Original subtitles

(Harvey Weinstein speaking)

Ambra Gutierrez: No. Please.

I don't wanna do something I don't wanna do.

(somber music playing)

Ronan Farrow: It was a Friday in March 2015.

It was cold outside and Ambra Gutierrez

found herself on a corner in lower Manhattan breaking down.

Ambra was 22. She didn't speak much English.

She's a Filipina-Italian model,

and she'd just moved to the United States about a month before

to pursue her career.

Gutierrez: And I was on the street

and I, I just start crying.

And in my head, I was like, "Oh my God,

like, why is this happening?"

Farrow: Ambra pulled out her phone and called her agent

and told him she had just been assaulted by Harvey Weinstein.

She said he groped her and put his hand up her skirt

during a meeting at his office.

I just felt that I needed to go to the police.

So, I told him to take me there.

Farrow: This is the story of the efforts

to uncover the truth about how a powerful and predatory man

for decades evaded justice.

It's the story of how media and law enforcement

and the world of private espionage protected that man.

Rosanna Arquette: Oh, I knew there was gonna be retaliation.

Rose McGowan: I didn't think there was going to be such collusion.

Farrow: And how, in the end, all of that wasn't enough

in the face of a group of sources who risked everything

to expose the truth.

♪ ♪

-Woman (on radio): 521. -Gutierrez: I was shaking.

Harvey Weinstein assaulted me.

So, I went to the... that station.

(man speaking indistinctly on radio)

And, um...

and when I talked to the police guy,

I said that this person assaulted me.

He answered, "Again?"

And I don't know why,

but that "again" just made me

feel like burning inside,

like this, I don't know...

I nearly would say boiling the blood.

'Cause you suspected this was a guy who was doing this in a serial way.

Happened again. Yeah.

Farrow: And then, while Ambra was sitting

with the NYPD's special victim's division,

giving a detailed report of what had happened,

she got a call on her cell phone.

(phone buzzing)

It was Weinstein.

Gutierrez: "Ambra, I'm very mad at you.

Where are you?"

Farrow: Weinstein didn't know

Ambra was with the police.

He was calling because he was annoyed with her.

Apparently, he'd told her he was going to hold tickets for her

at a production of "Finding Neverland,"

a Broadway show he was producing.

Ambra, however, didn't show up.

Gutierrez: They're very expensive tickets.

I said, "I'm sorry."

Um, I didn't feel so good.

Um, you know, women's problems, something like that.

Farrow: So, here's Ambra,

sitting in the police station,

in the middle of reporting this guy.

And now she has him on the phone.

Gutierrez: I asked him like...

um...

"So, how, how do my breasts feel?"

And he said, "Oh, you're, you're great.

They're, they feel great. They're, they're amazing."

Like he was admitting,

and so I thought that, that's it.

They heard it. I was saying the truth.

(laughs)

Instead, they asked me,

"Ambra, could you do something for us?"

They said, um, "Would you want to meet him tomorrow

and wear a wire?"

And I just said, "Yes, sure."

♪ ♪

Farrow: The night before the sting, Ambra says she couldn't sleep.

She was just hours away from reengaging with the man

who had assaulted her the day before.

And yet, while she was lying there awake

turning over this decision to help the police,

there was one word that kept coming back to her,

something the police had said the day before.

Gutierrez: "Again?"

I don't know, I kept repeating in my mind that "again."

I don't know, that gave me strength to do everything, I think.

I didn't want that to happen anymore to anyone.

♪ ♪

(alarm beeping)

Meteorologist: It is spring.

It doesn't necessarily look or feel like it today,

that is for sure.

Farrow: The next afternoon,

the police hid the wire under Ambra's clothes.

She went to see "Finding Neverland."

(cheering and applause)

♪ ♪

And then she met Weinstein.

Weinstein: So, I'm glad you went because,

you know, I made this a movie many years ago

with Johnny Depp and Kate Winslet.

-Gutierrez: Yeah, I've seen it. -Weinstein: And now I, I wanted to make it a musical.

-Farrow: And the police... -Gutierrez: Sitting...

-Farrow: Were there undercover? -Gutierrez: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And they told me that if I was feeling uncomfortable,

to just say that you were going to the restroom.

Farrow: Weinstein and Ambra stayed at the bar for a while.

(Weinstein speaking)

I'd teach you, whatever, but...

Gutierrez: He was saying, um,

those names of actresses that he helped,

giving me so many compliments,

saying, "You're much better than this and that."

And keep on repeating that if I would listen to him,

I would become even greater (laughs) than them.

Farrow: And what's going through your head

as you're listening to him do this?

