Hollywood’s most well-known advocacy group is now a leaderless ghost group, undone by conflicts of curiosity (and straight-up conflicts). Why it collapsed and what may emerge to supplant it.
When it was based within the months after the Harvey Weinstein scandal broke in 2017, Time’s Up was supposed to place Hollywood’s appreciable energy and cash — and its sudden outrage — to work preventing sexual harassment. As a substitute, in the present day Time’s Up is a ghost group, technically nonetheless working, however with no CEO or programming supplied in almost a yr, and with a skeletal board.
For a lot of victims who had hoped the nonprofit would change into a significant advocate for his or her rights, the devolution of Time’s Up from its attention-grabbing launch on the 2018 Golden Globes to its near-defunct standing in the present day has been one of many gravest disappointments of the #MeToo period. As a substitute of offering a voice for the unvoiced, the group ended up crumpling amid conflict-of-interest allegations and inner disagreements over its focus.
“Outdoors of pins being adorned to very fancy attire on the pink carpet, what got here out of that group?” asks Alison Turkos, an activist and sexual assault survivor. Turkos organized an open letter of 151 victims and former Time’s Up staffers to the gender rights group’s board in 2021 accusing the group of prioritizing “proximity to energy over mission” in regard to its relationship with then-New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo. “Whenever you do survivor-based work within the leisure world, you’re going to be speaking about hurt and trauma that your mates induced,” Turkos says. “You've to have the ability to look somebody within the eye who possibly wrote you a test and say, ‘We now have to have a tough dialog.’ As a substitute, cash and energy took over all the pieces, and their mission drifted into seeing what number of highly effective folks they might get at a lunch desk.”
Of Time’s Up’s three remaining board members, actress Ashley Judd declined to remark in regards to the group, and legal professional Nina Shaw and monetary government Gabrielle Sulzberger didn't reply to requests for remark. For months, the Time’s Up press e-mail tackle has bounced senders again a message stating, “Time’s Up is now within the strategy of an organizational rebuild. Throughout this transition part, we is not going to be making press statements or conducting interviews.”
The group has filed no monetary documentation with the IRS since its 2020 990 type, based on the nonprofit watchdog group CharityWatch, which “at present has considerations about this group and/or is unable to offer full ranking info because of the group’s nondisclosure of monetary info,” based on the watchdog’s website.
That’s a precipitous drop for a bunch that raised greater than $22 million in its first 10 months from outstanding business backers like Oprah Winfrey, Meryl Streep, Shonda Rhimes, Katie McGrath and CAA. The $22 million went to create the Time’s Up Authorized Protection Fund, which stays the motion’s most concrete achievement, even because the nonprofit that spawned it sits idle.
The TULDF, which is housed and administered individually by the Nationwide Girls’s Legislation Middle in Washington, D.C., has linked greater than 6,000 sexual harassment victims with legal professionals, paid the authorized charges in 330 circumstances, supplied publicity help for 130 circumstances and continues to take new circumstances.
“Since Time’s Up was a separate 501(c)(3) establishment, their board’s dissolution had no impression on the fund,” says Fatima Goss Graves, president and CEO of the Nationwide Girls’s Legislation Middle. “We proceed to function independently of them, as we at all times have.”
The Cuomo scandal, wherein it was revealed that Time’s Up leaders suggested the governor after he was accused of sexual harassment, was the speedy reason behind the group’s downfall, resulting in the resignations of CEO Tina Tchen and board chair Roberta Kaplan in August 2021, adopted by the resignation of all however three board members and the shedding of a lot of the Time’s Up workers.
In some ways, a collision of pursuits like this had appeared baked into the group from its very founding, when early conferences and funding got here from CAA, an company that had despatched a number of actresses to auditions with Weinstein wherein he behaved predatorily. Earlier than the Cuomo incident, there have been years of accusations in regards to the group’s perceived conflicts. Within the spring of 2021, 18 members of Time’s Up’s well being care arm resigned over the group’s dealing with of allegations that co-founder and board member Esther Choo didn't report complaints of sexual harassment made by a co-worker at Oregon Well being & Science College throughout her tenure at Time’s Up. In 2020, activists raised questions on Time’s Up’s lack of help for victims within the documentary On the Report, about Russell Simmons’ accusers, after Winfrey, one of many group’s main donors, sought to distance herself from the undertaking she had been government producing.
Over the three years that Time’s Up was lively, the group was additionally typically divided by competing visions about its mission — some wished Time’s As much as concentrate on leisure business abuses, whereas others wished to sort out harassment in industries like well being care, agriculture and tech. Even throughout the leisure business, there was a way that the issues of title actresses took priority over considerations that lesser-known girls in business crafts had been going through. Some wished Time’s As much as keep dedicated to office issues, whereas others wished it to sort out broader gender-based points like abortion rights. As inner debates raged, the group cycled via three CEOs in three years, its final, Monifa Bandele, exiting in November.
“This can be a wanted reset, not a retreat,” Sulzberger mentioned in an announcement in November when Bandele departed and a few two dozen Time’s Up staffers had been laid off.
“I don’t need them to fail,” says one former staffer, of Time’s Up. “I simply wish to see some demonstrated studying from final time. Which is, whenever you solely discuss to yourselves, you’re not getting a range of views.”
Whereas Time’s Up was the showiest group to emerge from the #MeToo period, it is only one of many teams dedicated to the problems of sexual harassment and assault, together with “me too. Worldwide,” the group based by Tarana Burke, who originated the slogan #MeToo in 2006 as a manner for victims of sexual violence to share their tales. In Hollywood, there are additionally the teams Voices in Motion, a sexual assault and harassment reporting clearinghouse created by actress and Weinstein sufferer Jessica Barth, and the Feminine Composer Security League, based by composer Nomi Abadi.
“The ladies’s motion in Hollywood is now a lot bigger than Time’s Up,” Abadi says. “We’re appreciative of the work they’ve finished, however our capability to carve a safer path on this business doesn’t hinge on their existence. I wish to see much more girls create organizations.”
When the Supreme Courtroom overturned Roe v. Wade in June, a number of of the ladies who had been key leaders at Time’s Up emerged in an advert hoc group holding weekly Zoom calls across the concern of abortion rights, together with McGrath, Shaw and Rebecca Goldman, the previous Time’s Up COO, who's now a co-founder of the impression agency Acora Companions.
When the ladies launched themselves, they by no means talked about Time’s Up, based on two sources who had been on the calls. Says one, “It’s like Time’s Up by no means occurred.”
This story first appeared within the Sept. 28 concern of The Hollywood Reporter journal. Click on right here to subscribe.