“Friends of Harvey”

“Friends of Harvey” was an office phrase for women whose visits and movements were handled by Harvey Weinstein’s assistants. Recalled by employees in different roles and echoed in a list of names and contact information, the expression linked a casual-sounding label to company work and to the management of Weinstein’s encounters with women.

Use in the Office

Sandeep Rehal, Weinstein’s personal assistant, said she had to maintain a roster of women she referred to as “Friends of Harvey” and manage their comings and goings. Irwin Reiter had heard the phrase around the office before Rehal described her duties, indicating that it was not simply a private label she had invented for one task.

Michelle Franklin, a former assistant in the London office, independently used the same term when describing work she had been assigned. She said she had to arrange hotel-room encounters for “Friends of Harvey.” Franklin had not been pressured for sex herself, but the work placed her in the role of organizing Weinstein’s meetings with women; she recalled objecting that it was not her job and that she did not want to do it, and said Weinstein dismissed her objection before she was fired.

From Phrase to Company Record

The phrase also appeared in a document called “HW friends.” As The New York Times’ investigation approached publication, Weinstein reportedly directed an information-technology employee to delete it from an executive assistant’s computer. The document contained women’s names and contact information organized by city. Its format gave the label an administrative counterpart: the phrase used by sources was associated with a geographically arranged list, not only with spoken office shorthand.

The document’s title was not identical to the phrase employees recalled, but the reporting connected the two. The similarity matters because it ties separate accounts of assistants’ duties to a company record that Weinstein sought to remove. The available evidence does not establish that every woman on the list had the same relationship to Weinstein or that the record captured every encounter.

Meaning and Significance

The phrase’s familiar, informal tone sat beside tasks that assistants described as part of their jobs: keeping a roster, arranging hotel meetings, and managing women’s arrivals and departures. In that context, “Friends of Harvey” functioned as workplace language for a recurring category of people whose access and movements employees were expected to organize. The label made the arrangement sound social; the reported duties show its operational dimension.

The phrase’s recurrence across Rehal’s and Franklin’s accounts, alongside the “HW friends” document, made it a point of connection in the investigation. It helped reporters recognize that separate employees had encountered related practices, while the deletion order suggested the record had become consequential as publication neared. The expression thus stands both for an internal shorthand and for the larger system of company assistance that the phrase helped conceal in ordinary language.