President Joe Biden has nominated the police chief who is believed to be the first gay police chief to get married in the U.S. to lead Customs and Border Protection (CBP).
Tuscon, Arizona Police Chief Chris Magnus made national headlines for his support for the Black Lives Matter movement and for his criticisms of former President Donald Trump’s immigration policies. Biden choice of Magnus to be the next Commissioner of CBP signals his intent on changing the culture of the sprawling agency charged with enforcing trade, customs, and immigration laws.
Magnus was police chief in Richmond, California from 2006 to 2015. During his tenure, he was credited with hiring more women and minorities, increasing communication between the police and the community, and increasing police accountability.
By the time he went on to be the police chief of Tuscon, 60 percent of the Richmond Police Department’s active police officers were non-white, and almost all the officers who were there when he started had left.
“It’s easier to get new people in a department than it is to get a new culture in a department,” Magnus said at the time.
He also made headlines a few times when he was in Richmond. He married Terrance Cheung, the chief of staff to the mayor of Richmond in 2014, and the two were dubbed “the city’s power couple.”
Magnus was the first known police chief to take advantage of marriage equality, and he and Cheung moved to Tuscon together in 2016.
Magnus also got attention for a picture of him holding a Black Lives Matter sign in 2014 during the protests of the police killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri.
“We support people’s rights to peacefully protest. We have a lot of respect for all lives in our community, Black, brown, everyone,” he told Richmond Confidential at the time. “Our goal is to promote and build the strongest relationships possible between the police and the community.”
But it’s his time as Tuscon Police Chief that is drawing the most attention now. Richmond, California is in the Bay Area and is far from the border, but Tuscon is much closer, putting him at odds with the Trump administration on immigration law.
In March 2017, the Tuscon Police Department refused to help Border Patrol capture an escaped detainee who allegedly crossed the border illegally, and they even evicted a task force set up to find the suspect from the police department.
The Observer reported that this led to bad blood between the law enforcement agencies and “homophobic language in their private comments” from Border Patrol officers on an online forum.
Later that year, he wrote a New York Times op-ed denouncing the Trump administration’s efforts to increase deportations, saying that it made it harder to enforce the law when witnesses and victims are afraid to talk to police.
“The harsh anti-immigrant rhetoric and [Attorney General Jeff] Sessions’s reckless policies ignore a basic reality known by most good cops and prosecutors,” he wrote. “If people are afraid of the police, if they fear they may become separated from their families or harshly interrogated based on their immigration status, they won’t report crimes or come forward as witnesses.”
“It’s a simple formula. When crimes go unreported and unsolved, criminals are empowered.”
The Biden administration mentioned his time in Tuscon in their brief announcement of his appointment.
“In Tucson, Magnus implemented de-escalation training, sentinel event review processes, and programs to promote officer health and wellness,” the White House said in a statement. “Because of Tucson’s proximity to the border, he has extensive experience in addressing immigration issues.”
Just after his nomination was announced, Magnus said that he wants to talk to senators and border patrol agents before he discusses policy changes for the border.
“Sometimes it’s frustrating how hyperpartisan all these issues can become, but I want to say from the very start, I am no ideologue and I do want to make a difference on things,” he told the New York Times on Monday.
Last year, Magnus offered his resignation following the in-custody death of a 27-year-old man, Carlos Ingram-Lopez. The Tuscon City Manager refused Magnus’s resignation.
Three officers also resigned in connection to Ingram-Lopez’s death, and Magnus said that he would have fired them if they didn’t resign.
An ISIS recruiter who stabbed a gayman to death and critically injured another because they were holding hands has gone on trial Tuesday (13 April).
The streets of Dresden, Germany, were seized by fear and violence after 21-year-old Abdullah AHH, wielding a large kitchen knife, stabbed two tourists who visited the eastern town on 4 October 2020.
AHH, a Syrian refugee, is facing one count of murder for fatally stabbing Thomas L, 55, and one count of attempted murder for wounding Thomas’s partner Oliver L, 53, according to the MailOnline.
