‘Catch and Kill: The Podcast Tapes’ Reframes the Harvey Weinstein Case

When the accusations against Harvey Weinstein first became public in October of 2017, they took the world by storm. How could such a major player in Hollywood get away with reports of rape, sexual assault, and sexual abuse for so many years? But for those in Hollywood’s bubble the news was less of a gut punch, and more of breath of relief. Ronan Farrow‘s Catch and Kill: The Podcast Tapes does a lot of work to address that disconnect. The docuseries explains the decades-long herculean effort that led to the allegations against Weinstein coming to light. But what it does best is explain how the media sausage gets made, and why this particular story took so long to see publication.

Over the course of six episodes, the docuseries painstakingly rehashes the interviews that led to Farrow’s industry-shaking series of articles. Those same interviews have been documented in greater detail in Farrow’s book, Catch and Kill: Lies, Spies, and a Conspiracy to Protect Predators, as well as his nine-episode podcast series, Catch and Kill: The Podcast Tapes. On that front, HBO’s series doesn’t offer any new information or any previously unheard stories. Instead, its strength comes from how it reframes this narrative.

This is most evident in Episode 2, “The Reporters.” Over the course of half an hour Farrow repeatedly interviews The Hollywood Reporter‘s editor-at-large Kim Masters and journalist and media critic for The New Yorker Ken Auletta. Through these interviews Farrow constructs the difficult, decades-long saga that went into trying to report on the allegations against Weinstein. “It was like trying to grab smoke,” Masters says at one point.

For Masters, trying to pin down Weinstein was a matter of knowing his open secret but being unable to find anyone who would go on record. It’s immediately clear why that particular hurdle existed. Masters tells story after story of Weinstein calling her and bullying her over unfavorable coverage. At one point she reveals that Weinstein offered her a book deal, a deceptively generous offer that would force her to stay on his side, right as the allegations against him were about to come out. As Masters tells it, she was constantly in a state of criticizing Weinstein; yet trying to be kind enough to keep that particular door open so she could one day report what she knew.

Auletta’s story is even more frustrating. The journalist learned the story of Weinstein’s former assistant, Rowena Chiu. Chiu has claimed that during a business trip in 1998 Weinstein attempted to rape her. That allegation was quickly buried in a mountain of paid-off NDAs and legal paperwork. The way Auletta saw it, he was unable to prove whether or not the attempted rape actually happened. But if Weinstein used corporate money to pay off his assistant, he could have nailed the super producer on that. Ultimately Auletta found that the checks given to Chiu were all personal, invalidating that particular angle. Once again the story was buried.

That’s the world Catch and Kill builds, an endless web of vicious lawyers, legal loopholes, and probable hearsay these lone journalists had to navigate independently. And then there’s the matter of publication. At one point in Farrow’s investigation, he had enough evidence to confidently publish the piece. He had three women willing to go on the record and five more willing to testify anonymously. That was when Farrow’s employer NBC News backed out. In a previously unaired interview with Farrow, Auletta says, “If NBC, which has the evidence, doesn’t go forward with this story, it’s a scandal.”

With so many constraints and Weinstein wielding so much power, the fact these allegations were published at all seems incredible. That more than anything else is what Catch and Kill highlights. The takedown of Harvey Weinstein wasn’t the work of one dedicated journalist or even a team. Rather, it was an unending collaborative effort made across both Hollywood and entertainment journalism. That subtle reframing makes this story so much more sickening, yet profound.

Watch Catch and Kill: The Podcast Tapes on HBO NOW and HBO Max