 "Michael Sitrick")
Michael Sitrick couldn’t comment on Harvey Weinstein. Until a few weeks earlier, Sitrick’s crisis management firm, Sitrick and Company, had been managing Weinstein’s unprecedented crisis.
Sitrick had dropped Weinstein, but he couldn’t say why. He couldn’t confirm if it was because Weinstein had stopped paying his bills, though he could confirm it was true that Weinstein had stopped paying his bills, and that the two parties were in arbitration.
He couldn’t say if there were other factors. But he could say what were not factors. He could confirm, for instance, that he did not resign out of concern for his company’s own reputation. “You can’t do that,” Sitrick said. “You cannot put your firm’s interests ahead of the client’s interests.”
Sitrick could also confirm that he had not grown morally uncomfortable with the flood of allegations against Weinstein. When I asked about this — and this was not long before Weinstein would be arrested in Manhattan on charges of rape and a criminal sexual act and swiftly indicted by a grand jury — he looked at me as if I’d just stepped off a UFO. “The law of this land is innocent until proven guilty,” he said. “There hasn’t been a single case that has gone to trial.”
Even if you don’t know his name, you know his work. Sitrick has been managing the narratives of besieged celebrities since the early 1990s.
When Erin Everly, about whom Axl Rose wrote “Sweet Child O’ Mine”, was suing Rose for assault and sexual battery, Sitrick got her story on the cover of People magazine. Sitrick was retained by Halle Berry when she was in a hit-and-run, Naomi Campbell when she was accused of assaulting her housekeeper and Rush Limbaugh when he was arrested on prescription drug charges.
“Paris absolutely did not smoke pot Tuesday night or Wednesday morning,” Sitrick told a reporter shortly after Paris Hilton was released from jail in 2007. When The New York Daily News reported that Kobe Bryant may have been flirting with someone other than his wife at a Jay-Z concert, Sitrick was there to push back: “There was no touching of the face, and he did not dance with her.”
Sitrick had dropped Weinstein, but he couldn’t say why. He couldn’t confirm if it was because Weinstein had stopped paying his bills, though he could confirm it was true that Weinstein had stopped paying his bills, and that the two parties were in arbitration.
He couldn’t say if there were other factors. But he could say what were not factors. He could confirm, for instance, that he did not resign out of concern for his company’s own reputation. “You can’t do that,” Sitrick said. “You cannot put your firm’s interests ahead of the client’s interests.”
Sitrick could also confirm that he had not grown morally uncomfortable with the flood of allegations against Weinstein. When I asked about this — and this was not long before Weinstein would be arrested in Manhattan on charges of rape and a criminal sexual act and swiftly indicted by a grand jury — he looked at me as if I’d just stepped off a UFO. “The law of this land is innocent until proven guilty,” he said. “There hasn’t been a single case that has gone to trial.”
Even if you don’t know his name, you know his work. Sitrick has been managing the narratives of besieged celebrities since the early 1990s.
When Erin Everly, about whom Axl Rose wrote “Sweet Child O’ Mine”, was suing Rose for assault and sexual battery, Sitrick got her story on the cover of People magazine. Sitrick was retained by Halle Berry when she was in a hit-and-run, Naomi Campbell when she was accused of assaulting her housekeeper and Rush Limbaugh when he was arrested on prescription drug charges.
“Paris absolutely did not smoke pot Tuesday night or Wednesday morning,” Sitrick told a reporter shortly after Paris Hilton was released from jail in 2007. When The New York Daily News reported that Kobe Bryant may have been flirting with someone other than his wife at a Jay-Z concert, Sitrick was there to push back: “There was no touching of the face, and he did not dance with her.”
Michael Sitrick