His only regret, AHH told court psychologists, was not killing Oliver. He said the couple “committed a grave sin” by holding hands in public, Dresden Higher Regional Court heard.
Arrested two weeks after the Dresden knife attack, federal prosecutors say that AHH worked for the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, a sprawling terrorist and ultra-radical Islamist group.
It was a vacation that slipped into disarray after the couple journeyed from the western state of North Rhine-Westphalia to Dresden to unwind and relax.
Out and about on a mild Autumn day in Saxony’s capital, Thomas and Oliver were both punctured with a 21-centimetre kitchen knife by AHH.
Thomas died of his injuries while Oliver survived, being badly wounded.
The attack deeply alarmed government officials, with it reportedly being the first known Islamist-motivated killing of a gay person in the country.
“Investigations have shown that the dreadful killing in Dresden had an Islamist background,” justice minister Christine Lambrecht said of the incident at the time.
“Islamist terror is a major, enduring threat to our society that we have to tackle determinedly.”
Prosecutors have claimed that the horrific killing was fuelled by radical Islamist ideology.
AHH’s biography is one of plots to carry out shuddering acts of violence onto others in the name of the Islamic State.
He was granted refugee status in May 2016 in Germany after travelling from Aleppo.
According to Bild, a German newspaper, AHH sought to recruit more to ISIS while threatening to “cut out” the tongues of Christian civilians when he lived in asylum.
“I will slaughter you today,” he wrote in a letter. “You have a big mouth and I’ll cut off your tongue, you Christian.”
In 2018, AHH was sentenced to spend two years and nine months in jail for allegedly planning a suicide bomb attack with the help of other militants.
His Facebook profile at the time was covered in ISIS symbols, retooling the social media platform to recruit more to the militant group while searching online for how to build an explosives belt. One that, the court heard, would have been detonated during a high-profile film festival.
AHH had been released from a juvenile detention centre only days before the attack.
He had been arrested once before in 2017, with the authorities wary that, if released, it would be likely that AHH would attack as he was categorised as likely to pose a threat to public safety by police.
Indeed, prosecutors have alleged that AHH did plan to kill again after stabbing the gay couple – but they did not provide further details at the time.
He was tied to the murder after investigators found DNA traces on the weapon, which was left at the scene – AHH had purchased a knife just two days before the incident.
The Michigan Court of Appeals has overturned a decision to remove a lesbian mother’s name from her children’s birth certificates.
Lanesha Matthews and Kyresha LeFever had a custody battle for their twins, who were born before same-sex marriage was legalised nationwide in the United States.
The couple had their children using LaFever’s egg, fertilised using donor sperm, which Matthews then carried.
When the children were born both mothers’ names were listed on the birth certificates. However, the couple split in 2014 and in the custody battle, a Michigan judge ruled that Matthews’ name be removed from the birth certificates.
The case was brought to the Michigan Court of Appeals where two judges ruled that the law had been “misapplied”, designating Matthews as a legal parent.
The decision was published earlier this month and stipulated that Matthews and LeFever “agreed to create and parent a child together” and “a genetic connection to one’s child is unnecessary to establish maternity”.
ay Kaplan, staff attorney for the ACLU of Michigan’s LGBT+ Project, told Pride Source: “The court was raising the question as to who is considered to be a legal parent.
“The family court judge decided that this relationship was like a surrogacy parenthood agreement. And the gestational mum [Matthews], because she wasn’t related by genetics, that she was not a natural parent.”
Calling the lower court’s decision “outrageous, Kaplan explained: “You have a mom who’s been co-parenting her children, has a relationship with her children for seven years, and the court’s saying, ‘Oh, no, sorry, you’re not a parent because you’re not biologically related to the child and, therefore, I’m going to strip you of your legal status as a parent.’ And the analysis of how she arrived at that result was pretty tortured.”
Kaplan explained the ramifications of the judges’ decision: “It’s a much larger burden for a third party to challenge the other parent’s custody arrangement.
