Universal Pictures has dropped the first trailer for She Said, the Carey Mulligan and Zoe Kazan-led drama based on the 2017 New York Times exposé outing Harvey Weinstein’s decades of sexual abuse.
Written by Rebecca Lenkiewicz and based on the best-selling memoir She Said: Breaking the Sexual Harassment Story That Helped Ignite a Movement, the film centers on real-life Times reporters Megan Twohey (Mulligan) and Jodi Kantor (Kazan) as they work — amid legal threats and intimidation — at the early height of the ongoing #MeToo movement to publish the bombshell investigation into one of Hollywood’s then-most powerful men.
“The only way these women are going to go on the record,” Mulligan says at the top of the trailer before Kazan finishes, “is if they all jump together.”
The nearly three-minute trailer teases how the film weaves together a team of female reporters’ efforts to not just expose a now-convicted serial abuser, harasser and rapist with immense power within the entertainment industry, but how that industry — and other systems like it — make sexual harassment “hard to address,” says Patricia Clarkson, who plays New York Times investigations editor Rebecca Corbett.
“Let’s interrogate the whole system,” she adds.
What follows are scenes that highlight just how early conversations around the investigation unfolded with Weinstein’s victims, Twohey and Kantor’s approach to convincing victims to speak up and securing them as sources, and details from the victims’ recountings of their assault and harassment at the hands of the Hollywood producer.
“In your previous stories, how did you persuade women to tell you what had happened to them?” Kazan’s Kantor asks.
“The case I made was I can’t change what happened to you in the past, but together we may be able to help protect other people,” Mulligan’s Twohey responds. “The truth, basically.”
It also previews how prior investigations into Weinstein were taken down, the way some victim-blamed his accusers, the stalking, threats and harassment Twohey and Kantor faced while trying to report, and ultimately how the “master manipulator” was able to evade accountability and legal recourse for so long. “This is bigger than Weinstein,” one female character says. “This is about the system protecting abusers.”
“I was silenced,” another says. “I want my voice back.”
Andre Braugher, Samantha Morton, Tom Pelphrey and Adam Shapiro also star in the film from director Maria Schrader (Unorthodox). She Said was produced by Brad Pitt, Dede Gardner and Jeremy Kleiner, and executive produced by Megan Ellison and Sue Naegle. It hits theaters Nov. 18.