Mega-producer Scott Rudin, one of the few people to have achieved EGOT status (he has an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar and a Tony), is the subject of a blistering expose in The Hollywood Reporter. The publication chronicles his alleged abuse of staffers, who spoke under conditions of anonymity, said emotional abuse was the norm, but physical abuse happened too.
Rudin’s wins include best picture for the Coen brothers' 2007 drama No Country for Old Men.
Rudin is the latest Hollywood mega-star whose bad behavior is being reported on. Harvey Weinstein was the first in 2017, and his widespread and legendary abuse helped spawn the #MeToo movement and landed him behind bars. Since then, Sharon Osbourne, Ellen DeGeneres, Simon Cowell and others have come under fire, with varying consequences.
A former assistant reports that Rudin threw a baked potato at his head over a meeting. “I went into the kitchen, and I was like, ‘Hey, Scott, A24 is on the way up. I’m not sure what it’s concerning,'” he recalled of the 2018 incident. “And he flipped out, like, ‘Nobody told me A24 was on my schedule.’ He threw it at me, and I dodged a big potato. He was like, ‘Well, find out, and get me a new potato.'”
In 2012, Rudin reportedly “smashed an Apple computer monitor” on an assistant’s hand after the assistant “failed to get him a seat on a sold-out flight.” The assistant had to go to the ER.
We were all shocked because we didn't know that that sort of thing could happen in that office,” says Andrew Coles, a then-assistant and now-manager and producer, whose credits include Queen & Slim. “We knew a lot could happen. There were the guys that were sleeping in the office, the guys whose hair was falling out and were developing ulcers. It was a very intense environment, but that just felt different. It was a new level of unhinged — a level of lack of control that I had never seen before in a workplace.”
“Every day was exhausting and horrific,” a former assistant, who worked for Rudin from 2018–2019, recalled. “Not even the way he abused me, but watching the way he abused the people around me who started to become my very close friends. You’re spending 14 hours a day with the same people, enduring the same abuse. It became this collective bond with these people.” Another former assistant claims that Rudin “relished in the cruelty” and “hundreds and hundreds of people have suffered” from his abusive behavior.
On May 14th, Netflix will release The Woman in the Window, Rudin’s latest. It stars Amy Adams and was directed by Joe Wright.