“My mom thanks you,” Ronan Farrow told me Wednesday, as he dug into an early lunch in a Pottery Barn–style conference room in Midtown. His mom thanks me because she would want him to eat, and he hasn’t had much time for that in the past few days, hence the mid-interview salmon and asparagus. (He offered me a spear; I declined.) Farrow has been making the press rounds to promote his book Catch and Kill, which was released this week from Little, Brown and Company after months of anticipation—and, for some parties, trepidation. The thing hardly needs promoting; it’s already at the top of Amazon’s best-seller list and is sure to crack the New York Times’ list too. It has gone into a second printing due to sheer volume of demand. Still, Farrow has popped up on The View, CNN’s New Day, and NPR’s Fresh Air, in addition to fielding calls and congratulations. In all, it doesn’t leave much time for nourishment.

One gets the impression that much of Farrow’s life for the past two years has played out in similar style: on the go, as he’s moved from one reporting target to the next. Catch and Kill chronicles a particularly tumultuous period, during which he began reporting on Harvey Weinstein’s many accusers for NBC. Ultimately that story ended up at the New Yorker, where it won a Pulitzer Prize. Farrow’s book is about the women who came forward to accuse Weinstein, but it’s also about the forces at the network that necessitated he take his work elsewhere—an aspect that made NBC brass squeamish enough to send a memo to staffers rebutting Farrow’s allegations. (Farrow stands by his reporting.) The book, too, moves at a brisk pace, feeding readers each revelation in real time, interspersed with personal notes that make the story stick. Here, Farrow elaborates on what pushed him to share the story behind the story, how he sees the #MeToo movement unfolding, and, of course, Jackie.

Vanity Fair: How did you arrive at the conclusion that the story behind your Harvey Weinstein reporting—what happened at NBC, what happened with Black Cube, what happened, ultimately, with the New Yorker—should be made public?

Ronan Farrow: There was a moment when I looked at the threads of reporting that were interconnecting and started to understand what shape this story would take. I spent months saying, “I don’t want to answer questions about that. I don’t want to be the story; this is about the sources,” and all of that was true. But there were reporters saying, “Hey, you witnessed the shutdown of the story. You witnessed a crazy operation to intimidate reporters and sources. That’s a story too; it explains why our culture stays silent about these things for so long.” I realized they were right: that it was an important story, that it required a personal thread, and that I had to be honest and vulnerable about myself. I realized it was going to be not just about the headlines, although there are many headlines broken in this book, but about the steady accumulation of evidence and the way in which those threads knit together. Those are all things you can do in a book in a way you can’t in a magazine article.

What was it like to put yourself onto the page as a main character when you’re typically behind the scenes telling the story?

Terrifying. I was fortunate to have incredible people around me to help guide me as I sought to strike the right balance on that. I wanted to do it in a way that wasn’t navel-gazing or taking a victory lap or patting myself on the back, but in a way that is honest and self-deprecating and vulnerable and confronts the moments in which I let people down. I also wanted it to be about more than just me. That’s why it’s so important that the stories of a number of journalists run through Catch and Kill. What I went through is the tip of the iceberg of something that can and does get much, much worse for others. I hope the clear message is not, “Woe is me, I went through a lot of B.S.,” but rather, that the free press is a precious, fragile institution, and all over the world there are journalists who wind up dead when they go up against powerful interests.

Did you anticipate NBC’s reaction?

There were no surprises at the responses from any of the parties on whom I report in this book because the fact-checking process was so intensive. Each of these individuals got a fair opportunity to respond, and that happened in various ways and sometimes included conversations I can’t talk about the specifics of. But suffice to say, many, many hours were spent making sure responses were in there and fairly reflected. With each of my stories, I’ve seen the same corporate or individual powerful-person-generated backlash. So none of it is particularly surprising, but each time it is an immense relief when people rally around it in the way they have been and reporters cut through the spin. At NBC, we’re seeing people like Chris Hayes and Stephanie Ruhle go on air and kind of call out their bosses, and behind the scenes there are even tougher conversations happening where great journalists there are calling for accountability.

One of the main lines of response from NBC has been that they didn’t know about the allegations against Matt Lauer until November 2017. We also have women journalists at NBC speaking out and saying that wasn’t the case. Why do you think that’s the approach the network has chosen to take?

So often in my reporting, you see this wild phenomenon play out in which there’s almost a complete lack of understanding of irony. In response to a book about a cover-up that involves settlements euphemistically couched as “severance” to prevent people from understanding that they’re about complaints of harassment voiced at senior levels within the company, we see a doubling down on euphemisms. In response to a book about the tactics of catch and kill and suppressing stories, you see Dylan Howard and AMI threatening to sue in every region of the world.