“What was flawed about this in so many ways is that most state courts do not define a parent solely based on being genetically related. We have people who adopt children; we have heterosexual couples who use reproductive technology who might not be able to have children on their own.”
The court echoed Kaplan’s views, stating that under Michigan law a man is still considered to be a “legal parent” of a child his wife bears through reproductive technology if he consented to the procedure, and same-sex couples “should have precisely the same right”.
Despite the country-wide legalisation of same-sex marriage, LGBT+ couples can still face barriers to parenthood in Michigan.
In 2019, several faith-based adoption agencies sued the state argued that not being allowed to refuse LGBT+ people infringed on their rights. Later this year, one Catholic foster agency will go to the Supreme Court after the city of Philadelphia stopped working with them when it found out about its refusal to work with same-sex parents.
LGBT+ youth are being forced into homelessness after sexual abuse from family members, a shocking report confirms, with many having casual sex to keep a roof over their head while homeless.
Almost a fifth (17 per cent) of LGBT+ young people surveyed by LGBT+ youth homelessness charity akt said they felt like they had to have casual sex to find somewhere to stay while they were homeless. A similar number (16 per cent) said they engaged in sex work as a direct result of being made homeless.
The charity asked 161 LGBTQ+ young people about their experiences of homelessness in the last five years in the UK. Almost a quarter (24 per cent) said they experienced being homeless for one to three months, while 21 per cent experienced up to six months of being homeless. Almost three per cent said they had been homeless for over three years.
The damning report found that many LGBT+ young people experienced sexual abuse before being made homeless. One in six (16 per cent) said they were forced by family members to do sexual acts before they became homeless. The same number said they experienced this with a romantic partner.
Sadly, the akt report found abuse was prevalent in other areas. Two-thirds (66 per cent) of LGBT+ young homeless people said they were repeatedly belittled by family members to the point they felt worthless, and a similar number (61 per cent) said they felt frightened or threatened by their family before they became homeless.
Half (50 per cent) said, before they were homeless, they feared expressing their LGBT+ identity to their family would result in them being evicted.
Tim Sigsworth, chief executive of akt, and Terry Stacy, chair, said in a joint statement that the tragic report provided evidence for rethinking how organisations and the UK government support young LGBT+ people at risk of homelessness.
The charity called for the government to introduce “mandatory monitoring of gender and sexuality as a first vital step across housing and homelessness services” which it said would lead to “faster and more responsive interventions”.
akt said there also needed to be a “stronger emphasis on prevention focused intervention” to limit the long-term impacts of homelessness including “poor mental health and perpetual journeys of abuse”.
Rick Henderson, CEO of Homeless Link, said the akt research shows the “abuse many LGBTQ+ young people experience in their family home”. He said the experience of homelessness is “isolating and can inhibit young people’s opportunities to build relationships and communities with their peers”.
“This report shines a light on the experiences of abuse, discrimination and suffering faced by young people who are marginalised due to their sexuality or gender identity,” Henderson said.
“While there is extensive research about how early experiences of adversity impact on health and social welfare, this research provides an explicit picture of how these experiences lead to and sustain young LGBTQ+ people’s homelessness and risk of further abuse and exploitation.”
A South African man is on trial for the brutal murder of a gay man who was butchered and burned in a suspected hate crime.
The mutilated remains of 40-year-old Andile “Lulu” Ntuthela were found in a shallow grave 11 days after his murder. He is believed to have been killed simply because he was gay.
The 28-year-old suspect, who has not yet been named, appeared at the Kwa-Nobuhle Magistrates Court in the Eastern Cape on Tuesday (13 April).
Police spokesperson Col Priscilla Naidu said he was arrested after the man’s family complained to the police that he had burnt bedding at his house.
“On 1 April, the family reported the malicious property damage to police and indicated that they were suspicious that he may have been involved in some other criminal activity,” she said. “Police went to the house and found bloodstains inside his room as well as outside.”
The suspect was hospitalised for a mental health condition between 1 and 9 April. On his discharge from hospital he was arrested and detained for malicious damage to property.
