Jayme Deerwester
USA TODAY
Published 5:18 p.m. UTC May 29, 2018
Morgan Freeman’s lawyer is demanding CNN retract a story in which eight women accused the veteran actor of sexual misconduct.
In a 10-page letter to CNN president Jeff Zucker obtained by USA TODAY, attorney Robert M. Schwartz calls their story “the product of malicious intent, falsehoods, slight-of-hand (sic), an absence of editorial control, and journalistic malpractice.”
He notes in the letter sent Tuesday that his firm, the Los Angeles-based Irell & Manella LLP, has begun its own investigation of CNN’s reporting. Nevertheless, he demands that CNN issue a retraction and an apology to Freeman and his producing partner, Lori McCreary, who Schwartz claims told their reporters she was not harassed.
Reporters Chloe Melas and An Phung wrote that McCreary, who co-founded Revelation Entertainment with Freeman and serves as co-president of the Producers Guild of America, witnessed inappropriate behavior by Freeman and was herself the subject of sexist remarks at a 2016 panel discussion.
The Hollywood Reporter, which covered the event, quoted Freeman as saying, “She doesn’t want to be thought of as a pretty face,” said Freeman of the producer. “She wants to be thought of as serious. But you can’t get away from the short dresses.”
Schwartz also cites Chloe Melas’ own words from a Friday Headline News interview, in which she said that her investigation and story had been inspired by comments Freeman made at a 2017 press junket for his movie Going in Style.
“The impetus for the story and this whole investigation was actually my own experience with Morgan Freeman at a junket last year, for the movie Going In Style. Right when I walked into the room, he began making sexually suggestive comments to me. Now, as an entertainment reporter for over a decade, it was truly unlike anything I have ever experienced. One of those comments was caught on tape. In this tape, he says to me, “Boy do I wish I was there,” while looking me up and down. I was six months pregnant at the time. And his co-stars Alan Arkin and Michael Caine were seated on either side of him and actually looked at him when he made this comment to me. Again, it was caught on tape. And take a note of Freeman’s eyes in this clip.”
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Schwartz says that a video of that interview, conducted with Freeman’s co-stars, Michael Caine and Alan Arkin, “makes clear” that Freeman was, in fact, responding to an embarrassing story in which he complimented a woman on her pregnancy only for her to awkwardly tell him she wasn’t expecting.
He argues, “The problem with Ms. Melas’ account, which infected everything that she and CNN thereafter did, is that her version of the interview is false.”
Schwartz notes that two of the eight women, Tyra Martin and Lori McCreary, had denied they’d been harassed, adding that “Martin has gone on record twice (to WGN and TMZ) since CNN published the article to state that CNN misrepresented what she said.”
Schwartz also accuses Melas of baiting her sources to “say bad things about Mr. Freeman and tried to get them to confirm her bias against him.” Consequently, he says, “No reader of the article can have any confidence that any of the anonymous sources, which make up the balance of CNN’s article, can be relied upon at all.”
At times, Schwartz also used comments on Reddit and Twitter to back his own arguments.
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Melas and Phung maintain that they spoke to 16 people in all, eight of whom said they were victims of what some of them described as harassment or inappropriate behavior by Freeman, and said they witnessed an act of misconduct by the actor. Altogether, they say, the 16 accounts “described a pattern of inappropriate behavior by Freeman on set, while promoting his movies and at his production company Revelations Entertainment.”
After issuing an initial two-sentence denial on Thursday, Freeman went into greater depth in a Friday statement to The New York Times.
“All victims of assault and harassment deserve to be heard. And we need to listen to them,” he began. “But it is not right to equate horrific incidents of sexual assault with misplaced compliments or humor.
I admit that I am someone who feels a need to try to make women — and men — feel appreciated and at ease around me,” he continued. “As a part of that, I would often try to joke with and compliment women, in what I thought was a light-hearted and humorous way. Clearly, I was not always coming across the way I intended.”
“But I also want to be clear,” Freeman told the Times, “I did not create unsafe work environments. I did not assault women. I did not offer employment or advancement in exchange for sex. Any suggestion that I did so is completely false.”
Schwartz’s retraction demand comes after Visa and the transit system for Vancouver, Canada, suspended the airing of ads voiced by Freeman.
CNN responded to the letter Tuesday afternoon in a statement to USA TODAY: “The unfounded accusations made by Mr. Freeman’s lawyer are disappointing and are difficult to reconcile with Mr. Freeman’s own public statements in the aftermath of the story. CNN stands by its reporting and will respond forcefully to any attempt by Mr. Freeman or his representatives to intimidate us from covering this important public issue.”
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