All featured products are independently selected by our editors. However, when you buy something through our retail links, Vanity Fair may earn an affiliate commission.
Marti Noxon, a director and prolific TV writer who once served as a consulting producer on Mad Men, is backing up allegations that show runner Matthew Weiner created a hostile work environment and sexually harassed one of his writers. Noxon went on a Twitter spree Friday afternoon in support of Emmy-winning writer Kater Gordon, a former Mad staffer who recently alleged that Weiner directed lewd remarks toward her while they were working on the show in 2008. “He told me that I owed it to him to let him see me naked,” she recalled in an interview with the Information.
In her tweet storm, Noxon says that she remembers Gordon appearing “shaken and subdued” at work after the alleged 2008 incident.
“I believe her,” Noxon writes. “I was at work with her the day after what she described transpired. I remember clearly how shaken and subdued Kater was—and continued to be from that day on.”
A representative for Weiner denied Gordon’s claims in a statement to The Hollywood Reporter: “Mr. Weiner spent eight to 10 hours a day writing dialogue aloud with Miss Gordon, who started on Mad Men as his writers assistant. He does not remember saying this comment nor does it reflect a comment he would say to any colleague. During the nine years he was showrunner on Mad Men, Mr. Weiner had a predominantly female driven writers room. He has long believed in and implemented an egalitarian working environment including the highest levels of production and writing based on mutual respect for all.”
Noxon took issue with Weiner’s denial. “Anyone with an even cursory knowledge of the show Mad Men could imagine that very line coming from the mouth of Pete Campbell,” she writes, referring to the opportunistic, sexist ad man played on the series by Vincent Kartheiser. “Matt, Pete’s creator, is many things. He is devilishly clever and witty, but he is also, in the words of one of his colleagues, an ‘emotional terrorist’ who will badger, seduce, and even tantrum in an attempt to get his needs met.”
Noxon claimed that Weiner’s difficult temperament created an environment that had his staff walking on eggshells. Creative team and crew members generally didn’t “confront” or “report” him to the network because they felt grateful for the work, and were “truly in awe of his talents.” Taking a risk on reporting Weiner, writes Noxon, also could have meant “the loss of a job and ruined reputation.”
X content
This content can also be viewed on the site it originates from.
“Taking that action is one thing to contemplate if you have money in the bank and family to fall back on but quite another for people from all walks of life without a safety net,” she writes. “And when sexual favors are lightly added to the bag of tools one might use to stay employed and valued, it can be destabilizing or even devastating. It may not be illegal, but it is oppressive.”
Representatives for Weiner have not yet responded to Vanity Fair’s request for comment.
