Long conference calls and bad-tempered threats: an exclusive extract from Ronan Farrow’s book Catch And Kill

• Read an interview with Ronan Farrow here

By fall 2017, I had taken my story to the New Yorker. As the investigation moved closer to publication, I called the Weinstein Company for comment. Sounding nervous, an assistant said he’d check if the boss was available. And then there was Weinstein’s husky baritone. “Wow!” he said with mock excitement. “What do I owe this occasion to?” The writing about the man has seldom lingered on this quality: he was pretty funny. But he veered swiftly toward fury. Weinstein hung up on me several times that fall, including on that first day. I told him I wanted to be fair, to include anything he had to say, then asked if he was comfortable with me recording. He seemed to panic, and was gone with a click. The pattern repeated that afternoon. But when I got him to talk for a sustained time, he abandoned his initial caution and got sharply combative.

“How did you identify yourself to all these women?” he demanded. I was caught off balance. I had started reporting the story for NBC, before turning to the New Yorker.