Gutierrez: I was thinking how, I don't know,

he could even like think that I would

even believe those things.

Farrow: Ambra's pretty savvy about these things.

Some of that is just who she is

and some of it came from experiences

in a different country with a different powerful man,

Silvio Berlusconi,

the now former prime minister of Italy.

Berlusconi had made a lot of his money as a media mogul.

In 2009, "Forbes" listed him

as the 12th most powerful person in the world.

And at the time, he controlled or influenced

six of at least seven major TV networks.

And the government, which he ran,

also provided subsidies to most of the newspapers in the country,

which many argue made the press

less critical of the prime minister.

(bell tolling)

Gutierrez: I was born in Torino.

My mom is Filipina, and my dad Italian.

Farrow: Her family was working class.

She was close with her mom,

but her strongest relationship

was with her little brother, Claudio.

Gutierrez: My brother, of course, was little.

He was three years younger.

So, we were playing a lot of video games.

Farrow: What did you play?

Gutierrez: (laughs) We had Mario Karts...

and PlayStations.

There is this little dragon that I don't remember...

-Spyro the Dragon. Yeah! -Spyro, oh yeah, that's it.

So, I remember, like, trying to go to sleep

and then instead turning on the TV and play all night.

(laughs)

Farrow: Ambra says her father could be violent.

She called him "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde."

She says sometimes he beat her mom,

and when Ambra tried to intervene and protect her,

sometimes she'd get hurt, too.

Eventually, her father left

and Ambra needed to find a way to support the family.

That's when she decided to try modeling.

(Ambra speaking Italian)

Farrow: She was a finalist for Miss Italy in 2010.

She was on TV and got a lot of attention.

Not all of it wanted.

Gutierrez: I was noticed by bad people

that tried to take advantage of playing on my dreams,

taking me to the house of the prime minister at the time.

Farrow: Ambra's agent brought her to what she was told

would be a work function.

Turns out, it was one of these wild bacchanals

that Berlusconi threw at his mansion outside of Milan.

The press called them "Bunga Bunga parties."

This is a story about a guy who wants to dance.

♪ In the land of Bunga Bunga ♪

♪ All the chores are fun and games... ♪

Reporter 1: It's the Italian prime minister,

he's in the news again, insisting that

his infamous Bunga Bunga parties

are innocent get-togethers.

Reporter 2: Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi

is once again defending his love life.

Reporter 3: Allegations that he paid for sex with a 17-year-old girl

and used his office to cover it up.

(Silvio Berlusconi speaking in Italian)

(audience laughing)

♪ ♪

Gutierrez: I was there with my friend

and what I saw was, um...

just like women that work in TV

being there and doing dances,

erotic dances, and like being naked and other stuff.

Farrow: Ambra says she was groped repeatedly by Berlusconi.

The 30 or so women there were asked to perform degrading sex acts

like kissing a statue of an erect penis.

After two hours, Ambra and her friend demanded to leave.

On their way out, one of Berlusconi's associates told them,

"You can forget about your careers."

♪ ♪

Farrow: Back at the hotel bar in Tribeca,

Ambra was still wearing the wire.

(Weinstein speaking)

Gutierrez: I have a costume, yeah.

Gutierrez: Oh, okay. (laughs)

Farrow: She and the undercover police surrounding her

had been waiting for Weinstein to escalate things.

Then he said, "Okay, um, I need to get ready for this event.

I'm gonna take a shower and just come with me."

-(Weinstein speaking) -Gutierrez: Now?

I was like, "Why do I have to come with you,

if you're taking a shower?"

But I was playing dumb.

(Weinstein speaking)

Weinstein: That's all, and if you need anything...

Be like, "Okay."

Um, I left my jacket there.

And I followed him.

And this was something the police had told you to do

if you got in a situation where you needed to get out?

No, that's something I thought of.

It's something you came up with?

Yeah, because my mom always told me,

like, "always pay attention."

"Be careful, like, you're a woman."

In any situation, I had to have an escape plan, always.

(Weinstein speaking)

Gutierrez: Oh, my jacket.

Gutierrez: I, it's downstairs. I forgot.

Gutierrez: I took my jacket and I'm watching the police.

I'm like, "Will someone follow me?"

And then in the hallway, almost close to the room,

I finally hear someone say,

"Hi, Mr. Weinstein.

Uh, this is blah, blah, blah from TMZ."

(Andy speaking)

Weinstein: Nice to see you.

Weinstein: What are you doing? Whatever.

Farrow: And this was a police officer posing as a TMZ reporter?

Gutierrez: Yes, of course.

