Late-night hosts on Monday addressed the New York Times report last week that detailed decades of sexual harassment allegations against Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein, who has since been fired from the Weinstein Company.
“Now, if you’re not familiar, Harvey Weinstein is responsible for The English Patient, Good Will Hunting, Shakespeare in Love and other movies your mom liked in the 90s,” Stephen Colbert began. “Well, last week the New York Times published an explosive article detailing decades of sexual harassment claims against Weinstein. And today, Harvey Weinstein was fired from the Weinstein company.”
“Some of the details of what Weinstein did are pretty terrible,” Colbert said. “For example he apparently required some female employees to be present while he bathed. But that is nothing compared to this next one: a local reporter in New York said Weinstein forced her to watch him masturbate into a potted plant.”
“If you ever have dinner at Harvey Weinstein’s house, avoid the fresh basil,” Colbert quipped.
“This is monstrous behavior that in a just world would not have been allowed to go on for decades,” the host continued. “It is indefensible. Weinstein immediately defended it, saying, ‘I came of age in the 60s and 70s, when all the rules about behavior and workplaces were different.’ Weinstein’s lawyers called him an ‘old dinosaur learning new ways’.”
“A, that’s no excuse,” Colbert replied. “B, dinosaurs did not touch themselves in front of employees. The T rex’s arms were way too short.”
Jimmy Kimmel also weighed in on the report about Weinstein’s continued abuse of the women with whom he worked. Donald Trump Jr, the president’s son, tweeted at Kimmel this week inquiring about whether or not any late-night television hosts would address the allegations against Weinstein, a noted democratic donor who gave money to the Hillary Clinton campaign.
“There was an exposé in the New York Times about decades of sexual harassment accusations made against the movie producer Harvey Weinstein,” Kimmel began, before detailing his Twitter spat with the president’s son, in which Kimmel replied with a video of Trump’s own infamous statement, in last year’s Access Hollywood tape, about routinely sexually harassing women.
“The insinuation was that we as part of the biased leftwing media propaganda machine wouldn’t say anything about him because he’s a Democrat,” Kimmel said. “Never mind the thousands of jokes about Bill Cosby and Bill Clinton and all the other Bill’s of that ilk.”
“Note to DJTJ, next time you’re defending your father and you think it’s a good idea to draw a comparison between him and a sexual predator, don’t,” Kimmel quipped.
“I did promise a Harvey Weinstein joke,” he continued. “What’s the difference between Harvey Weinstein and the Pillsbury doughboy? When the Pillsbury doughboy offers you a roll, he doesn’t ask you to watch him take a shower for it.”
Finally, Seth Meyers invited the women of his writing staff on the show to share their thoughts about Weinstein and the statement he released after the Times’ report was published.
“It was revealed that famous Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein has been sexually harassing women and then paying them to keep quiet about,” Meyers began. “And as stunning as the allegation are, equally stunning was the apology that Weinstein issued after the article was published. Here to comment are three of our writers: Amber, Ally and Jenny.”
“We want to start by applauding the women who went on the record to detail Harvey Weinstein’s terrible behavior,” one began. “So far we know Weinstein reached cash settlements with eight women, and where there are eight, there are always more.”
The Late Night writers continued: “And whatever details you hear just know that means there are worse details we haven’t heard. In his apology, he blamed disrespect of women on growing up in the 60s and 70s, which would be a good excuse if he came to the present via time machine. Did he not notice things have been changing over the past 50 years?”
“To make matters worse, he said he was going to go after the NRA and Trump, as if our shared politics makes his sexual assault OK,” one continued, before mocking Weinstein’s deflections. “‘Hey, I saw a guy masturbate into a plant, but it was OK because he was wearing a Planned Parenthood button.’”
“When he got busted, Weinstein said ‘to make up for it, I’m starting a scholarship for women directors,’” the writers continued. “That’s just him being around more women. That’s not the solution, that’s the problem. Every woman in the American workforce has been harassed at some point. Whether it’s physical harassment or passing inappropriate comments, this is something women deal with every day.”