Information about Ntuthela’s murder emerged under questioning, and officers found his remains only a few paces from the alleged killer’s front door.
“The murder is suspected to be LGBTQI linked,” Naidu confirmed.
The gruesome killing in South Africa comes days after another gay manwas stabbed to death and dumped in a ditch near a school.
As Ntuthela’s murder forced South Africans to confront the reality of this mounting death toll, members of KwaNobuhle’s LGBT+ community were left reeling.
“We know we are not safe. We only hang out with people that we know and trust because we know the prejudice we face,” said Sixolile Ndlondlo, Ntuthela close friend, speaking to The Herald.
“Andile knew his [alleged] killer. They were friends. For him to be killed like this … has us questioning who we can trust.”
Sibonelo Ncanana-Trower, spokesperson for Nelson Mandela Bay LGBTI Sector, urged queer South Africans to speak out against the increase in homophobic hate.
“[We are] deeply worried about Lulu’s murder and would like that the heavy might of law be felt by the killer,” Ncanana-Trower said to IOL.
“We call on the community to not be silent on such cases and to speak out. The Sector notes the increase in crimes of hate in the country and calls on government to intervene and work with the sector in engaging the community.
“Hate crimes don’t only affect the victim and family, it affects the whole community in a negative way.”
A candlelit prayer to celebrate Ntuthela’s life will be held on Thursday (15 April), the Sector said.
A chilling new bill in Texas would define the parents of trans kids who consenting to their affirming healthcare as “child abusers”.
Texas Senate Bill 1646 was filed on 11 March, 2021, and is sponsored by 13 Republican state senators.
The bill states that a person will be considered guilty of child abuse by “consenting to or assisting in the administering or supplying of, a puberty suppression prescription drug or cross-sex hormone to a child, other than an intersex child, for the purpose of gender transitioning or gender reassignment” or “performing or consenting to the performance of surgery or another medical procedure on a child, other than an intersex child, for the purpose of gender transitioning or gender reassignment”.
The bill places Texas parents consenting to gender-affirming care for their trans kids alongside those who create child porn, sexually abuse children, give illegal drugs to children and those who facilitate forced child marriages.
Penalties for child abuse in Texas include jail time, fines, and removal of the child.
American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) staff attorney Chase Strangio wrote on Twitter: “This bill in Texas, SB1646, would remove trans kids from their homes if a parent affirms their gender. Truly barbaric.”
In response, the Texas charity Doctors For Change wrote an open letter to state senator Bryan Hughes, who chairs the Senate State Affairs Committee, condemning the bill and its implications for both parents and healthcare providers.
It wrote that its “more than 1,000 healthcare provider members… vehemently oppose SB1646”.
The letter continued: “We care for Texans of all ages, including transgender and non-binary children, youth, and adults, and we are appalled by the blatant intention of SB1646 to characterise the provision of our compassionate, evidence-based care as ‘child abuse’ and to levy criminal penalties against providers who are putting the health and wellbeing of patients first, as is our duty to do, as well as parents/ guardians who are properly ensuring their children receive necessary care.”
The group also pointed out that because of mandatory reporting of child abuse, the bill would “mandate any healthcare provider report minors receiving certain care which would irreparably damage the trust and confidentiality of patient-provider relationships”.
The White House is not ruling out any legal action being taken in the future against states in which lawmakers are pushing anti-trans laws, including banning transgender athletes from female sports teams.
Press secretary Jen Psaki said Thursday (8 April) that president Joe Bidenwould continue to advocate for LGBT+ rights amid the flurry of new state laws against trans youth. But she stopped short of committing to any legal action against them.
Chris Johnson, the White House correspondent for the Washington Blade, asked Psaki if Biden would “reach out to the attorney general” to begin legal action against states which enacted anti-trans bills. He pointed out that state legislatures had been ‘warned’ that “anti-transgender bills are an illegal form of sex discrimination”.