-Weinstein: Please... -Gutierrez: Uh...

Weinstein: I don't give a... who you are.

Farrow: Weinstein tried to get him to leave,

but the cop wouldn't budge.

Weinstein went and complained to the hotel staff,

who pointed him and Ambra to a more private entrance

and eventually to a service elevator.

Weinstein pressed the button for the penthouse.

And Ambra had a problem.

Gutierrez: And I couldn't text the police.

My phone was not working.

I was trying to keep calm

and I knew that I could have just got out of there.

So, there I was starting to, to get very nervous.

♪ ♪

Farrow: Ambra was getting farther away from the police.

Her phone wasn't working.

And the pacified Weinstein,

the one who'd seemed so interested in helping her career,

had now become more insistent, more overbearing.

Gutierrez: And he starts saying, uh, "Get into the room."

Gutierrez (on wire): What do we have to do here?

(Weinstein speaking)

Gutierrez: And he's like, "I'm just gonna take a shower.

You just sit there five minutes."

(Weinstein continues)

Gutierrez: I don't drink.

-Can I stay down in the bar? -Weinstein: No.

-Gutierrez: No. -Weinstein: You look beautiful. Please?

Gutierrez: No, I don't want to.

Gutierrez: I know.

Gutierrez: I'm sorry. I did not mean...

Yesterday was kind of aggressive for me.

-Weinstein: I know. -Gutierrez: I need to know a person to be touched.

-Gutierrez: I don't... -Weinstein: Come with me, please.

I swear, I won't.

(Weinstein continues)

Weinstein: Please, I'm not gonna do anything.

Please come in.

What did you think when he said that,

"I swear on my children"?

I don't know.

It made me feel a little disgusted.

-Gutierrez: No, I can't. -Weinstein: I asked you to...

Gutierrez: Please, I don't wanna do something I don't wanna do.

Weinstein: Go to the bath.

Gutierrez: I wanna go downstairs.

Weinstein: I'm not gonna do anything

and you'll never see me again after this.

Gutierrez: I'm feeling very uncomfortable right now.

Weinstein: Five minutes.

Gutierrez: I know, but it's kind of like,

it's too much for me, okay?

Farrow: Ambra, still wearing the wire, asked him a question.

(Gutierrez speaking)

Weinstein: Oh, please, I'm sorry, just come on in.

-(Weinstein continues) -Gutierrez: You're used to that?

Weinstein: Yes, come in.

Gutierrez: No, but I'm not used to that.

(Weinstein continues)

Weinstein: Come on, sit here.

Farrow: She'd gotten it. She'd gotten a confession.

Weinstein didn't know Ambra was recording,

but it was obvious she wasn't gonna comply with his requests.

And in that moment, she'd become a liability.

He followed her downstairs and returned to the bar.

Weinstein was trying to keep her calm.

He asked if they could have a coffee.

But Ambra's job was done.

She was scared, exhausted.

She walked away from him and into a bathroom

where she met two police officers.

They snuck her out of the building and into a car.

She was rattled but they reassured her.

Gutierrez: They were like, "Ambra, you were great.

You got it. You stopped a monster."

Farrow: Shortly after Ambra left the hotel,

detectives went and found Weinstein.

He voluntarily followed them to an NYPD precinct

where he was questioned before eventually requesting a lawyer.

He was let go that night.

♪ ♪

The matter was now in the hands of the district attorney,

Cyrus Vance, Jr.

Cyrus Vance, Jr.: The Manhattan district attorney's office

is one of the great civic institutions in this city.

Farrow: Ambra met with the head of the DA's sex crimes unit,

Martha Bashford, for questioning.

Gutierrez: First moment I saw her, I said, "Great.

She's a woman."

And they asked questions like,

"So, what happened in Italy?

Were you a prostitute?" And things like that.

And I was like, "Did you hear the recording?"

Farrow: Two law enforcement sources told me

Bashford grilled Ambra about Berlusconi

and her personal sexual history.

One even said Bashford was acting

like one of Weinstein's personal defense attorneys.

The DA's office has said that this was all part of a typical interview

meant to prepare a witness for what could happen at trial.

But Ambra and those law enforcement sources

saw it differently.

Gutierrez: I understood what was happening.

But I couldn't believe it, that, you know,

was actually going that way.

So, I...

And what was happening, in your view?

That this person was against me.

Farrow: This situation, trying to report criminal activity

and getting smeared as a prostitute instead,

Ambra had faced this before, too.

Back in 2010, the Berlusconi parties

became public knowledge in Italy.

