This week, New York Times reporters James Stewart and Rachel Abrams join Inside the Hive cohost Joe Hagan to discuss their explosive new book, Unscripted: The Epic Battle for a Media Empire and the Redstone Family Legacy, which details the unseemly power struggles around the late Sumner Redstone, who controlled Viacom and CBS, and the downfall of CBS chief Les Moonves, whose attempts to cover up years of alleged sexual misconduct exploded at the height of the #MeToo movement. (Moonves has long denied the sexual misconduct allegations against him.)
Redstone, report Stewart and Abrams, surrounded himself with grifters who tried to exploit the media mogul’s late-life sexual predilections. Two of Redstone’s romantic interests managed to become his caretakers and allegedly conspired to download millions of dollars into their private accounts. “They walked away with at least $150 million between the two of them,” says Stewart. “And now they’re on the boards of museums and charities, and their bios all say, ‘Oh, they’re world-renowned philanthropists.’”
The two women, of course, eventually turn on each other, as does everyone, it seems, in the book. “Everybody in this book is out for themselves,” says Abrams. “Everybody in this book wants something from somebody else and…is willing to throw somebody else under the bus to get what they want.”
The book also details, through hundreds of text messages, how Moonves fell victim to his own inept attempts to cover up years of alleged sexual misconduct that had once been baked into the culture of business and Hollywood. When Stewart learned, from a deposition Moonves gave to investigators, that the former CBS chief had an employee on the payroll with whom he had oral sex, he called Abrams in shock: “I called Rachel, I said, ‘Do you believe this?’” he recounts. “I’m so happy I had a coauthor because I didn’t have anybody else to talk to.”
After you listen to the Inside the Hive episode, read Vanity Fair’s exclusive excerpt from Unscripted: “Sumner Redstone in Love: The Cringey Sexcapades of a Horny Billionaire.”
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