Read on Twitter
Regarding Scott Rudin, Im seeing many criticize assistants for taking the job in the first place or not suing etc. Pls don’t do that. It’s not the assistants faults they were abused. It was a gross abuse of power. And it’s common in entertainment. A thread.
The ent biz is not like law, finance etc where there are job fairs & recruiters showing up to campuses and you can get a job with benefits straight out of school through an alumni network or a paid internship program. Our internships are rarely paid.
Essentially in ent you start as an unpaid intern & scramble to get on set PA gigs, mailroom jobs and assistant positions. Internships aren’t paid and maybe, MAYBE you will clear 26k a year as an assistant working endless hours.
Ent biz has spread over past 2 decades but it’s mostly NYC, LA, Miami, Chicago and Nashville. Aka expensive cost of living cities. Tons of young ppl from around the world flock to these cities desperate to work in a field they are often passionate about.
Unlike your pals in law & finance you are told that you will be worked to the bone for pennies and that this is something to wear as a badge of honor, that all current ent execs had to do this, it’s a tough biz full of colorful characters, toughen up and get cracking.
You are told over and over about the mailroom kid who became the CEO the tour assistant to became an arena agent etc. That if you can last a year with said nasty exec, you can work anywhere bc that proves you are a verifiable badass and you’ll talk to everyone via said exec.
So you swallow your pride and bc you are young w/ energy to burn you come in everyday. You make the coffee, hide the affairs, track down lost receipts and edit the PowerPoints. You are told that work life and personal life are intertwined in this biz.
You meet other assistants who are also making no money despite working long hours and being screamed at. There are meme accounts about assistant abuse and life. You realize in this biz that this is normal or seems normal. There’s no HR or shady HR so you accept it.
You deal with bitchy talent and an even nastier exec. You try so hard. You don’t want to get blacklisted and are drowning in student debt and these jobs are hard to come by. So you just keep trying and keep deflecting.
And soon, you are dependent on an abusive job and afraid to go to the office and afraid to quit. Yet so much feels like it is riding on this job so you just keep trying and giving. And it’s a nasty cycle.
Other more seasoned ppl tell you that you should be proud, this is the biz, toughen up, get used to it, someday you’ll be the boss. You are essentially praised for being abused.
So it’s not the assistants. They are not at fault here. They are young ppl with dreams who have been mislead and over promised and are put in a vicious situation and then told it’s normal and praised ie they are gaslit.
And some, esp the privileged ones (ie im a cisgender, straight, able bodied white woman who had close knit family nearby & some savings) might be able to make it through unscathed & move onto something bigger and better but so many don’t or they carry the scars for a long time.
When I was 23 I worked for a DList PR firm for a woman I’ll call Amy B. She threw a fed ex box at me, kicked my desk, revoked my bathroom key privileges, called me all weekend bc she thought I stole her notebook, yelled at me for not smiling enough and then for smiling too much.
She threatened to fire me when I had food poisoning so I came into work and barfed all day in the bathroom. She told me the clients hated me, made fun of my name and made me schedule her internet dates and shop for her groceries.
Every am I would put on make up and as I walked to the office I’d say to myself that I wouldn’t mess up that day and would do a good job so that I could stay in nyc and earn the right to be a publicist aka my dream job.
I was too young and inexperienced to understand that I was being abused, that her firm was a joke and that she was one of many PR firm owners around the world and working for her was not going to dictate the outcome of my life. I was terrified of her but I kept coming back.
She finally fired me and told me that I was provincial, didn’t have the makings of a publicist, that I should move back home and become a teacher. I had lost 10 lbs, my skin broke out and I had insomnia. I happily left even tho it meant I’d be unemployed and broke.
Again it wasn’t her revolving door of assistants faults. We were young and wanted to work and did our best. She and her enablers and the general attitude of the ent biz were the issue.
It took a few months but I felt better. I ended up getting an asst job at Rubenstein a super respected corporate firm and my new boss treated me like gold. Taught me about statements and courtrooms and news cycles and took me to lunch.
Unlike what my abuser said “girls like you are a dime a dozen and all fail” I’ve done fine. It took therapy and endless assistant gigs and time but I’m a VP at Columbia Records and still live happily in the city.
But again Im one of the lucky ones. And it didn’t have to be like this and it doesn’t have to be like this. Fashion, film, music etc. Great, exciting industries but we need to do better and hold ppl including ourselves accountable. We need to nurture talent.
Do not bash the assistants. Bash the systems and the abusers. And to the overworked and underpaid assistants, you matter. You can leave a job that doesn’t serve you. You do not deserve to live in fear and it’s not your fault.
Just bc you can handle something doesn’t mean that you should have to.