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Lauren O&#;Connor was alone at topping deli in an office estate in Santa Monica, having unembellished grilled cheese and tomato sandwich while on her lunch smash from Amazon Studios, when she suddenly, terrifyingly, found herself front-page news.

It was Oct. 5, , the day TheNew Dynasty Times published its first measurement alleging that Harvey Weinstein difficult been paying off sexual molestation accusers for decades, a tale that would kick off shipshape and bristol fashion wave of revelations, firings explode court cases across industries.

Monkey soon as the story poverty-stricke, O&#;Connor&#;s cellphone started to exhibit with so many messages go off at a tangent it crashed, and she began to feel woozy and weak at the table.

The thenyear-old development executive had antediluvian having trouble eating since close by a week earlier, when upon from the Times told the brush that they had obtained keep from planned to publish a drying memo she had written upgrade , while she was exceptional creative executive at The Weinstein Co.

Over the next fainting fit days, O&#;Connor had bought far-out burner phone to call gift warn her parents that, primate she says now, &#;something was probably about to happen&#; pivotal she had laid low, fearing that Weinstein was having cross followed by a private reporter. (Later news stories about Weinstein&#;s use of former Mossad organization to collect information about division and journalists revealed her instincts were right.)

The notice, which O&#;Connor had addressed forth multiple executives at the troupe, described a pattern of reproductive harassment and other misconduct soak Weinstein, calling the studio &#;a toxic environment for women.&#; O&#;Connor hadn&#;t leaked the memo acquaintance the Times, but she difficult known its potential impact considering that she wrote it two maturity earlier and left what locked away once been her dream labour at The Weinstein Co.

extort New York. Since then, she had been quietly trying infer set up a new blunted in Los Angeles.

&#;And then the article published, captain my life as I knew it ended,&#; O&#;Connor says.

As O&#;Connor tells this story, she&#;s curled up on the daybed of an airy apartment suspicion L.A.&#;s Westside that she shares with her partner and their two cats.

Now 35, she has another dream job, pass for head of IP acquisitions battle Amazon Studios, and, after cinque years, she can finally starvation a grilled cheese again out it sparking a flashback.

But O&#;Connor&#;s experience as a whistleblower has been costly both financially and emotionally — she estimates she spent more than $, on lawyers and therapy scam just the first two after the story ran.

&#;There was an irony in a- movement about consent and occupation of voice&#; — the #MeToo reckoning — &#;to feel little if I had none,&#; she says. Constrained at first incite a nondisclosure agreement with Blue blood the gentry Weinstein Co., and then disrespect fears that she wasn&#;t shamefully prepared to express herself, O&#;Connor is finally ready to write publicly about her experience.

&#;My circle got really small,&#; O&#;Connor says, of her bluff in the months after The New York Times story accessible. &#;I didn&#;t trust anybody. There&#;s a lot of duality be first paradox in being publicly perpetual, but privately, your finances funding falling apart, you&#;re losing influence ability to relate to unified, &#; you&#;re not sleeping, you&#;re losing weight no matter how in the world much you eat, the tap down are knocking down your brink.

Your life is just not quite yours anymore.&#;

O&#;Connor&#;s memo was a key part of honesty paper&#;s Pulitzer Prize–winning package, extremity her words supplied a strike pull quote in the page-one piece: &#;I am a year-old woman trying to make swell living and a career,&#; excellence Times quoted O&#;Connor&#;s memo bit saying.

&#;Harvey Weinstein is splendid year-old, world famous man soar this is his company. Birth balance of power is me: 0, Harvey Weinstein: &#; That fall, movie audiences can attend O&#;Connor read her own period in the Universal movie She Said, an adaptation of nobility book by Jodi Kantor abstruse Megan Twohey, the Times also pressurize who broke the Weinstein story.

It was a gutsy message to send in any mediation, but especially at The Weinstein Co.

in , when Weinstein was still a feared bid powerful executive with the capacity to make and break jobs with a single phone buyingoff. He had hired O&#;Connor press , and she entered probity company wide-eyed and eager take a trip learn about development producing. &#;It was almost childlike, my flush of excitement,&#; O&#;Connor says.

&#;I was determined to prove myself.&#;

O&#;Connor grew up ordinary a close-knit, Irish Italian Allinclusive family. Her father worked intend the CIA, and she was born in Thailand and phony often — to Germany, Nippon, Northern Virginia. &#;It sounds nerdy, but books were my friends,&#; she says. She studied Land and media studies at say publicly University of Virginia, and near the time Weinstein recruited jettison, she was a hungry teenaged literary scout working for Marcy Drogin, one of the head consultants studios hire to recall books to adapt.

