By Lana Eldjoundi
*trigger warning: mention of sexual assault*
I want to take a moment and introduce you to Charlotte Kirk. For those of you who don’t know her, Charlotte is an actress, a writer, a businesswoman, and a survivor. From a young age, she knew she was different. Being on the Autism spectrum, Charlotte holds a creative outlook on life and a passion for acting. She showcased her talents anywhere she could, even practicing them on the bus as a kid. In her teenage years, she became determined to pursue her dreams of acting professionally and decided to move to Hollywood. However, the Hollywood she arrived at was a nightmare her dreams hadn’t warned her about.
On the night of September 26, 2013, Kirk was sexually assaulted. Little has been reported about the night given Charlotte’s gag order, which legally does not allow her to speak about it. However, THR was able to obtain text messages detailing the lead-up in which James Packer (media mogul and billionaire) invited her to the presidential suite of the Hotel Bel-Air that night with the promise of “the opportunity of a lifetime for [her]” and an introduction to the “most important man [she] can meet” ultimately referring to former CEO of Warner Brothers, Kevin Tsujihara. Billionaire producer, James Packer, was Kirk’s boyfriend at the time, resulting in her trusting him.
According to the texts, Packer let Kirk into the suite but somehow separated from her. This is seen through messages exchanged between the two throughout the night with Kirk writing of Tsujihara: “He just wants to fuck nothing … else dose not even want To say anything”. By the end of the night, Kirk appeared to grow more alarmed, writing “James!?” to which Packer replied, “U OK ?” and “Be cool”.
The petition filed by Kirk’s lawyers at Fagelbaum & Heller fills in several blanks and describes the events of Tsujihara engaging in nonconsensual sex facilitated by Packer himself. However, all documents pertaining to the petition, if any, were under pseudonyms, leaving all the names unrecognizable. According to the filing, “When [Kirk] arrived, she was introduced to a cocaine-snorting [Kevin Tsujihara] … who shortly thereafter left and went into another room. Mr. [Packer] told Ms. [Kirk] that Mr. [Tsujihara] wanted to discuss her career further in the other room. Ms. [Kirk] entered the other room to find Mr. [Tsujihara] naked on the bed and demanding sex. When Ms. [Kirk] hurried to the adjoining bathroom and strongly objected by text message to Mr. [Packer], he ordered her to comply by replying ‘Be Cool”. When attempting to leave the room … Mr. [Packer] blocked her from leaving and menacingly told her she had to have sex with Mr. [Tsujihara] … Mr. [Packer] offered her $30,000 to do as he demanded, which she did not accept. Fearing for her personal safety, being blacklisted and the destruction of her career before it even began, she complied with Mr. [Packer’s] demands and engaged in non-consensual intercourse with Mr. [Tsujihara] under duress. [Kirk] later learned she was Mr. [Packer’s] offering to Mr. [Tsujihara] to further induce him to agree to a $450,000,000 deal between Mr. [Packer] and Mr. [Ratner], and Mr. [Tsujihara] and [Warner Bros.].”
When asked about the 2017 incident, Tsujihara engaged legal counsel, denied any relationship with her, and threatened a lawsuit. In a statement made by Kevin Tsujihara’s attorney, Bert H. Deixler, all claims made against his client were “factually baseless” and were a result of using their “brief consensual relationship to unjustly seek the payment of money”.
Packer, Lerner (who we will get into later), and Ratner’s lawyer, Marty Singer, claims his clients were “victims of a multimillion-dollar civil extortion plot”. Singer and his clients then commenced an arbitration proceeding against Kirk, Newton (Kirk’s ex-boyfriend), and Marshall (current fiance) for civil extortion and related claims. This in turn prohibits them from filing any lawsuit against Packer, Lerner, or Ratner.
Whether the actions of that night were consensual or not, it is clear that what followed that night was clearly a cover-up that involved some of Hollywood’s most powerful men, including Ron Meyer. Meyer was a high-level executive at NBCUniversal and very well known as a Hollywood “fixer”. Having met Charlotte when she was a mere 19 years old, he repeatedly took advantage of her, also promising her film roles and opportunities to advance her career as an actress which mostly never materialized.
