How Harvey Weinstein’s lawyer became one of Australia’s biggest film and TV producers

The name “Hutensky” is uttered in just one scene in She Said, the recently released film dramatising the investigation into claims of sexual harassment against Harvey Weinstein by New York Times reporters Jodi Kantor (played by Zoe Kazan) and Megan Twohey (Carey Mulligan).

But that fleeting reference has shone a light on something few in the local industry had either known or been willing to discuss. Namely, that a man involved in securing settlements with some of Weinstein’s victims is now a senior figure at an Australian production company that has received millions in public funding and conspicuously positions itself as female-focused.

American Steve Hutensky is the husband of Australian producer Bruna Papandrea, who made Gone Girl, Wild and Big Little Lies with Reese Witherspoon before establishing production company Made Up Stories in early 2017. Alongside his wife and fellow Australian Jodi Matterson, Hutensky is one of the three principals of the company, and its chief operating officer.

Made Up Stories – which has received more than $5 million of Screen Australia funding since 2018-19 – has had enormous success as a maker of high-end, big-budget television and well-crafted indie features. It has made much of this work in Australia, making the company one of the biggest generators of employment in the local production sector.

Harvey Weinstein in court for an appeal hearing in 2020. He has been sentenced to 23 years in prison for rape.Credit: AP

Its credits include TV series The Undoing, Nine Perfect Strangers, Wolf Like Me and Pieces of Her, while its movies include The Nightingale, Penguin Bloom and The Dry. Soon to emerge are Force of Nature (the sequel to The Dry) and the Amazon series The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart, an Australian drama starring Sigourney Weaver in which gendered abuse features prominently. The company is also developing a screen adaptation of the book Work, Strife, Balance by Mamma Mia founder Mia Freedman, for Binge.

It is, in short, a very big fish in the rather small pond of the Australian screen industry.

But despite some reporting by international outlets over the past five years the link between Hutensky and Weinstein, who is currently serving 23 years in jail for rape, had largely flown under the radar in Australia.

Hutensky’s connection to the disgraced film producer was first noted by Kantor and Twohey in October 2017 when the pair described him as “one of Miramax’s entertainment lawyers”. Miramax is the production company founded by Weinstein and his brother Bob in 1979, which was acquired by Disney in 1993. Hutensky was, they wrote, dispatched to London in 1998 to negotiate a settlement with Zelda Perkins, a former assistant at the company’s London office who had been repeatedly subjected to “inappropriate requests or comments in hotel rooms” from Weinstein. They reported that Hutensky “declined to comment for this article”. Perkins’ story features in She Said.

Steve Hutensky, Bruna Papandrea and Jodi Matterson of Made Up Pictures.Credit: Mark Rogers

In December 2017, The New York Times ran a more detailed account of Weinstein’s crimes, in which it revealed more of Hutensky’s connection.

“Mr Weinstein shielded himself with legal measures that silenced alleged victims and muffled employees,” the paper reported. “Steve Hutensky, a Miramax lawyer ... helped write an agreement with Ms Perkins in 1998 that barred her from disclosing Mr Weinstein’s name, even to a therapist, and required her to provide ‘reasonable assistance’ to Miramax if the company chose to contest any criminal investigation that might arise.”

Hutensky again declined to comment for the article.

In September 2019, Kantor and Twohey’s book She Said – on which the movie is based – was released. It detailed how Hutensky, “who generally handled deals and contracts with actors, directors and writers”, was sent to London to secure settlements with Zelda Perkins and a second harassment victim, Rowena Chiu, who also features in the film.

“One negotiating session lasted until five in the morning,” Kantor and Twohey wrote. “In the end, each woman would receive £125,000, but both had to agree to extraordinary restrictions.”

This masthead is not suggesting Hutensky has acted illegally, or that at the time he was working for Weinstein he knew the extent of the allegations against him, or that those allegations were true. Hutensky was doing his job, within the bounds of the law, before Weinstein was a convicted rapist. But part of that job entailed the silencing of two victims of sexual harassment.

At the time Hutensky acted for Weinstein, no criminal charges had been laid against him. Twohey and Cantor wrote in She Said that Hutensky claimed the dual settlement in which he was involved “was the only sexual assault claim against Weinstein of which he was aware, and that the producer insisted to him that the encounter was consensual, and that he was settling the matter to protect his marriage”.

Nicole Kidman in Nine Perfect Strangers, the big-budget series Made Up Stories produced in Australia during COVID.Credit: Vince Valitutti/Hulu via AP

In April this year, Rolling Stone ran a story in which Chiu once again put Hutensky at the heart of the negotiations around the settlement with her and Perkins.

Hutensky again declined to comment for the article.

In July, Ken Auletta, author of the book Hollywood Ending: Harvey Weinstein and the Culture of Silence, told The Washington Post that Hutensky’s name “is mentioned twice in those NDAs”. Auletta said Hutensky insisted he was “not the lawyer” but, the writer added, “he was his business affairs guy, and he was in every meeting”.

Despite all this, Hutensky’s connection has come as a surprise to many senior figures in the Australian entertainment industry, only brought to light following the release of She Said in November, and its reference to him.

When local screenwriter Kim Ho tweeted about Hutensky a few days after the film opened, it became, as one award-winning screen professional put it, “the only thing anyone has wanted to talk about”.

“As #SheSaidMovie hits theatres,” Ho wrote at the start of a long Twitter thread on the subject on November 20, “Maybe the Australian screen industry will finally acknowledge that one of our most prolific producers of feminist film and TV is a former Miramax lawyer who secured NDAs for Weinstein.”

That tweet has been shared by more than 130 people, many of them members of the industry, though few of them well-known outside it. Among them was Alexandra George, a mid-career producer who was unaware of Hutensky’s role in the Weinstein saga before Ho posted about it.

In George’s view, the fact Hutensky’s past role has never been acknowledged locally feels like a continuation of the “culture of silence” that allowed Weinstein to behave as he did for decades.

“The issue for me is the disparity between the way that company [Made Up Stories] represents itself and what this link brings to light,” she says. “It’s borderline misrepresentation to allow this to conveniently disappear.

“I see it not as a women’s issue but as an institutional one around a culture of silence in our industry. For me, the cognitive dissonance is astounding.”

That no senior figures had yet been willing to speak on the record about it was due to a complex range of factors, one leading local creative said.

“It’s a small industry and everyone knows each other,” they said. “Bruna is very respected, and Made Up Stories has been really successful and brought a lot of production to Australia. The stakes are high, and it’s simply easier to ignore it.”

A female producer in the early stage of her career said she had been aware of Hutensky’s Weinstein connection since reading She Said when the book was first released. But there didn’t seem to be any way of raising any concerns she might have had – and she believes that itself is an issue.

Zelda Perkins breached her NDA to go public over Harvey Weinstein’s behaviour. Credit: Geoff Pugh/Headpress

Speaking out with concerns “can impact your chances of getting Screen Australia funding”, she said.

It’s a failing of the system, she added, that such concerns should have to be raised through the media. “The problem is there seems to be no other way to draw attention to these issues. If people felt they could have a direct conversation with Screen Australia, they would be doing that.”

In response to questions from this masthead, a spokesperson for Screen Australia said: “These matters have been raised and discussed internally. However, as with all of our assessment processes, we never disclose the details of individual applications.

“Screen Australia has a robust governance framework around its decision-making,” the spokesperson said. “For all funding decisions we carry out careful assessment of the project’s ability to meet the funding criteria and each project is assessed on merit and in strict accordance with the funding program criteria.”

Steve Hutensky declined to comment for this article.

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