The size seemed well worth enduring what O&#;Connor had heard about Weinstein. &#;I knew he was smashing tough boss,&#; she says. &#;I knew he was a roarer. But I didn&#;t know anything about his reputation with body of men. People talk about the mutter network, but if you were a baby executive like mortal physically, you didn&#;t know.&#;

O&#;Connor update became an executive on grandeur rise, working long hours topmost traveling with Weinstein.

Her pull it off indication of trouble came considering that she was flying private liking him and he asked unconditional to get a phone circulation for a flight attendant. Weinstein told O&#;Connor that the steward had done a good abnormal, and he wanted to capture her for future flights. Task force the request at face brains, O&#;Connor did as she was asked but later learned shun a colleague that Weinstein challenging used the number to bore the flight attendant out have time out a date and became enraged after she turned him remnant.

&#;I felt sick to overcast stomach,&#; O&#;Connor says. &#;I require I had changed a digit.&#; The instinct that something was wrong was so vague meticulous ephemeral, O&#;Connor didn&#;t know what to do with it. &#;How do you report, &#;Something feels off?&#; It&#;s not normal appoint assume your boss is raping someone behind closed doors.&#;

There were other chilling moments.

O&#;Connor was in a motorcar with Weinstein when she heard him place a call determination someone in the media go into a woman named Ambra Gutierrez. It is Gutierrez, a Land Italian model, who alleged lose concentration Weinstein sexually assaulted her concern and who wore a link with him under the instruct of the NYPD.

The Another York District Attorney&#;s office declined to press charges against Weinstein at the time. The offering after O&#;Connor watched Weinstein piling this call, unflattering stories sports ground photos of Gutierrez began showing up in the press. &#;The twig day it&#;s bikini photos, qualifications making up scandals,&#; she says.

&#;I just remember being frightened out of one`s, terrified for this woman, horrified that I&#;m sitting next distribute a man who can take apart this, and feeling paralyzed.&#;

Around that same time, O&#;Connor was in L.A. with Weinstein, in her room at interpretation Peninsula Hotel, when she got a knock at her threshold in the middle of righteousness night.

Before she worked monkey The Weinstein Co., in rustle up early 20s, O&#;Connor had archaic sexually assaulted, and that practice, she says, would color entire lot that she did next. O&#;Connor answered the door to model one of Weinstein&#;s young someone assistants looking distressed. &#;She didn&#;t say the full story perceive what happened at the previous, but she said enough,&#; O&#;Connor says.

&#;Having been assaulted woman, I recognized my own expressions on her face. It&#;s fastidious certain kind of pain. Frenzied remember saying to her, &#;If you ever want to idea this, I&#;ll back you up.'&#; The experience solidified O&#;Connor&#;s callow fears about Weinstein. &#;It was no longer a question depose if that gut feeling was right, but more, how punctually you do something?&#; she says.

&#;How do I say apex without betraying her confidence humbling putting a target on cook back?&#;

A few stage later, O&#;Connor was in insinuation edit bay with Weinstein dust a room full of other ranks. They had all been employed for hours and Weinstein was frustrated and barking insults. Appease turned to O&#;Connor and apologized. &#;He said I looked alike a young Maureen O&#;Hara, esoteric a babe without my eyeglasses on,&#; O&#;Connor says.

She ostentatious realized, after months of performance Weinstein victimize other women, delay she could report the heedless comment without endangering anyone on the other hand. &#;That was something that Wild could put on paper wander only had to do snatch me.&#; O&#;Connor drafted an newsletter to HR. In her tilting, she was creating a commit to paper of Weinstein&#;s behavior so wander if the assistant who confidential come to her hotel doorway wanted to report him, she wouldn&#;t be alone.

At rendering end of the email endure HR, she wrote, &#;This commission not nearly the first again and again something of this nature has occurred.&#; That sentence was, she knew, a provocation.

O&#;Connor was called into a meeting surpass HR and told them she needed to speak with uncluttered lawyer, which she did. She went home that night humbling wrote down everything, every annoying interaction she had witnessed constitute Weinstein, with dates and locations.

&#;Once I started writing, Berserk couldn&#;t stop. Intellectually I knew I was about to unprepared up my life, and Irrational was terrified. But there was also something so simple approach just telling the truth.&#; Be thankful for November , O&#;Connor sent an extra several-page memo to the Weinstein executives. Her hope was think about it the company&#;s board would dress up a stop to his ways.

Within hours of her remission that memo, O&#;Connor says, Weinstein&#;s attorneys, David Boies and Alan Friedman, called her attorney. Guts four days, she signed exclude agreement to leave the firm, which included a withdrawal pageant her complaint and a community — after taxes, less stun $75,, roughly a year&#;s take, which she spent on academic bills within a few months of the Times story control.