Johnson specifically cited the actions of the Arkansas legislature, which overrode its governor’s veto to pass an anti-trans healthcare bill. The cruel ban, which passed into law on Tuesday (6 April), makes it illegal for healthcare professionals in Arkansas to offer gender-affirming care like puberty blockers and hormone treatment to trans youth.
Arkansas has also become the second state to ban transgender athletes from female sports teams. Mississippi’s governor has also signed a law banning transgender athletes from girls’ school sports.
Psaki said she can’t “stand here and predict legal action” as the ultimate decision on if action would go forward lies with the Justice Department and attorney general, Merrick Garland. However, she said Joe Biden remains committed to advocating for LGBT+ rights and transgender equality in the US.
“What I can say is that the president’s view is that all persons should receive equal treatment under law, no matter their gender identity or sexual orientation,” Psaki said.
“That’s fundamental to how he will make laws — advocate for laws, I should say; how he will communicate about his views on the rights of transgender individuals in the country; and certainly, you know, what his view is as it relates to any actions by the government.”
In a follow-up question, Johnson asked if Biden would engage in communication with Garland about the anti-trans legislation. Psaki said the president “certainly can”, but she reiterated: “I don’t have anything to predict for you at this time.”
Garland has said he will advocate for stronger protections for trans Americans. In a hearing before the Senate about his nomination to the office of the attorney general, he promised to combat violence against the trans committee, especially Black, trans women, in the US.
He said it was the “job of the Justice Department to stop” the murders of transgender Americans and protect trans youth. Garland said: “It’s clear to me that this kind of hateful activity has to stop, and yes, we need to put resources into it.”
But in the same hearing, Garland dodged questions about bans on transgender athletes being included in girls’ and women’s sports. He declined to comment on questions, saying he hasn’t had the “chance to consider these kinds of issues” in his career.
The NCAA Board of Governors released a statement Monday that it will not host championships in places that discriminate against transgender athletes.
“The NCAA Board of Governors firmly and unequivocally supports the opportunity for transgender student-athletes to compete in college sports. This commitment is grounded in our values of inclusion and fair competition,” the statement read in part.
A spokesperson said the NCAA has not made decisions about specific championships at this point in time but is monitoring the situation.
Even as other Hollywood bullies are being sidelined, the uber-producer behind ‘The Social Network’ and Broadway’s ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ has been given a pass for his volcanic temper. Now, former employees open up about a boss who left many traumatized: “It was a new level of unhinged.”
On a brisk Halloween day in 2012, the thin facade of normalcy at Scott Rudin Productions shattered. Literally.
At about 4:15 p.m. — more than 10 hours into a typical Rudin day that began at 6 and never wrapped before 8 — the Oscar-winning producer was enraged that one of his assistants failed to get him a seat on a sold-out flight. In a fit of fury, he allegedly smashed an Apple computer monitor on the assistant’s hand. The screen shattered, leaving the young man bleeding and in need of immediate medical attention. One person in the office at the time described the incident as sounding like a car crash: a cacophonous collision of metal, glass and limb. The wounded assistant headed to the emergency room, and Rudin called his lawyer, according to another staffer there that Halloween afternoon. Everyone else huddled in the conference room, shaken. No one stayed until 8 p.m., with most of the staff heading over to a Times Square bar for a therapeutic drink.
“We were all shocked because we didn’t know that that sort of thing could happen in that office,” says Andrew Coles, a then-development executive 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.” Through a spokesperson, Rudin declined to comment on any of the specific allegations mentioned in this story. The alleged victim declined to comment.
For some four decades, Rudin’s abusive behavior has been chronicled — even celebrated — by the press. In a 2010 profile, this publication dubbed him “The Most Feared Man in Town” and called him “dazzlingly charming” one paragraph after describing acts of cruelty and intimidation. In a 2005 Wall Street Journal profile with the headline “Boss-zilla!,” Rudin himself pegged the number of assistants he burned through in the previous five years at 119.
