“She Said”: Bringing Personal Stories to the Forefront of Investigative Thriller

For director Maria Schrader, “She Said” was more than a truthful and thrilling recreation of the New York Times report, Pulitzer Prize winner and encouraging #MeToo, which exposed the decades of sexual abuse and harassment by Harvey Weinstein. It was also the personal stories of New York Times reporters Jodi Kantor (Zoe Kazan) and Megan Twohey (Carey Mulligan). This made for a more complex and emotionally resonant film about female empowerment and the "crucible of motherhood", which Schrader editor Hansjörg Weißbrich leaned into.

"It was an investigative thriller and a bigger aspect: their private lives and how they got to know each other through the collaboration," Weißbrich told IndieWire. "It was an extra story that wasn't in the book."

But that first required Schrader and screenwriter Rebecca Lenkiewicz to earn the trust of Kantor and Twohey, to let them include their struggle with parenthood as well as the rigors of their investigative reporting. The challenge was to delicately balance their professional and personal lives by often combining them (talking to each other on the phone while preparing lunch or pushing a stroller in the park). It helped maintain the tension of trying to track down survivors of Weinstein's abuse and bring them into Kantor and Twohey's story.

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It was journalistically daunting, however, as journalists opposed the power structure that enabled and protected Weinstein. The film deftly intercuts Kantor and Twohey in contrasting fashion: Kantor had experience in workplace abuse and Twohey had experience in sex crimes; Kantor relied on empathy in coaxing interviews, while Twohey was more aggressive and intimidating. The first third of "She Said" often finds them on the phone in hallways and hallways next to windows that reflect the outside world — a perk of being able to shoot in the newspaper's offices in Midtown during the COVID-19 shutdown. Crucially, the two reporters were backed by a predominantly female Times team, led by editor Rebecca Corbett (Patricia Clarkson), and that workplace camaraderie was also an important part of the story told by "She Said."