I Was a Celebrity Assistant.  The Power Imbalance is Very Real.

By Rowena Chiu, New York Times, August 21, 2024.

Earlier this month, Kenneth Iwamasa, 59, the live-in assistant to the actor Matthew Perry, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to distribute ketamine, the drug that led to the death of his employer. Very few people have firsthand insight into the toxic dynamic that can develop while assisting a celebrity or understand the inherent power imbalance that can arise. I do.

For two months in 1998, I worked as a personal assistant to Harvey Weinstein. I witnessed the many ways in which his celebrity and power warped the behavior of people around him and how, as his assistant, I was considered to be less than a person. While I was his employee, he attempted to rape me. I was silenced for years from talking about it by an NDA until I was able to speak up in 2019.

Of course, there is a critical distinction between Mr. Perry, an addict, and Mr. Weinstein, a rapist. Mr. Perry wasn’t the criminal that Mr. Weinstein is, and his former employee (and others) are being charged as his enablers, not being put in the spotlight as his victims. But when I read about Mr. Iwamasa’s indictment, I understood all too well that an assistant to a celebrity can be expected to do whatever is asked of them, regardless of ethics or legality.

These requests can range from telling white lies (to, say, an irate spouse wanting to know where your boss is) to procuring illicit indulgences (such as drugs). In the rarefied world of celebrity, assistants are often not really treated like people. They’re more like accessories: barely paid, highly expendable, and interchangeable.

Over the past decade, I’ve thought deeply about complicity and culpability. Is it true, as the German theologian Martin Niemöller contended, that those who did not speak out in Nazi Germany were just as culpable as the prison guards? To me, that is a false conflation. As an assistant, you’re in a double-bind: You have almost no power yet you carry a disproportionate amount of responsibility. In a fundamental sense, assistants do not belong to themselves.

Mr. Iwamasa was living full-time with his employer, presumably so he could be of service around the clock. In my time as an assistant, I often thought of myself as a terrified butler. My job was to be both invisible and everywhere all at once. It was to conjure the impossible — and then to make the impossible seem like it never occurred in the first place. That is the alchemy of assisting. If you insert yourself, you’re doing a bad job. You’ve succeeded only when no one notices you or the things that you’ve made happen.

Mr. Weinstein once told me he liked Chinese girls because they’re discreet, and he spoke to me often of loyalty. Similarly, reports about Mr. Iwamasa’s social networking presence have detailed how he highlighted discretion and loyalty as professional traits. Words like “discreet” and “loyal” often signal to wealthy clients that you not only will look the other way when necessary but will also facilitate their indiscretions. I was expected to keep my employer’s secrets, to protect his reputation, and ultimately I became his victim.

In Mr. Weinstein’s case, we can point to an entire circle of people who enabled his criminal activity, including but not limited to accountants, board members, and lawyers — all of whom had access to money and power that permitted them to defend themselves. Celebrities can be surrounded by a stream of sycophants who tell them they are above the law. Few dared to tell Mr. Weinstein that he couldn’t do something or that he had gone too far.

The system that enables this imbalance goes far beyond entitlement. When it came to Mr. Weinstein’s indiscretions toward women (in other words, rape), his enablers didn’t just tell him that he’d get away with what he was doing. More dangerously, they spoon-fed him the idea that it was his God-given right to do as he wished, using such rationales as: You’re a creative genius and you need to get your inspiration somewhere, or you’re a good man with a weakness for pretty women. Mr. Weinstein spent decades cultivating his self-image as a tortured genius. He fell for his own myth, and it consumed him.

Assistants are often privy to this behavior yet have little power and little choice in the face of it. I’ve tried to describe this sense of entrapment to those outside the film industry to no avail. I’ve been asked why I didn’t get another job. Recent images of Mr. Weinstein, hunched and trembling over his walker, have eradicated images of the media mogul at the zenith of his power, but in 1998, it was almost impossible to get a meeting with the man, let alone work in his office. Once I was there, I could be fired at the drop of a hat, and I was fully aware that it would be the loss of not only that job, but any other job in the film industry. The blacklisting was permanent.

As his assistant, I had no identity of my own. My identity erased and my needs subsumed, I felt like a ghost whose fate was tied to my employer. This tragic one-way reliance is never clearer than when it comes to the legal world. As a personal assistant, if you’re ever asked to do anything ethically dubious, you’re immediately reassured, as I was: Oh, don’t worry, you’ll never get into trouble. Harvey has the world’s top lawyers at his beck and call. That viewpoint puzzled me. I always itched to retort, “Yes, he does — but I don’t!”

If I am (and I am) a separate legal entity from the person I am assisting, then the responsibility for my actions is mine alone. What does it matter, then, how much money Mr. Weinstein had or which lawyers he had on speed dial?

There is a darker, unspoken risk: If your legal dispute is with your employer, there is no way out. As an assistant, your identity, not to mention your livelihood, is so tied to your employer that society sees you as one entity — but the legal system does not.

That symbiosis became unraveled in the case of Mr. Iwamasa. Mr. Perry’s death severed their connection for good. Mr. Perry (and his deep pockets) are no longer around to protect the assistant. Without that patronage, the legal system has come for him.

I’m not surprised that Mr. Iwamasa pleaded guilty. The assistant, who is usually invisible, is suddenly center stage, the last place he or she is equipped to be. Along with invisible, the assistant can also be penniless, powerless, and a vulnerable target. It’s far too easy to turn the butler into the scapegoat.

Rowena Chiu is an activist and a former assistant.

Join The Beacon Institute to Join Sunny Nunan's January 24th Interview with Rowena Chiu on the Power Imbalance in the Administrative Profession.