Over the years, numerous news outlets have been able to piece together the story through a series of legal documents not accessible to the public. It is clear from a series of subsequent texts that Charlotte felt coerced that night, writing to Packer in 2014, “u made me sleep with Kevin,” to which Packer replied, “I didn’t promise u anything or make u do anything. This is a very uncool conversation.” Kirk responded, “We all know the truth.”
It is important to note that four days after the Bel-Air incident, Packer, Ratner, and now-Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin announced a $450 million slate financing deal between their RatPac-Dune Entertainment and Warner Bros. However, there is no evidence suggesting Mnuchin was aware of any potential wrongdoing.
Back in 2017, Kirk’s former attorneys at Johnson & Johnson pointed out Kirk’s condition by saying. “Due to her autism and difficulty interpreting people’s self-interested conduct, Ms. Kirk was unaware that she was becoming a victim of sexual abuse”. Charlotte then prepared to sue in civil court to seek damages over promises she felt were made about her career and a subsequent alleged smear campaign that supposedly prevented her from landing work as an actress. It is important to note that Warner Bros. was at a particularly vulnerable state given they were in the middle of a deal to be acquired by AT&T for $85 billion and the bad press surrounding the corporation at the time.
Ron Meyer then gets involved, essentially to save himself and those tied to him. Posing as Charlotte’s friend, he convinces her to go into arbitration, or private mediation, rather than filing a lawsuit. So, she did. Kirk entered into private mediation with Packer, Tsujihara, Ratner and Lerner. After the mediation discussions, a settlement was reached: Kirk gets $3 million over the course of 2 years and is promised “above-the-line billing” in three films produced by Lerner (or $500k/each role which doesn’t materialize), and Newton gets $1 million in financing for his film Nicole & OJ, starring Charlotte, which Ratner is enlisted to produce. The settlement bound Kirk and Newton to a confidentiality agreement, a.k.a. an NDA. In an email exchange between Kirk and her Johnson & Johnson attorney, Douglas Johnson, she accused her lawyers of “bullying” her into the settlement agreement, an allegation she made sure to repeat in the most recently filed lawsuit against the firm. In a twist of events, Meyer was added to the agreement (under a pseudonym) without the knowledge of Charlotte and Newton, although Meyer denies ever knowing he was added. This, however, counteracts with his action of persuading Kirk to enter into private mediation.
The year following the finalization of the agreement, Kirk continued to be put forward for Lerner films as promised. But behind the scenes, Lerner disparages her to directors for both her acting ability and character. Some sources say that Lerner had been depicting her as a “honeypot”, probably to reinforce his false innocence and rebuild his tarnished reputation in the industry. He had been spreading these negative words to directors like Marshall, who at the time didn’t know Charlotte. When Marshall began dating Charlotte in 2018 he did explain to her the way she had been characterized by Lerner, prompting her to threaten to sue Lerner for his breach of contract.
In an anonymous letter sent to Tsujihara’s new boss at WarnerMedia, CEO John Stankey, questions were asked about whether a top Warner Bros. executive had promised speaking roles to an actress — who was referred to as “CK” — in exchange for her silence. No evidence was found as to who might have sent the letter and Kirk was still not contacted.
It is clear the abuse and manipulation Charlotte experienced from both sides of the party. She had been taken advantage of and used for the sole purpose of trying to erase the mistakes made by high-profiles in the industry. Two days later, THR published its story that detailed the promises made by Tsujihara to help Kirk get Warners TV and film roles.
Just mere hours before publication, Kirk’s attorney, Douglas Johnson, received an email from Singer stating: “You and your client have been aware of the proposed story for nearly a full day and have had ample time to respond to THR. Should [Kirk] fail to do so … she will be in material breach of contract and exposed to substantial liability”. I efforts to avoid any further issues, Kirk was forced to release a statement saying, “There are real victims of #MeToo in our industry and my heart goes out to them. I applaud them and support them — but, I’m just not one of them”. Following the release of her statement, Johnson emailed Kirk saying, “[these men] are using you to take the heat off Kevin. This is why they want this further statement made right away — to help Kevin keep his job”. But despite Kirk’s efforts to dissolve any rumors, there was a battle behind the scenes for Tsujihara to remain, which confounded industry observers at the time. To add to this, Charlotte had discovered Meyer was added to the original settlement agreement and demanded he be removed. However, she did not succeed. By the summer of 2019, Kirk grew increasingly frustrated with her attorney’s at Johnson & Johnson, eventually causing them to part ways, leaving Kirk without an attorney for a couple of weeks.