But in October 2017, Harvey Weinstein was toppled from power following twin investigative reports in The New York Times and The New Yorker detailing his sexual predation, ushering in the entertainment industry’s #MeToo era. That reckoning has expanded in scope to include toxic behavior encompassing everything from racism to milder microaggressions. Talent and executives, including Sharon Osbourne at The Talk and three executive producers at The Ellen DeGeneres Show, have been kicked to the curb for bullying antics. Likewise, America’s Got Talent judge Gabrielle Union received a settlement from NBC in September after filing an employment complaint that alleged a “toxic culture,” which included fellow judge Simon Cowell smoking cigarettes on set and guest judge Jay Leno making a racist joke.
Still, there has been no reckoning for Rudin, 62, one of the industry’s most decorated producers, whose films have earned 151 Oscar nominations and 23 wins, including best picture for the Coen brothers’ 2007 drama No Country for Old Men. He’s even more successful on the theater front, having nabbed 17 individual Tony Awards. His Aaron Sorkin stage collaboration, To Kill a Mockingbird, became the hottest ticket on Broadway in 2018. During a single week that year, the drama earned more than $1.5 million at the box office, breaking a 118-year-old record in the process.
Bruce Glikas/FilmMagicFrom left: Rudin, Carole Shorenstein Hays, Viola Davis and Denzel Washington at the Tony Awards in 2010 in NYC.
On May 14, Netflix will release Rudin’s latest production, The Woman in the Window. Like most of his efforts, the film features A-list talent, including star Amy Adams and director Joe Wright. As was the case with many things involving Rudin, it was fraught with drama, say sources, with the producer taking the reins from Wright after the Fox 2000 thriller tested poorly, then hiring Tony Gilroy to write for reshoots. In the end, sources say, it tested about the same.
Even as others have been canceled or have dialed back their aggression, Rudin’s behavior has continued unabated, leaving a trail of splintered objects and traumatized employees in his path.
***
Caroline Rugo had expected a grueling environment when she joined Scott Rudin Productions as an executive coordinator in fall 2018. She accepted that her days began at 5 a.m., fielding emails before reporting to the New York office at 6. Given that she lives with Type 1 diabetes, Rugo needed to carve out 30 minutes a day for exercise and provided a doctor’s note signed off on by Rudin that allowed her to work out from 5:30 a.m. to 6 a.m. Even with a narrow margin for an outside life, she was eager to work for the uber-producer behind The Social Network and Broadway’s The Book of Mormon. What she hadn’t anticipated was the onslaught of acts of intimidation.
Paul Drinkwater/NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal via Getty ImagesRudin (center) with the Golden Globe for best picture for ‘The Social Network’ in 2011.
“He threw a laptop at the window in the conference room and then went into the kitchen and we could hear him beating on the napkin dispenser,” says Rugo. “Then another time he threw a glass bowl at [a colleague]. It’s hard to say if he threw it in the general direction or specifically at [the colleague], but the glass bowl hit the wall and smashed everywhere. The HR person left in an ambulance due to a panic attack. That was the environment.”
Multiple people corroborated the incident involving the HR staffer, who never returned, as well as the laptop and napkin-dispenser episode, which took place in early March 2019 during a meeting with a publicist from SpotCo, a major Broadway ad agency. The following year, SpotCo sued Rudin for $6.3 million for unpaid pre-pandemic work on eight shows, becoming the latest legal action against him that spilled into public view. (The case is still active.) In 2018, the estate of Harper Lee sued Rudin, claiming that the Sorkin script altered characters, the setting and the legal proceeding at the heart of her novel. (The parties later reached a settlement, the details of which were not made public.)
