One of the most powerful people in Hollywood – the co-founder of film and television production companies Miramax and The Weinstein Company, Harvey Weinstein has begged a New York judge to hear the retrial in his landmark #MeToo case as soon as possible due to his deteriorating health, telling him: “I don’t know how much longer I can hold on.”
Weinstein has chronic myeloid leukaemia, diabetes and heart problems, and told the judge he was struggling amid harsh conditions at New York City’s Rikers Island jail complex.
“Every day I’m at Rikers Island, it’s a mystery to me how I’m still walking,” he told the court in Manhattan. “I’m holding on because I want justice for myself and I want this to be over with.”
The 72-year-old is facing a retrial after his 2020 rape and sexual assault conviction involving two women was overturned by New York’s highest court in April last year. He has always maintained any sexual activity he was involved in was consensual.
At the hearing on Wednesday, Judge Curtis Farber said the retrial would start on 15 April.
However, Weinstein asked him to swap with another, unrelated case the judge has scheduled in March.
The disgraced movie mogul had arrived at the court in a wheelchair more than half an hour after the hearing’s scheduled start time. In court, he complained that jail officers had given him the wrong medication and failed to pick him up on time.
“I’m asking and begging you, your honour,” Weinstein said. He told the judge he was facing a “serious emergency situation” and wanted to “get out of this hellhole as quickly as possible”.
He told the court that at times he finds himself gasping for air and predicted he would soon need to be treated in hospital again.