There is an aspect in these responses that is Trumpian in many respects: It’s the playbook of digging in and hoping the storm will pass, even when the facts have been presented, even when the public has decided they understand the facts, and there are tough questions being asked. For a certain kind of privileged guy who grew up in a certain era and is used to possessing power without challenge, there is a belief that you can always weather the storm. And I’ve been really inspired to see people refusing to stop the storm.

Do you think the higher-ups at NBC—Noah Oppenheim, Andy Lack, and Rich Greenberg, in particular—will weather the storm?

I say this a lot, but I am truly a reporter, not an activist. I am so moved and grateful to see activists revving up their engines and journalists calling for accountability. I think it’s correct that I not comment on that other than to say that those are the right kinds of reactions to a set of facts like this being presented.

I want to talk about the concept of systems designed to repress these allegations, and the fact that they’re now being exposed and interrogated on multiple fronts. At this point, it feels like things could go one of two ways: These systems could be dismantled, or they could go further underground and change to accommodate the #MeToo movement. What do you think the outcome will be?

We’re seeing a push and pull between those two possible outcomes right now. People are speaking up and voting according to these issues, and interrogating political candidates, and making their news and product consumption decisions based on how principled companies are. If that keeps up, I think we will see a continuation of meaningful reform. Companies and legislatures have taken meaningful steps to limit nondisclosure agreements and the use of forced arbitration. The situation is still fluid, but I have a lot of hope that reform will continue. There are a lot of powerful interests who do benefit from the secrecy of these kinds of agreements and would like to see companies and the law continue to tolerate them. All I can say is that I hope sources are brave enough to keep speaking.

In the wake of reporting like yours and Megan Twohey’s and Jodi Kantor’s, I personally have heard from people with stories to tell. They sound harrowing, but in some cases they don’t quite rise to the level of things that are reportable, or things that we think readers would become invested in. How do you think that should be handled?

One of the hardest dilemmas that journalists face is when you get a lead that is quite possibly credible, but doesn’t rise to the level of newsworthiness where it exposes some bigger, forward-looking pattern. I think the most powerful way that I can be a good reporter is to carefully choose stories that expand our understanding of the systems and issues. And that’s a really hard analysis to undertake. If I can’t report a story, I try to get it to someone who maybe can, whether it’s a reporter who works on a specific beat within a niche industry, or even law enforcement or a counselor, or any number of other people who can help make sure a story is heard and ensure accountability on a smaller level.

You’ve said that Catch and Kill is based on a two-year timeline. Are there pieces of the story that didn’t make it into the book?

Many, many revelations did not make it into the final draft of Catch and Kill. Some of those were revelations were fact-checked, and I could’ve confidently defended them as a piece of reporting, but for whatever reason—dramatic reasons, streamlining reasons, reasons related to not wanting to include things that were overly prejudicial against someone that the book was tough on—they were omitted. In earlier versions, the book ended with a much more damning punctuation mark on the reporting about one of the individuals in it. It was kind of a hair-curling passage, and people who read it responded in an incredibly dramatic way. We had significant conversations about it, but in the end I felt strongly that this is not a book about sensationalism; it’s about the steady accumulation of facts, and it’s about bigger patterns and systems. So it was important to me to end the book on a note that was about those systems, and not about any one of these individuals.

Will those details make their way into any of your future stories?

There are threads of reporting that, in some cases, other reporters are already mining, where there’s absolutely more to be disclosed. In a number of cases, there were sources who came close to speaking and weren’t quite ready, and actually in some cases, from what I’ve heard, are becoming ready. The reporting will continue, through me and others. Yes, there are specific things that did not make it into the final draft of this book that will probably enter into future reporting you’ll see from me.

Can you tell me who any of these things are about?

Absolutely not.

I had to ask.

You had to ask!

Speaking of had to ask: Do you really hate Jackie?

It was incredibly funny going through the transcripts and discovering this running joke of people having this opinion about Jackie, but for what it’s worth, in the full unabridged conversations, every single time I pivoted to talking about how much I loved the score. Mica Levi is amazing, and I love her work on Jackie. Natalie Portman is amazing in that movie. So, sadly, the book, which had to come down from 1,000 pages to 450, is silent on my opinions about Jackie.

This interview has been edited and condensed.

— How one industry is bleeding Wall Street dry of talent
— Ronan Farrow’s producer reveals how NBC killed its Weinstein story
— Ivanka’s $360 million deal is raising eyebrows at the FBI
— The big turn for Elizabeth Warren’s campaign
— Why a leading neurocriminologist left Joker completely stunned
— The Fox News movie’s uncanny depictions of the network’s drama

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