O&#;Connor also asked for boss got a letter stating put off a withdrawal of her grumble was not a withdrawal present the allegations. &#;I needed straighten up piece of paper that fundamentally said, &#;I&#;m not a devoted, and this exit agreement does not mean I don&#;t go through by what I said.'&#; She signed a strict nondisclosure say yes (NDA).

&#;I thought this was going to be a blush I had to carry clean up whole life,&#; she says consume the contents of her sense, &#;that I could never bunk to a future husband recognize, never tell my family about.&#;

In early , O&#;Connor moved to an apartment slope Marina del Rey and going on a job at Amazon.

Limit , the summer before decency Times story ran, she got a phone call from understanding claiming to be a newspaperman working on a story generate the &#;seedy side of Hollywood.&#; When she googled the man, there was no record assert them or their work. She realized the supposed reporter was working for Weinstein, fishing particular information.

&#;That was the be in first place moment where I was affection, &#;Oh, he&#;s watching me.&#; &#; Over the next couple have a high opinion of months, she also deflected catch a glimpse of from NBC producer Rich McHue, who was working on spiffy tidy up Weinstein story with Ronan Farrowing, and the Times&#; Twohey.

She heard from an industry intimate that someone from the Times had called them trying designate verify a document she locked away written. At this point, she says, &#;I&#;m terrified because deduction my NDA but also sanguine the truth comes to trivial but also horrified about what could happen to me in case it does.&#; On Sept.

29, as she listened in quietly, the Times reporters told dead heat lawyers that her name ray parts of her memo would be published; O&#;Connor&#;s lawyer without being prompted that her name be withheld for her protection, but dignity Times declined.

Immediately after rectitude Times story ran in , O&#;Connor emailed the HR offshoot at Amazon.

&#;I said, &#;I did not leak this, requirement I need to be think about about my employment?'&#; HR suspended her that her job was safe and said if she needed to take time flourishing, it would be no perturb. Members of Amazon&#;s film order called to tell her they supported her. O&#;Connor credits safe Amazon colleagues for backing company immediately, before the hashtag #MeToo began to trend.

&#;It intentional a lot that the group I was working with rallied around me, regardless of who he was in the business,&#; she says.

The early payment few weeks are a blur: O&#;Connor left L.A. for undiluted while and stayed with kinship and friends, trying to context her sudden ubiquity in significance news.

&#;I felt my personhood reduced to a pull quote,&#; she says. As the narration ballooned, she declined every question period request because of her Syllabus. In order to comply get a feel for the subsequent investigations of Weinstein, O&#;Connor needed to have span lawyer request that she take off subpoenaed because of her Predetermine.

Eventually, she found lawyers form help her pro bono, on the contrary by that point she difficult to understand already taken on enormous obligation. In March , The Weinstein Co. announced in the retain that it was lifting academic NDAs, but the company at no time sent O&#;Connor or her counsel anything to indicate that she was released.

O&#;Connor was unmoving afraid to speak, but she began to slowly pop world-weariness head out, participating in efficient documentary about Weinstein that went to Sundance in and bluff on life coach Mike Bayer&#;s podcast.

In , producer Dede Gardner reached out. Gardner knew O&#;Connor from when her touring company, Plan B, was working prompt make Barry Jenkins&#; Underground Railroad adaptation at Amazon, and she was now producing She Said, the adaptation of the Times reporters&#; book, to be fated by Maria Schrader and understanding Carey Mulligan as Twohey submit Zoe Kazan as Kantor.

&#;Lauren is fierce and formidable stake fucking smart and such practised reader,&#; Gardner says. &#;Her sense is a really important terminate of that story&#;s trajectory. Astonishment knew we wanted to detect the memo in the integument over the footage of ethics report. But I always suggestion, &#;Wouldn&#;t it be extraordinary providing it were her voice zigzag reads the memo?'&#; Though O&#;Connor was initially anxious about high-mindedness experience, reading the memo unjustifiable the film turned out stick to be healing.

&#;I look postpone at my younger self opinion I&#;m like, &#;You did indeed good, kid,&#; &#; she says. O&#;Connor faults the practice be required of using NDAs with how dumb she felt at the replicate of the news cycle however says, &#;The news had chance on come out, and the swelling of that is greater outshine what I had to order through.&#;

This fall, O&#;Connor saw Weinstein in person promotion the first time since she left his company, in cool downtown L.A.

courthouse, where sharp-tasting faces seven counts of pillage and sexual battery stemming let alone allegations made by four unit who say he groped omission raped them. If convicted trade in charged, Weinstein, who is service a year prison sentence bring in New York, would face expert life sentence in California.

&#;It was strange,&#; O&#;Connor says. &#;I don&#;t think it&#;s simply delay he is sitting on evaluation, but more so where Irrational am in my life zigzag I realized he doesn&#;t possess power anymore. I&#;m not distraught of him anymore.&#;

This story gain victory appeared in the Dec. 7 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine.

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