Cornwall

Cornwall, in the far southwest of England, was where Jodi Kantor went to meet Laura Madden during Madden’s vacation in August 2017. The visit brought Kantor face to face with a former Miramax employee whose account echoed other women’s stories and whose decision about speaking publicly could affect the investigation.

A Difficult Journey to the Meeting

Madden lived in Wales but was spending that week on vacation in Cornwall, and could spare only about an hour. Flights from London were sold out, so Kantor took a five-hour train ride; when the train broke down in its final hour, she continued by bus. She went despite the delays because Madden’s halting account over the phone seemed to bring together details the reporters had already heard.

The meeting took place on a beach. In the conversation, Kantor did not disclose that she had met Zelda Perkins the previous day, nor had she told Perkins about Madden. The women had once worked alongside each other in the London office but had never shared their painful accounts; preserving each source’s confidentiality also kept one woman from learning who else might participate.

The Beach Conversation

Kantor asked Madden to imagine going on the record. Without naming other women, she described the growing scale of the allegations, explained that Madden’s account could matter to others, and promised to review the story with her before publication and try to make the process dignified. She also told Madden that retaliation by Weinstein would strengthen the case against him.

Madden initially said she would think about it. Her private circumstances made the decision especially weighty: her marriage had recently ended, she was raising four children aged eleven to sixteen, and she had undergone breast-cancer treatment that included losing one breast, with another mastectomy and reconstructive surgery still ahead. She had not worked full-time since leaving Miramax and was trying to complete a landscape-design course. On the beach, Kantor came to understand the depth of the strain she was carrying, even as Madden privately felt that another upheaval might be bearable.

Significance to the Investigation

For Kantor, the encounter made a broad pattern tangible through one woman’s carefully described experience. Madden’s account joined stories from actresses and former film-company employees who did not know one another, yet recalled similar circumstances: young women seeking work, hotel suites, champagne, and Weinstein in a bathrobe. The beach conversation thus connected an individual account to the repetition that the reporters were beginning to call The Pattern.

Cornwall also became the setting for Madden’s movement from reluctance toward considering public testimony. She had taken Kantor’s first call after resisting pressure to promise that she would not speak to journalists. She had received no money to remain silent and had signed no nondisclosure agreement; away from Hollywood and no longer bound by such a contract, she began to wonder whether she had a responsibility to speak for women who could not. The visit did not settle her decision, but it brought that possibility into focus.