Reporter: Silvio Berlusconi has appeared in court

to deny having sex with an underage prostitute.

Farrow: Ambra provided a police statement

and eventually agreed to testify against the prime minister

on charges that he'd paid for sex with a minor.

(Italian reporter speaking)

Gutierrez: I had paparazzi coming at school.

I had people not talking to me anymore.

And, uh, my, my life just fell down completely.

♪ ♪

Farrow: After meeting with the Manhattan DA's office,

Ambra simply had to wait.

Gutierrez: I got out of that meeting

and I was waiting for something to happen.

Was waiting for someone to call me to tell me anything.

Farrow: Weinstein's lawyers, meanwhile,

hired a private intelligence firm called K2,

to keep Manhattan DA Cyrus Vance, Jr. from pressing charges.

Reporter: K2 Global Partners has investigated

countless suspects,

corporations and sovereign nations.

Farrow: The firm dug up clips from the Italian press

about the Berlusconi scandal,

clips that made Ambra out to be an illicit sex worker.

And then current and former K2 employees,

all of whom had previously worked at the DA's office,

relayed the information smearing Gutierrez

in calls to prosecutors.

Reporter 1: She's the stunning Italian model

who's accusing famed movie mogul Harvey Weinstein of sexual abuse...

Reporter 2: ...has made similar claims before.

Farrow: Just like in Italy,

the claims about her found their way into American tabloids,

tabloids Weinstein had close ties to.

Reporter 3: She was a witness in the notorious

Bunga Bunga sex scandal.

Gutierrez: They were trying to smear me.

So, I don't know.

I kept waiting for the DA to call me.

And instead, I saw it coming out in the news

that Harvey Weinstein was not going to be charged criminally.

News anchor: The New York District Attorney chose

not to press charges against Weinstein,

citing not enough evidence.

If we had a case that we felt

we could prosecute against Harvey Weinstein, we would.

What went through your mind when you saw that?

(sighs) Game over. (laughs)

Farrow: And your reputation

-was... spiraling.

Getting shredded completely. Yeah.

Like I was losing everything,

and then I got an email from my lawyer

where, um, Harvey wanted to stipulate a contract

to help me out in the situation, let's say.

It was to put this all behind in an exchange of money.

I told him, "No, I, I don't want anything from you."

Like I don't want money.

And he started with, I think, $300,000.

And then he went up to $500,000.

And the last time that he tried to offer me

the million dollar.

I remember that day 'cause it was the most...

scary that I could remember.

'Cause my brother called me.

And, um, started saying that

someone went to where he worked, asking about me.

Farrow: Ambra's brother, Claudio,

the one she'd grown up playing video games with all night.

He was living in Italy at the time.

And the press had found him, too.

It freaked her out.

Gutierrez: I couldn't put anyone of my family at risk.

And that's it.

I decided to, to accept.

♪ ♪

Farrow: On April 20th, 2015,

a few weeks after the alleged assault,

Ambra sat in an office in midtown Manhattan

with an 18-page non-disclosure agreement in front of her.

One of Weinstein's attorneys sat opposite her.

Gutierrez: He looked super nervous,

even looking a little like embarrassed.

Mm-hmm.

Like, "I'm here, but I'm sorry that I'm here."

You know?

Farrow: As part of the agreement,

she was required to hand over all of her technology

to another investigative agency, Kroll.

She had to give them passwords to all of her email accounts

and they combed through the accounts to clear them of any evidence

of the Weinstein incident.

Then they gave all the devices back empty.

Because there were no charges,

none of the evidence the police collected

was a matter of public record.

No one outside law enforcement knew there had been a tape.

It was as if nothing had ever happened.

Ambra slipped into a long period of depression.

She couldn't get any work.

She developed an eating disorder.

Gutierrez: I didn't leave my bed.

I remember like my mom had to...

to bathe me, to...

to take care of me 'cause I was just there in bed sleeping,

trying to think it was a dream.

Farrow: She lived in the Philippines and Italy for the next two years...

trying to put it all behind her.

♪ ♪

At that moment, I was in the thick

of my Weinstein reporting at NBC.

I'd read the initial tabloid coverage of Ambra's story.

I'd heard there was a sting.

I called Ambra's lawyer, who sounded worried

and said he wasn't at liberty to talk.

But then, to my surprise, I got a text from her.

Gutierrez: "Uh, this is Ambra. I would like to meet you." (laughs)

Farrow: We met for the first time at a Manhattan restaurant.

She was sitting in the back. She seemed anxious.

You were putting a lot on the line.

What made you decide to talk to me anyway?

I was really thinking like, this is it.

