CNN anchor slams Tarantino’s remarks on Weinstein: ‘The whole thing is gross’

“I felt what he was doing was pathetic and I didn’t want to deal with his patheticness,” the director said of Weinstein in an interview

CNN morning show host Kaitlan Collins criticised those who were aware of the allegations against Harvey Weinstein, the disgraced film producer now in prison for rape following allegations against him from more than 80 women going back to the 1970s.

Chris Wallace, who left Fox News for CNN this year, spoke to film director Quentin Tarantino on the programme Who’s Talking to Chris Wallace.

Mr Wallace appeared on CNN This Morning on Friday to discuss the interview.

Speaking to Mr Tarantino, Mr Wallace said: “You made most of your movies with Harvey Weinstein. You heard stories about him over the years. You’ve said that. Why didn’t you do more to try to stop him and to protect the women?”

“I’d never heard the stories that later came out at all. I heard the same stories that everybody had heard,” the director responded.

Mr Tarantino went on to say “I chalked it up to a Mad Men-era version of the boss chasing the secretary around the desk. I’m not saying that’s okay,” before adding that “there was never any talk of rape or anything like that”.

“The reason I didn’t was because that’s a real hard conversation to have, because, I felt it was pathetic. I felt what he was doing was pathetic and I didn’t want to deal with his patheticness,” he said.

Mr Wallace prodded, telling the director “obviously, you say you didn’t know how severe it was, but did you think it was casting couch type stuff, kind of Hollywood lore?”

In respone, Mr Tarantino said he “didn’t think it was, ‘okay, you do this for me or you’re not going to get this movie.’”

“I never heard any actresses say anything like that. It was ... ‘just don’t get in the back of a limo with him’ ... It was easy to compartmentalize that to some degree,” he added. “I feel bad about it now ... I feel bad that I did not have a man-to-man talk with him about it.”

Following the clip with Mr Tarantino, CNN This Morning co-host Poppy Harlow said “that last part is everything. That’s what I was waiting for ... it sounds like there is some contrition. Do you feel like he could have stopped this? Had he spoken up and had the harder conversations?”

Mr Wallace said he believed “the smarter thing to do would have been just to condemn Harvey Weinstein and stop talking.”

“But I think he was genuinely regretful and remorseful that he didn’t do more. Now, again, he says he didn’t hear the stories of rape, sexual assault. He just heard basically that he was a lech,” Mr Wallace added. “I think he is genuinely contrite about the fact that he didn’t do more, as he said, to have a man-to-man conversation at some point and say ‘you can’t do that’,” he said. “Having said that, from what we’ve heard about the Harvey Weinstein story, there’s no indication that kind of a conversation with Quentin Tarantino would have stopped Harvey Weinstein.”

Ms Collins chimed in to say “the larger point that it goes to is that people knew something was happening. A lot of people ... came out afterwards, said, ‘oh, well, I had no idea’. And then you heard people more candidly say, ‘well, we’d heard these stories and this and where there’s smoke, there’s fire’. And I don’t know, the whole thing is gross”.

The clip concludes after another response from Mr Wallace.

“You can talk about an awful lot of powerful people who did business with Harvey Weinstein over the years,” he said, mentioning the Clintons. “‘Well, I heard stories’ and they leave it there. But in the meantime, a lot of women were being abused.”