Around the same time of the SpotCo complaint, red-hot writer Jeremy O. Harris called Rudin out on Twitter as “loudly racist,” in another public break. The Slave Play playwright and Zola screenwriter continued, “He called me on the phone and cussed me out once and said ‘you’re a baby playwright who has written one good play no one gives a FUCK what you have to say’ To which I responded, ‘Why did you just pay me to say something in TWO plays?’ “
Rudin tantrums have been well documented going back four decades and are said to have at least partly inspired the 1994 assistant revenge fantasy film Swimming With Sharks. Manchester by the Sea producer Kevin Walsh told THR in 2014 that Rudin demanded Walsh get out of his car and abandoned him on a highway. In the same article, producer Adam Goodman called the environment “really, really, really gnarly.” Others depict a cult-like atmosphere, where once-abused lieutenants take on their boss’ worst qualities (one former staffer says Rudin and a senior executive would throw every item off the desk of an office manager for “no reason at all”). In a 2010 THR profile, Rudin downplayed his high rate of turnover. “People who do fantastically tend to end up going on to very strong, illustrious careers,” he says, “and the people who wash out tend to not be heard from again.” (The Rudin diaspora includes such high-profile executives as producer Amy Pascal and Josh Greenstein, co-head of Sony’s Motion Picture Group.)
But with Hollywood reexamining its power structures and inequities, Rudin’s brand of aggro behavior is suddenly out of step in an industry championing egalitarianism. One recent Rudin assistant says the mercurial producer threw a baked potato at his head in 2018 for not knowing why someone from indie distributor A24 was in the lobby.
“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 says. “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.’ “
Adding insult to injury, the assistant was fired by Rudin not long after dropping out of college to join his staff full-time.
Ryan Nelson, who was Rudin’s executive assistant in 2018-19, says he experienced and witnessed so much mistreatment, including the producer throwing a stapler at a theater assistant and calling him a “retard,” that he left the industry altogether.
“Every day was exhausting and horrific,” he says. “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.”
Vince Bucci/Getty ImagesRudin in 2008 flanked by Ethan (left) and Joel Coen, best picture Oscar winners for ‘No Country for Old Men.’
Likewise, assistant Miguel Cortes became a bike mechanic for a year after leaving Scott Rudin Productions in 2019, feeling scarred by the experience and assuming that all offices operated this way.
“There was definitely a distance you wanted to maintain when you were talking to Scott at any time,” he recalls. “I’m a tall guy. Like 6-foot-3, 6-foot-4. I remember thinking, ‘Oh, well, I’m not intimidated by him. He’s shorter than me.’ But every time I’d be sitting down is when he’d come over and lord over me. I remember thinking, ‘That’s almost a genius move, getting me when I’m at my smallest.’ He would be right over me and literally shouting at me.”https://d01452b876a6ed2c532a3dc781e6dd9b.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-38/html/container.html
On Indeed.com, where Rudin posts ads for a constant stream of vacancies, one anonymous reviewer warned prospective applicants to “Please Run Far, Far Away” and claimed to have witnessed the producer “pulling a chair out from under an assistant’s seat to fire him so he could fall down,” among other transgressions carried out in front of the titan’s industry partners.
For Rugo, she was out in six months after enduring a series of so-called “soft firings” — a unique phenomenon at Rudin’s company that several sources detailed. An ousted employee would wait in the Starbucks in the lobby for Rudin to cool off and allow the groveling underling to return. Not this time. After Rudin became ensnared in a feud between Nathan Lane and director George C. Wolfe during previews of his Tony-nominated play Gary: A Sequel to Titus Andronicus, Rugo says Rudin began to blame her for the situation. He demanded that she skip her 5:30 a.m. gym visit or work faster. She refused — and didn’t bother waiting in the Starbucks.
“I got fired for having Type 1 diabetes, which is a federally protected disability,” says Rugo, who now works in development at Netflix. “I one hundred percent could have sued him. But I didn’t because of the fear of being blacklisted. But I’ve worked at Netflix for a year and a half now. And it was such a shock to the system because it’s one of the most respectful and progressive workplaces in terms of employee relations. Now that I have established myself here and I am a part of a team where my opinions are respected and welcomed, I have no issue speaking out about Scott. Everyone just knows he’s an absolute monster.”
Another assistant, who asked not to be named because he fears career retaliation, detailed a kitchen encounter with Rudin in 2018 that devolved quickly.
