the time,” Moonves texted Dauer.
The rumors came to a head at a special meeting of the nominating and governance committee that month. Shari couldn’t believe CBS wasn’t preparing for a potential public relations catastrophe for CBS and its leadership. Moreover, the renewed plan to merge CBS and Viacom assumed that Moonves would be chief executive of the new, much larger company. Anything that put Moonves’s viability in question threatened the merger.
The committee agreed to enlist Michael Aiello, the lawyer for the independent directors, and the head of the corporate department at the large New York firm Weil, Gotshal & Manges. Aiello would investigate the rumors and report back.
Shari assumed her dealings with the committee were confidential. But that wasn’t explicit, and Gifford and Gordon shared everything with Moonves in a flurry of emails and conversations.
In response, Moonves alerted them “at a high level” that there were “decades-old incidents that were consensual, but that women might point to,” which he wasn’t comfortable discussing. Gifford and Gordon assured Moonves that they didn’t need or want to hear the details themselves but advised him to tell Aiello everything.
Faced with the prospect of a formal board interview, Moonves hired Dan Petrocelli, who gained national fame after successfully representing the father of O. J. Simpson victim Ron Goldman. He also called on Ron Olson, one of Los Angeles’s most prominent trial lawyers and a longtime lawyer for Moonves who had negotiated his lucrative contracts.
Aiello interviewed Moonves on January 16—the first time he’d been formally questioned about any #MeToo allegations. Aiello and Olson both took notes. Other lawyers from Weil Gotshal also listened to the call.
“If there are any stories out there, we need to know,” Aiello began.
Moonves said there were two instances of possible concern, both now decades in the past, long before his employment by CBS.
In the first incident, a young actress had come in for a meeting when he was at Warner Bros. He didn’t know her. He said he had exposed himself and she “ran out of room,” according to a lawyer’s notes of the interview. “Victim didn’t say anything,” Aiello wrote, meaning she hadn’t complained.
“Let me take a step back,” Aiello said. “What does ‘exposed’ mean?”
This time Moonves said they’d engaged in oral sex and that it was consensual. Afterward he heard from her manager that the actress was “upset.” The New York Times had been making calls, and there was “buzz” about what had happened. “Friends were saying she wasn’t happy about it,” Aiello noted. Moonves hadn’t spoken to the actress herself, although he knew her name. The actress “has never been heard from since” and has “shut down,” according to another lawyer’s notes of Moonves’s comments.
There had been no threats of litigation, “no complaint ever made,” and “no payments ever made either public or private,” according to Aiello’s notes.
This was obviously a description of Bobbie Phillips.
The second incident, Moonves said, involved a female television executive who had recently filed a police complaint against him for sexual assault. But the incident dated to the 1980s, and the statute of limitations had expired long ago, which would prevent any charges being filed. In any event, the sex had been consensual.
The highly abbreviated account was clearly about Golden-Gottlieb. Despite the gaping holes in Moonves’s versions, Aiello was curiously uninquisitive. He didn’t ask for the names of the women, even though Moonves had said he knew them. He didn’t ask for the name of the actress’s manager or any other witness who could corroborate Moonves’s story. He didn’t follow up on an obvious inconsistency: How could the actress have fled after Moonves “exposed” himself—but also stayed to have consensual oral sex?
Nothing in Aiello’s notes suggests that Moonves volunteered anything about Dauer’s requests for work for Phillips and other clients or any efforts Moonves was making to accommodate him.
The same day as the Aiello interview, Shari Redstone had lunch alone with Moonves at his office in Los Angeles. She laid out her long-term plans—CBS and Viacom would merge and then be in a stronger position to be acquired by another company. If necessary, National Amusements would give up its controlling interest once a deal was negotiated. As she’d said before, she didn’t want to be a media mogul—she was looking forward to focusing on her family and her other ventures. Was Moonves on board?
He said he was.
Moonves, she said, was essential to the strategy. What were his future plans, given that he was nearing seventy?
Moonves told her he was looking forward to the “next stage” of life and would probably leave in two years’ time. He said he understood she’d need to start thinking about a successor.
Shari also mentioned that some board changes would be necessary. After his offensive behavior toward her, Gifford was unacceptable. And she wanted to nominate Richard Parsons to the board. The grandson of a groundskeeper on the Rockefeller estate in Tarrytown, New York, the sixty-nine-year-old Parsons had retired as chief executive of Time Warner a decade earlier, served as chair of Citigroup for a few years, and then become a trusted adviser to many chief executives, as well as to Shari.
The choice of Parsons could hardly be faulted, but Gifford remained a sore spot with Moonves. Gifford was among his most loyal directors. An unusual provision in Moonves’s contract provided that he could resign for “good reason” and collect an enormous golden parachute if a current or former chief executive of a rival company was nominated to the board. He pointed out that naming Parsons would trigger that option.
Finally, there was the delicate issue of the #MeToo rumors, now the subject of Aiello’s investigation. Shari asked Moonves if there was any truth to them.
“Look me in the eyes,” Moonves told Shari. “There is nothing there.”
After the interview with Moonves that day, Aiello briefed Gifford and Gordon. He assured them he hadn’t found anything they needed to be concerned about. He said nothing about any police report.
Aiello briefed the full committee on January 29, saying pretty much the same thing he’d told Gordon and Gifford: the board had nothing to worry about. Aiello said Moonves had brought up two incidents that were decades old, that occurred long before Moonves came to CBS. Moonves may have been “clumsy” and made some “unwanted advances,” but only before his marriage to Chen. Moonves was now happily married and by all accounts a model husband.
Minow asked for more detail about the two incidents. Aiello assured the committee members they “didn’t want to know” and he “didn’t want to go there,” reflecting a squeamishness about discussing sex that seems to have pervaded the investigation. There was a brief discussion of whether CBS needed to beef up its human resources operation, but the consensus was that it was already adequate. When someone asked about the rumored New Yorker article, Aiello assured them that Schwartz was “monitoring it” and “had his finger on the pulse” but wasn’t aware of anything concrete.
Minow questioned whether they’d done enough to get to the bottom of the rumors. Aiello assured her there was nothing left to investigate. (Further steps should have been obvious to anyone who’d watched an episode of CSI: interview the victims and get their version of the story, as well as potential witnesses. Aiello hasn’t publicly explained why he didn’t pursue anyone for corroboration, but he may have been concerned any inquiries would become public.)
Aiello cautioned the committee members to say nothing to other members of the CBS board, especially the nonindependent directors aligned with Shari. Given the suspicions about Shari, the committee members were afraid of leaks. In the current environment, news that the board had even looked into sexual allegations about Moonves could be devastating.
Shari subsequently asked Gordon what, if anything, Aiello had uncovered, but he told her only that Moonves had denied the allegations and so there was nothing to worry about. She was dubious. “Are you telling me a denial from Les is sufficient investigation that would pass legal review?” He insisted it was.
Shari went to Minow, who told her Aiello had said there was nothing more to investigate.
“Are you kidding me?” Shari replied. “I hope you got good legal advice,” she said.
Gordon told Shari she could talk to Aiello herself if she wanted more information, but she didn’t bother. She felt she’d get nowhere and had already done what she could.
That was basically the end of Aiello’s investigation. The full board never got a briefing, and most seemed only too happy to rely on Aiello’s conclusion and move on.