She Said director Maria Schrader on the Weinstein case, rape scenes and the “complicity” of German television stations

She received an Emmy for the Netflix series Unorthodox, and Maria Schrader won the most important German film award with her sci-fi love story I am your human. But none of their previous projects is as ambitious as She Said, the in German cinemas since December 8, 2022 runs. The adaptation of the bestseller of the same name works on how the journalists Jodi Kantor (Zoe Kazan) and Megan Twohey (Carey Mulligan) brought down the Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein with an article. A scandal that shook the film industry to its foundations.

She Said is a film that is important on several levels, which, in addition to the hard work of the journalists, above all highlights the incredible courage of the women who dared to to make her traumatic experiences with Weinstein public. The producer had sexually harassed and assaulted women for decades. In 2020 he was sentenced to more than 20 years in prison.

We spoke to Maria Schrader about why it’s not just Hollywood that has a problem with sexual violence and abuse of power and why the film is a personal matter for the director.

Maria Schrader doesn’t do a single rape scene in She Said — and there’s a good reason for that

Moviepilot: Before you started filming, did you feel any particular pressure to do justice to this difficult subject?

Mary Schrader: Yes, and also the fact that everyone knows about this story. There were things we thought about in preparation, the decisions what is told and how it is told, I’m not alone either. It’s been a very collaborative project overall and there’s a consensus between the producer, the screenwriter, the two journalists whose book the film is based on and myself.

There will be no rape scene. We will not show a victim at a crime scene. And there won’t be any naked women either. Those were the three “nos” we wanted to stick to from the start. I also benefited from my experience with Unorthodox, since it was also about the collision of intimacy and publicity.

Then what were you worried about?

The pressure was the responsibility we all felt: Every character that appears in this film is a real person, which we wanted to do justice to. These journalists have entrusted us with telling the private side of their lives, which they deliberately kept out of the book. Your men, your home. Jodie Kantor’s apartment has been recreated in great detail. They opened their closets for us and we knew what they wore on which days. Her wedding rings were replicated. Her children’s names appear in this film.

The witnesses who agreed to confide in us their intimate and traumatizing experiences have given us a huge leap of faith. And the New York Times has opened the door for a feature film for the first time and let us shoot in her office. We had 350 extras pretending to be journalists. The real ones were all in the home office.

I think it’s great how the film explicitly doesn’t show any assaults and instead works with sound recordings and tracking shots through rooms. I still got chills down my spine and at the same time I thought to myself: How nice that a film doesn’t even use the first opportunity to show a rape. I often ask myself: what do we need the pictures for? We know what’s happening now.

I think so. You see these people talking, you see their faces, their emotions, the journalists who listen to them. We experience a conversation while images are created in our own heads and can look very different. I believe in personal imagination, to the individual visualization of what is told and not shown. It need not be less powerful than an image.

The Weinstein revelations blur the line between professional research and personal life

You screened She Said in New York at a film festival and you said in an interview on the red carpet that the film felt like something personal to you. In what way?

When I hear it like that, it sounds a bit absurd. Like a cliché. [lacht]

It’s not absurd if it’s true.

It’s true. I don’t know of any woman who hasn’t had experiences of her own that this film reminds her of, even a small situation involving sexism and intimidation. We probably all have biographical experiences there, including me. And in this respect the film has something personal for me too. There is a wide spectrum ranging from uncomfortable situations to harassment to violent crime. The gradations and previously gray areas are redefined and I think that’s right. Just that there is a term for sexual harassment… For centuries it was called a “minor crime”!

In this alone, the topic differs from a film like The Untouchables: The things that Jodi and Megan were told by witnesses were such intimate and personal stories, they have an echo in private life, you don’t just leave that in the editorial office and do it then closing time. You come home, look at your newborn daughter and wonder: What will the world actually look like in 20 years? What happens if I find out all this and can’t publish it? Or even worse: What if no one cares?

I always asked myself during the film: if I were in the position of the women involved in the film, would I have made it public and risked my career? Would I have been so brave?

It’s nice that you say that, because that’s how I feel too. You have to ask yourself these questions. A friend of mine said that he likes the way tears are handled in the film. They are often tears of relief because you remember terrible experiences, but at the same time you are happy to be able to share them with someone. We all know that many stories have remained unpublished. How many people have not spoken up to this day about what happened to them? I wish the film is encouraging. Anything is better than isolation and shame.

In Germany there are “similar processes and cover-ups” as in Hollywood

There were these allegations against Dieter Wedel in 2018, but a real trial never took place due to his death. But all in all, I had the feeling that this film industry-related MeToo wave wasn’t that big in Germany itself. Are the structures simply different here? Do these almighty producers just not exist?

Perhaps one could have called Bernd Eichinger a powerful producer, but that was a very different person from Weinstein. You’re right, there are no such monolithic rulers or studio bosses in Germany. But what was the time back then? uncovered via fronds was really shocking too. Also, how long it took for this process to get going at all. You could go there too Complicity of TV stations read, these are similar processes and cover-ups.

Do you think it had any influence that, as a German director, you can look at the subject of Weinstein from a greater distance than someone who might have worked with people like him before?

I think Unorthodox was the main reason I got the offer to do this film. At the same time, however, it was in keeping with the spirit of this project that I far removed from Hollywood and Harvey Weinstein. He’s an almost symbolic character, and there are a few moments in the film that transcend this specific research and broaden the theme to: where does that actually come from? How is this anchored in society? How many of these stories exist, in how many other work environments, and how many less powerful people abuse their position and dependence on employees?

I think almost everyone who has made a career in Hollywood has met Weinstein sooner or later. At least I was free from the doubt of bias because I never had anything to do with the man.

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What do you think: Does the German film industry have similar problems with abuse of power as Hollywood?