Something exciting landed in my Messenger inbox this week.

I was watching the second season of Physical (starring Rose Byrne on Apple TV+) one afternoon when a notification popped up on my iPhone.

It was a message from a good friend, with a link to the first official She Said trailer, which immediately got my attention.

Eep! I bolted upright and immediately clicked on the link to view the almost 3-minute teaser.

She Said is the film adaptation of the book, She Said: Breaking the Sexual Harassment Story That Helped Ignite a Movement by The New York Times journalists, Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey.

The book recounts how Kantor and Twohey broke the Harvey Weinstein story (published by The New York Times in 2017) and delves into their investigation and explosive expose of the notorious movie mogul.

As described by another article published in The New York Times, the book is a story about “how two reporters with no connections in Hollywood and with almost no one willing to go on the record were able to penetrate this omerta and expose what lay behind it to public scrutiny”.

It’s “the story of getting the story”.

And now, the first official She Said trailer has landed along with the film’s release date (18 November in the US).

After first reading Kantor and Twohey’s original The New York Times piece exposing Weinstein, I was instantly hooked by their investigation.

So, as soon as it was available, I read their book, which won a Pulitzer (along with Catch and Kill by Ronan Farrow) and then went on to also base my Master’s thesis on how the #MeToo movement was covered by Australian news media at the time.

Needless to say, it’s is a story and topic I’ve been hugely interested in for a while now.

That plus the fact that I’m also really interested in investigative and narrative journalism – a career dream. So, any book that depicts the inner workings of a news organisation and the work of journalists has my attention.

I then learnt about the book being made into a film in 2021 (click here for my blog post about it) and have been anticipating its release ever since.

And now it’s almost here.

In just a few months (and just over 5 years after the infamous investigative article went live on The New York Times site) the film adaptation of She Said will grace our silver screens.

A little bit of detail

Directed by Maria Schrader, with the script written by Rebecca Lenkiewicz, the film’s producers include Brad Pitt’s production company, Plan B Entertainment.

This, as I wrote about in my previous blog post on the topic, is fitting given that Pitt had a personal encounter with Weinstein after the movie mogul allegedly made unwanted advances to Pitt’s then-girlfriend, Gwyneth Paltrow.

The film’s casting is impeccable: Carey Mulligan (of Promising Young Woman fame, for which she was nominated for an Academy Award in the Best Actress category – honestly, she should have won!) as Megan Twohey, and Zoe Kazan as Jodi Kantor, with Patricia Clarkson, playing The New York Times investigations editor Rebecca Corbett.

The trailer

In the opening sequence of the nearly 3-minute teaser, Clarkson who plays Corbett asks:

“Why is sexual harassment so pervasive and so hard to address?”

The trailer goes on to depict the inner workings of The New York Times and an insight into the work undertaken by the reporters – a peek into how they got the story, and the work involved in exposing the notorious movie mogul.

“Together we may be able to help protect other people.”

One of the main reasons why anyone gets into journalism, right?

For those who want to read it first (the preferable way to do these things! … in my opinion), She Said: Breaking the Sexual Harassment Story That Helped Ignite a Movement is available on Amazon and Booktopia.

She Said, a film by Universal Pictures, hits silver screens on 18 November.

Cannot wait!

“Go write. It’s time to write.”

x G.