Award-winning dramatist Jez Butterworth has revealed that his new play is part-inspired by his encounters with disgraced mogul Harvey Weinstein.
The British playwright, who beforehand penned The Ferryman and Jerusalem in addition to Sky Atlantic drama Britannia, informed the BBC’s Entrance Row radio present that his expertise with Weinstein – when the pair labored collectively on the 2001 Birthday Lady starring Nicole Kidman – has stayed with him and influenced his writing on The Hills of California.
Butterworth stated: “My very early experiences within the movie enterprise had been with Miramax, particularly Harvey Weinstein. It grew to become very clear, in a short time that that was the principles of the sport. I used to be assembly actresses in California who wished to do my movie however wouldn’t speak to me as a result of they’d had encounters with him.”
When the accusations towards Weinstein had been made public in 2017, Butterworth learn out an open letter on the BBC’s Newsnight programme, urging him to “consider all these little 11-year-old women, over a long time, whose singular abilities you might have taken benefit of, whose goals you might have decisively and for ever outlined.”
In 2018, Butterworth informed Radio Occasions journal that, on the identical movie, he had as soon as punched Weinstein in defence of one other colleague.
Weinstein demanded that the producer be taken off the movie, and Butterworth insisted that he shouldn’t.
When Weinstein punched the producer, Butterworth punched him again – “If Harvey desires to begin throwing punches, he ought to know that I do know what to do!”
In 2020, Weinstein was sentenced in New York to 23 years in jail following conviction of two felony counts. In 2022 in LA, he was discovered responsible of an additional three offences and sentenced to 16 years, to be served individually.
