The 1998 Venice Film Festival incident and Miramax settlement began with Rowena Chiu’s account of Harvey Weinstein’s conduct during a work trip and ended in a legal agreement that restricted what she and Zelda Perkins could say about it. Perkins confronted Weinstein and resigned with Chiu, but the settlement—£125,000 to each woman—came with extensive confidentiality obligations. The episode showed how a dispute over workplace conduct could be converted into a private financial agreement that silenced those involved while leaving proposed reforms uncertain.

Setting and the account of the incident

In September 1998, Perkins and Chiu travelled to Venice for the film festival as part of the usual work routine: attending screenings, staying in a top hotel, and meeting colleagues from New York. Perkins had hired Chiu earlier that year. An aspiring producer with experience staging challenging theatre at Oxford University, Chiu was a recent hire in the London office; Perkins, older and more experienced, had warned her to be cautious around Weinstein.

Chiu’s evening duties put her alone with Weinstein for long stretches in a hotel room. She later told Jodi Kantor that he made advances from the outset of the trip. On the second or third night, while the two were supposed to be reviewing scripts, his requests escalated. Chiu tried to return their attention to the work and to deflect the advances without provoking a confrontation. She said the pressure continued for about four hours, interrupting repeated attempts to resume the script review. Weinstein eventually held her down briefly on a bed, she recounted; she managed to get away and continued working until her shift ended. She left the room at about 2 a.m.

The narrative also records signs that something was wrong before the details became public. In the autumn of 1998, entertainment executive Amy Israel met with Weinstein and saw Perkins and Chiu sitting together, visibly trembling. Israel inferred that something had happened involving the two assistants, while Weinstein spoke about films as usual and did not acknowledge a problem. She did not know the full account at that point. Israel later told Kantor that Weinstein had also harassed her: on an earlier occasion at the Toronto Film Festival, she had been summoned to his hotel room and found him almost naked, asking her for a massage. Israel said she had pretended to call her mother to get out of the situation. Her experience offered a separate account of the risks surrounding work encounters with Weinstein, but it was Chiu’s account of the Venice trip that prompted Perkins to act.

Confrontation and joint resignation

After Chiu confided in her, Perkins became upset and set off to find Weinstein. She later recounted confronting him at a business lunch on a hotel terrace, in front of the other guests. She told him to follow her; he did, down the hallway, in a reversal of their ordinary workplace roles. Perkins said Weinstein swore that he had done nothing wrong. He later denied Chiu’s account through a representative, rejecting it as untrue.

Perkins was twenty-four and had worked for Weinstein longer than Chiu. She knew of his history of misconduct, and believed that Chiu could not effectively challenge him alone. The women joined forces and resigned. Perkins described her action as protecting her assistant, a response shaped both by what Chiu had told her and by the imbalance between a young employee and a powerful producer. Their decision moved the matter beyond a private disclosure between colleagues, but it did not lead directly to the criminal proceedings they had expected.

Perkins sought help from producer Donna Gigliotti, who recommended a New York lawyer, joined a call, and offered other support. Perkins and Chiu, then a part-time law student, found a lawyer through the London firm Simons Muirhead & Burton. Their lawyers told them that they lacked physical evidence and had not contacted police in Venice. They were two young women confronting Weinstein and potentially Disney, which then owned Miramax. Rather than proceeding as they had anticipated, they were advised that a settlement was the likely course.

Negotiations and the agreement

The lawyers initially discussed a payment of roughly one year’s salary, about £20,000, and told the women this was how such cases were commonly handled. Perkins and Chiu did not want to keep the money: they wanted it donated to charity, hoping that the gesture might draw attention to what had happened. They were told that Weinstein’s lawyers were unlikely to negotiate without a financial demand.

Perkins responded by seeking more than compensation. She proposed that Weinstein attend therapy and that she be present at his first session. She also sought a sexual-harassment policy at Miramax, training, and a three-person body to review complaints, including an attorney. For a similar allegation within the next two years, she proposed a minimum settlement of £35,000 or six months’ salary, with the matter reported to Disney or Weinstein dismissed. These were Perkins’s demands in the negotiations; the evidence does not establish that the proposed policy, review process, or consequences were adopted.

Weinstein’s side was represented by the London firm Allen & Overy and Miramax attorney Steve Hutensky, who travelled from New York to work on the matter. Hutensky later said he knew of no other sexual-assault claim against Weinstein, that Weinstein had described the encounter as consensual, and that he was settling to protect his marriage. One negotiating session continued until five in the morning. The resulting agreement provided £125,000 to each woman, alongside restrictions that substantially limited what they could disclose.

Confidentiality and consequences

When Perkins later showed Kantor pieces of the settlement papers, the restrictions revealed the agreement’s reach. Perkins was barred from discussing her time at Miramax with others, and a medical professional she consulted about the events would have to sign a confidentiality agreement. She could not be truthful with her own accountant about the money. The agreement also recorded, anonymously, people she had already told about her departure and the incident. Its language extended beyond ordinary limits on speaking to the press: if disclosure occurred, Perkins was required to assist with steps to prevent further disclosure or mitigate its effects.

The documents were dated October 23, 1998, only weeks after the Venice trip. Perkins was not permitted to keep a complete copy. She had limited access to the paperwork through her lawyer’s office and brought fragments to the later meeting with Kantor. Under intense pressure from Weinstein’s lawyers, she and Chiu had also accepted matching confidentiality terms that appeared to bar them from discussing the matter with each other. Chiu sent Perkins a Filofax planner as a thank-you gift, then disappeared from Perkins’s view.

The settlement’s consequences continued after the negotiations ended. Perkins felt broken and disillusioned, and found that she could not explain to prospective employers why she had abruptly left a prominent company. She concluded that her film career was over and went to Guatemala to train horses. Although she had negotiated for Weinstein to attend therapy and had chosen a therapist, she struggled to make the sessions happen and eventually gave up. The agreement thus failed, in her account, to deliver the personal and workplace remedies she had sought, while making it difficult for her to describe why she had left.

Years later, the surviving fragments became important to Kantor and Megan Twohey’s reporting. They had known of Weinstein settlements but had not seen the documents; Perkins’s papers provided direct evidence of the terms imposed on her and Chiu. The episode connects the original confrontation to the later investigation: a settlement arranged within weeks could restrict disclosure for years, but its incomplete paper trail eventually helped journalists examine how confidentiality worked in practice.