Like after two years, I could be taking my life back.

Farrow: I remember Ambra taking a deep breath

and then showing me the million-dollar settlement.

Turns out, Ambra was sitting on something

even bigger than the contract.

She didn't have a recording from the wire,

but it turns out that throughout the sting,

while she was wearing the wire,

Ambra was also recording a backup on her cell phone.

The first thing that I did after the, uh, police operation,

I sent my recordings to five different emails that I had.

Farrow: Remember that Kroll, the cybersecurity firm Weinstein hired

to enforce Ambra's NDA,

had asked for all of her passwords

and scoured all of her devices and email accounts

to make sure any copies of the recording were destroyed.

And Ambra had said she'd complied.

But there was one password she didn't give up right away.

And I said, "Sorry, I don't remember the last one.

"I'm, I'm gonna figure it out.

It's, it's an Italian account."

♪ ♪

I opened up my, my email and I saw the recordings.

I made copies of it to the desktop of the computer.

And then I called my lawyer and I said,

"Oh, I remember the password. It's this one."

Farrow: So just like that, Ambra had saved a copy of the recordings

and no one figured it out.

For weeks, I pressed Ambra to give me the audio.

Gutierrez: I would have wanted to give you those recordings

and, of course, I didn't wanna make trace of where it was coming from.

And then I said, "Well, what if we just..."

-Record the recording. -Record the recording.

And it allowed me to say,

"She never transferred any files to me."

-Gutierrez: Of course. It was the truth. -Yeah.

Then I said, "Great, let's, let's get the computer out,"

and I remember you saying, "Oh, there's a problem."

The speaker don't work.

The speakers don't work.

So, you ran out of the restaurant to get a speaker.

♪ ♪

Farrow: What was going through your mind

as I sprinted across town to get speakers?

I was really waiting for it to come out.

Like I was really ready.

(Weinstein speaking)

Farrow: Later, in fact-checking calls

with Weinstein and his lawyers,

when we told them we had a copy of the recording,

Weinstein was shocked.

"The recording that was destroyed

by the district attorney?" he kept saying.

District Attorney Cyrus Vance, Jr.'s office denies this

and says they would never agree to destroy evidence.

Weinstein: Oh, please, I'm sorry. Just come on.

(Weinstein continues)

Farrow: That October, I published the first

in a series of articles exposing Weinstein

and telling Ambra's story.

What was it like to finally see the story

and the recording go public?

Like extreme happiness.

The freedom that maybe a person could feel

after being in jail.

I don't know.

Like it's, it was just...

being born again.

I got to see these two versions of Ambra.

The source that I was working with who was so, uh,

brave and strategic and savvy.

And then this caricature of you

that so many people in the media had embraced.

You know, I got to listen to all these executives

over and over again saying,

"Oh, but she's a hustler. She's a shakedown artist.

She's a hooker." Uh...

And it, it blew my mind on several levels because,

first of all, if a source had been a prostitute,

that doesn't mean her story isn't true.

Exactly. That's something I would have always said.

Like, "Did you hear the recordings?"

-Even if I was that. -Of course. Of course.

I, I never wanted to,

to not be myself.

Why should I change what I am, what makes me happy,

to just make people think that, um, things cannot change,

that even a woman that wears high heels and a short skirt

can stop someone bad to do bad things,

to be strong enough,

to be knowing who she is, what she want,

and so to say no when she doesn't want to do things.

Farrow: Once I understood Ambra's story,

I realized another way to understand the power dynamic

that played out in that hotel.

Because in standing her ground

and showing this incredible degree

of savvy and determination,

Ambra Gutierrez became the one with the power.

People really miscalculated, underestimating you.

It was perfect. They would never have thought I had those recordings.

Who am I? I have no power. I'm a model. (laughs)

♪ ♪

Farrow: Ambra's recording was the kind of hard evidence

that reporters have chased for years.

Some of those reporters had come pretty close to nailing the story, too.

That's what I discovered when I spoke to Kim Masters,

the respected entertainment journalist.

(Kim Masters speaking)

♪ ♪

What were you thinking as you left that meeting with Harvey?

Oh, I knew... as soon as I went down that elevator.

I knew it. It's over. I got to the bottom floor...

and I said, "There's gonna be retaliation."

SPEAKER: Harvey could basically say, "Would you like an Oscar

or to litigate until I destroy you?"

It really did feel like the ungettable story.

I had any number of people who'll say,

"I'll talk, but you can't quote me."

And what was that about? It was fear.

Harvey comes screaming like a madman,

and then he said, "What have you heard about me?"

I said, "I heard you rape women."