“He asked me to clean the kitchen. I told him, ‘That’s really not my job.’ I had to do a bunch of other stuff that was urgent,” the former assistant says. “The kitchen was not urgent. And then he flipped out, and he took his teacup, threw it, and it shattered and left a hole in the wall. I was like, ‘I’m a human. This is a physical act of aggression.’ “
***
Since its earliest days, Hollywood has been prone to abuses of power. Abusive behavior tends to be overlooked or accommodated when the power imbalance dynamic is at its most extreme. Nowhere is that more evident than at Scott Rudin Productions, where a conveyor belt of assistants — typically recent NYU grads who are hungry, vulnerable and willing to put up with maltreatment — rotates in and out, providing the backbone for the prolific producer behind There Will Be Blood and Doubt, the latter for both stage and screen, and TV’s What We Do in the Shadows and The Newsroom. None of them is over the age of 25.
One former Rudin assistant says the producer relished in the cruelty but was able to pivot from berating staff to turning on the charm as soon as talent walked in the door.
“When you feel his spit on your face as he’s screaming at you, saying, ‘You’re worth nothing,’ it obviously makes an impact, and we’re young,” the assistant says. “Over his long career, there are hundreds and hundreds of people who have suffered. And some have given up their dreams because he made them feel and believe that they can’t do whatever it is they’re trying to do.”
Another staffer says Rudin purposefully disrupted people’s careers with lies. Around the time that Rudin attained EGOT status in 2012 — becoming one of only 16 people living or dead ever to win an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony — he became enraged when one of his female underlings left to work at The Weinstein Co. According to multiple sources, Rudin emailed Harvey Weinstein and insisted that she had stolen from him. (Weinstein didn’t listen and continued to employ her. She continues to work in the industry to this day.)
“That was a big, big moment,” says another staffer of the mistreatment of his colleague. “It literally changed everyone who was there at the time’s interest in having anything to do with him ever again. All of the employees realized that this is what we had to look forward to, after slaving away, being attacked so much, being maligned in really bizarre ways. There was a casual disregard for human rights.”
Rudin’s wrath wasn’t only aimed at employees. He privately clashed with director Sam Mendes and took out an ad in The New York Times to berate a Times theater writer. His emails — which became fodder for the general public following the Sony hack when he called Angelina Jolie a “minimally talented spoiled brat” and made racially insensitive jokes about President Barack Obama, saying he probably liked Kevin Hart — are often scathing, says an assistant who was privy to them. In one exchange with fellow EGOT Whoopi Goldberg, he lambasted her because she wanted to play a part in To Kill a Mockingbirdinstead of another Rudin-produced project, the film adaptation of Aleshea Harris’ acclaimed play Is God Is. He called her an idiot, said she’d never work again in anything important and wished her luck on The View. Goldberg declined to comment.
Rudin continues to work with the best in the film business. His next projects include Joel Coen’s The Tragedy of Macbeth, with Denzel Washington and Frances McDormand, and Jennifer Lawrence’s Red, White and Water, both for A24. The New York-based distributor says it has no official first-look deal with Rudin even though it does frequent business with him.
Per a knowledgeable legal source, bullying claims against Rudin never see the light of day and are settled quietly. Fear of reprisals has kept many from speaking out. Employees typically sign a non-disparagement agreement. And several sources for this piece consulted with an attorney before proceeding, even off the record.
Rudin also has been known to change credits, both as incentive and punishment. Several sources say that the victim of the computer monitor incident received three associate producing credits in addition to a monetary settlement. Others have seen the flip side of Rudin’s leverage.
“When they ultimately quit — which they always do at some point — he vindictively goes on IMDb and takes away any credits they may have amassed while working for him,” says one producer who hired a traumatized assistant following a Rudin stint and saw the practice play out.
Coles hopes that fear of Rudin’s power will not stymie progress in the industry just at a time when Hollywood appears ready to confront abuses of power.
“Part of the change we want to see in the industry means starting to talk about these things openly, to name names, to talk about the things that actually happened. And you don’t get a free pass for abusing people,” he says. “I’m not afraid of Scott Rudin.”