Things seemed to be steady as she continued to receive quarterly payments as part of the 2017 settlement agreement, but in August of 2019, the payment never arrived, prompting Kirk to contact Springer via email. In the email, she “asked about the missed payment and reiterated that she wanted Meyer removed from the agreement or else she would file a public suit”. Two days later, Singer informed Kirk that she was in breach of her confidential agreement.
On August 11, 2019, Kirk enlisted Bernard & Bernard in connection with the claims against Meyer, Ratner, Tsujihara, and Packer according to the retainer agreement. Her new attorneys seemed eager to go after Meyer however this contrasted with their lack of interest in Singer’s clients who she claimed owed $1.8 million. Regardless, she continued with the firm on the Meyer litigation and the NBCUniversal chair agreed to mediation. In the end, both parties settled on Kirk receiving $2.5 million and agreeing to a confidentiality agreement. It’s clear there is a commonality between all these cases, those being money and silence.
Kirk then decided to split with Bernard & Bernard and signed with John Cowan. On June 18, Singer obtained a temporary restraining order against Kirk in his civil extortion case. This effectively kept Kirk’s voice even more constrained than before even after the media identified her as the unnamed woman who led to Meyer being ousted. Nonetheless, Kirk filed her petition to vacate the gag order on September 3rd. Until justice has been achieved, she remains silent and unable to speak about the situation, despite it being a necessary step for her to properly resume her career as an actress.
According to Film Daily, “Waiving the petition became the first public test of #MeToo legislation signed in September 2018, banning non-disclosure agreements in sexual misconduct cases”. In a major setback, Kirk’s petition was denied by Judge Christopher Lui on October 15, 2020. Although the scandal led to the ousting of Tsujihara and Meyer, the implications are far greater for Kirk due to her petition testing California’s “STAND” Act (Stand Together Against Non-Disclosures), passed in 2017. The issue: the law says that it applies only to settlement deals “related to a claim filed in a civil action or a complaint filed in an administrative action”. Because Judge Lui decided in court to uphold the arbitrator’s ruling, he didn’t have jurisdiction in the question of whether Charlotte’s NDA still applied.
The Let Charlotte Speak campaign stands in solidarity with Charlotte Kirk in her fight against powerful men in Hollywood. One of their long-term goals is to pass a new law/amend the STAND Act in order to get rid of the non-disclosure agreement keeping her silent. It is time we hold Hollywood accountable. It is time we stand with survivors.
If you would like to support Charlotte in her return to Hollywood, check out her newest movie The Reckoning released on February 5th, 2021. This adventure horror film, starring Kirk herself, follows a woman accused of being a witch after losing her husband to the plague. The Let Charlotte Speak campaign also created “the mask challenge” to help spread the word. It’s simple really: write “let Charlotte speak” on a mask, put it on, and post a picture wearing it with the hashtag #LetCharlotteSpeak. Then you can nominate 5 others to do the same.
If you would like to learn more about ways you can help Charlotte, follow @letcharlottespeak on Instagram and take the time to sign the petition below. Follow along on here, Rogue to Vogue, and on Tea and Cake Magazine — @teaandcakezine on Instagram — for more updates on her story and how you can help.
National Sexual Assault Hotline:
1-800-656-4673
Sources:
Siegel, Tatiana. “Charlotte Kirk, Kevin Tsujihara and a Nonconsensual Sex Allegation That Sparked a Secret Legal Saga.” The Hollywood Report, https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/features/charlotte-kirk-kevin-tsujihara-and-a-non-consensual-sex-allegation-that-sparked-a-secret-legal-saga.
Medina, Julissa. “Will Charlotte Kirk’s case affect future #MeToo accusations?” Film Daily, https://filmdaily.co/news/charlotte-kirks-case/.
Haylock, Zoe. “Untangling Charlotte Kirk’s Role in the Fall of a Hollywood Executive.”
Vulture,
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