Five years ago, #MeToo rattled the entertainment industry down to its tectonic plates. Triggered by Jodi Kantor, Megan Twohey, and Ronan Farrow’s reporting on Harvey Weinstein as well as actress Alyssa Milano’s tweet, stories of abusive behavior and flagrant misuses of power erupted out of Hollywood, one after another. Kevin Spacey, Louis CK, Jeffrey Tambor, director James Toback, Danny Masterson, Amazon Studios executive Roy Price, Pixar’s John Lasseter, Charlie Rose, and Matt Lauer were just a handful of the powerful men named and shamed in the first few months of the turmoil that would become an all-out reckoning for Hollywood.
The assumption was that the industry would never be the same. Abusers would be rooted out, policies would change, and far more women would be elevated to decision-making positions. But five years later, how much have things really changed? And how much more is Hollywood willing to change?
“#MeToo is a bit of a failure in terms of institutional power,” one television showrunner tells Vanity Fair. “They mostly didn’t put women in charge, with some exceptions. The truth is that men still run Hollywood up and down the line, and they don’t care [about #MeToo]. If anything, they feel that their colleagues have been unfairly maligned.”
That doesn’t mean that #MeToo hasn’t had an impact on the industry. “I think what has changed is I think men are afraid, and that has never happened before,” says a veteran film producer. “Men are afraid to behave badly because there have been enough situations where [they] are now suffering consequences. It would be nice if that wasn’t the only motivation for behavior to improve. But I’ll take it, you know?”
The repercussions of “behaving badly” are on Technicolor display this month: Weinstein and Masterson are currently on trial for alleged sexual crimes, director Paul Haggis’s civil rape trial is underway, and former Scrubs producer Eric Weinberg pleaded not guilty last week to sexually assaulting five women whom he is accused of luring to photo shoots. (Weinstein, Masterson, and Haggis have denied the allegations against them.) “There is far more accountability now,” says veteran television showrunner Jenny Bicks, a former Sex and the City writer and creator of the Fox series Welcome to Flatch. “I think it is harder for [abusers] to hide, and there are more clear channels to be able to report situations.” Bicks recently dealt with a situation on her own set in which someone reported inappropriate behavior from a male crew member. “Five years ago, I don’t think they would have felt comfortable coming to a showrunner and telling them that, but I was able to go and fire him, which made me feel: See, we can start to show people that there are rules—that you can’t do this shit and get away with this.”
After the #MeToo floodgates opened, many Hollywood unions and organizations set up hotlines that helped survivors of abuse or discrimination process their trauma and take the next steps, including how to file complaints with their studio or company’s HR department. Women in Film recently released the results of its survey, taken by members this fall, in which 79.9% of respondents say they or someone they know have experienced abuse or misconduct while working in the industry in the last five years. WIF CEO Kirsten Schaffer was dismayed by the numbers. “It’s kind of surprising how much hasn’t changed,” she says with a sigh. Respondents shared stories like, “An agent pulled his genitals out of his underwear in front of me” and “Our director grabbed our female PR professional’s ass on the red carpet and would not let go.” Schaffer says, “It made me think about how long and how hard it is to actually change behavior. Awareness is part of the solution, but it’s not the sole solution.”
Similarly, the Hollywood Commission—which was created in the wake of the 2017 #MeToo explosion to target the industry’s “culture of abuse and power disparity”—launched a sweeping new survey last week tracking behavior in the industry. The results of the 2020 survey showed that 65% of those who responded didn’t believe powerful individuals would be held accountable for harassing someone with less power and that just over a quarter of those who experienced an incident involving harassment or sexual coercion reported it to employers, “because they think they won’t be believed, nothing will happen, or they’ll be retaliated against.”
An industry insider who struggled to get her HR department to take action against an abusive colleague understands why so many in Hollywood feel that way. “I think the whole apparatus is rigged,” she says. “If we have HR departments that are hired by studios investigating people on their shows and movies, it is never going to be fair. Because at the end of the day, the HR departments are beholden to the studios…and there’s just too much money on the line.” She also believes racial bias can distort the process. “If a white woman comes out with claims she is taken much more seriously than a Black woman. I saw it happen…. I can’t tell you how many people said, ‘Oh, you’re so strong.’ But this is a fucked-up situation and I shouldn’t have to be strong through it!”
This insider suggests something that I heard from many people in my reporting: The feeling remains that the best way to get a complaint taken seriously is by going public to the press or social media. It’s a solution that still requires the survivor to put their own career at risk. Which is why most of the entertainment-industry people I spoke to say there is still an active whisper network warning people away from the many remaining problem figures in town.