Endeavor CEO Ari Emanuel said on Wednesday that rival CAA agency bosses Bryan Lourd and Kevin Huvane should step aside in light of Julia Ormond’s lawsuit against disgraced mogul Harvey Weinstein, Disney and their own agency.
Speaking at the Bloomberg Screentime conference Wednesday in Los Angeles, Emanuel said that “they should take a leave of absence. And investigators should come in and they should look at what they did. They didn’t apologize. They didn’t deny it.”
Emanuel is bitter rivals with CAA, and is long known for disrespecting his industry competitors, though usually in private. But even so, his broadside against two respected industry veterans was shocking in its directness.
The TKO Group head went so far as to say that Lourd and Huvane’s role in Weinstein’s abuses of vulnerable actresses mirrored Ghislaine Maxwell’s for Jeffrey Epstein — that “they were leading them in to this man” and that “it’s disgusting what they did.”
Emanuel’s entire statement was lengthy and biting. He told the audience of the pair, “So this past week, and this is serious actually, the two heads of that company were sued for their involvement with Harvey Weinstein, and it’s been, I think, seven cases. It was the Steven Seagal case that they told Kevin Huvane about, he said don’t do anything. And the whole edict about CAA that they pitch is everybody knows everything, we share. Seven different agents knew about different incidents with women.”
“You’re sitting in a situation that Kevin and Bryan are to Harvey Weinstein like Ghislaine Maxwell was to Jeffrey Epstein. They were leading them in to this man,” Emanuel continued. “So what should happen with them is the following and then we’ll talk about the business. As any public or private company and they are owned by Kering now, which is a huge luxury brand for women. If you bring an outside person to investigate it… they should take a leave of absence. This is the seventh time it’s been brought up about that agency.”
CAA was bought in September by Artemis Group, the parent company of Kering.
“I don’t know where [the] Screen Actors Guild is on it, because if it was an agency in the valley, they would close that thing down. So they should take a leave of absence. And investigators should come in and they should look at what they did. They didn’t apologize. They didn’t deny it,” he emphasized.
“So from my perspective, it’s horrific. I don’t know where Margot Robbie is, where Meryl Streep is on this issue. Like hey, where are you guys? Are you guys questioning your leaders and your agents. No they’re not. As it relates to the business now and I think it’s disgusting what they did and it’s happening when they were just taking power….we have more morals,” Emanuel concluded.
Lourd, meanwhile, is notably slated to appear at the Bloomberg conference on Thursday.
Ormond filed her lawsuit on Oct. 4 and alleged that Weinstein sexually assaulted her in 1995. She also accused Disney and CAA of knowing about the assault and listed them as codefendants in complicity. The suit states in part that “sexual assault on Ormond could have been prevented if Miramax or Disney had properly supervised Weinstein and not retained him while knowing that he was a danger to the women he encountered at work.”
Ormond also claimed that she wanted to pursue legal action against Weinstein at the time and was cautioned against doing so by CAA — which the agency has vigorously denied. Her suit does not name Lourd and Huvane as defendants, but the pair were working as her agents at the time.
