“Stop!” The crosswalk’s orange hand signals to the camera amid a montage of women on the streets of New York City.
And “stop” might just be one of the key messages of “She Said” (2022). As the film weaves the story of a famous newsroom investigation, New York Times journalists Jodi Kantor (Zoe Kazan) and Megan Twohey (Carey Mulligan) set out to stop the powerful from silencing women.
In an opening scene, a young woman flees — wet, traumatized, and disheveled — from an unrevealed threat. Remarkably, as she runs through the street, men passing her on the adjacent sidewalks don’t even pause to notice her distress. It is this very act of noticing that Jodi and Megan will assume.
Alongside their work of motherhood, Jodi and Megan find themselves working on an assignment from editor Rebecca Corbett — looking into “all workplaces where sexual harassment might happen.” Their investigation leads them to film producer and Miramax co-founder Harvey Weinstein, and allegations from multiple women that he coerced them into sexual favors — or worse.
The victims, alongside the protagonists, Jodi and Megan, are portrayed as heroes — as they are. But as much as this story centers around women, the film does not flatten into a simple men versus women trope.
Fans of director Maria Schrader’s 2019 Netflix mini-series, “Unorthodox” — about a Jewish woman who leaves her community in New York for a life of self-discovery in Berlin — may recognize the same focus on strong, central, hold-her-own female characters in “She Said.”
But several good men show up in this story. Megan’s husband Jim, in particular, comes across as supportive and safe. A quiet openness pervades the couple’s interactions on screen. Megan answers crucial phone calls in the kitchen, late at night, or while lying in bed with her husband — unclothed, as far as we can tell. Her husband looks on with eyes full of admiration, support, and the quiet bemusement that comes from knowing what your partner is thinking about something extraordinary. Not once do we sense competition or lack of support coming from the baby-wearing dad, starkly contrasting with Weinstein’s power plays that ruined women’s careers.
As a journalist, I can’t help but feel enraptured by Kazan’s portrayal of Jodi. In a moving phone call with a source, Jodi offers abundant warmth and empathy. But the very next scene is filled with mystifying and propelling music. We feel that Jodi can at once hold space for tears and embrace a propulsive rage as she digs for the reason behind the victim’s emotion.
Just as Jodi exemplifies the characteristics of a proficient journalist, so too, the film predominantly portrays the NYT as abiding by common journalistic ethics. The journalists take great care not to pressure the victims into speaking. Even though they must have sources, they work slowly and patiently until the victims will confide in them.
Even Weinstein himself is treated with a degree of respect quintessential to journalism. At one point, he threatens to tell his version of events to The Washington Post, right before the Times is going to print. But Baquet is unflappable: “Call them. That’s fine. You can call The Post.” To kowtow to Weinstein’s demands to avoid a competitor getting in on the story would simply be unethical, and akin to bribery. Weinstein demands to know the Times’ sources, and the journalists stand firm in refusing to provide him with that confidential information, thus protecting the women who had bravely spoken out.
The film does offer a few scenes which present questionable ethics, and both have to do with the way phone calls are treated. Once, Megan turns a call on speakerphone in front of her husband, and later, Jodi motions for Megan to listen in while she hears from a source. Though these scenes serve to augment some thematic elements of the film, they don’t seem in keeping with journalistic best practice — shouldn’t the journalists disclose to their source if someone else is listening in on the conversation?
For all its stellar insight into journalistic process, the film could improve by strengthening the character arc of its protagonists.
Simply put, Jodi is admirable throughout the film. She shows profound compassion for the victims. As a mother, she navigates a surprising conversation with her daughter flawlessly. But the closest we come to sensing any flaws in Jodi would be her frazzled hair, which affords her a slightly flustered appearance, and a brief scene where she is so immersed in her work that her husband has to tease her to get her attention. A heart-to-heart exchange with her daughter reveals that Jodi has a secret she promises to share “one day,” and I wish we knew what that was.
We do catch more glimpses of character development for Megan. She experiences what we may assume is postpartum anxiety or depression. But even that doesn’t develop into a significant influence on her character. She does wrestle with the work they will do on this story — are these voices worth augmenting when they already have a platform? Her prior experience in the newsroom makes her question whether the exposure of this wrongdoing will even make a difference.
And yet, while the film humanizes these heroes by portraying relatable scenes — Jodi scribbling the Netflix password in marker for her daughter while taking a call, Megan sneaking away from her sleeping baby to talk to Jodi — their characters still possess a certain infallibility. When Megan loses her cool and cusses out a man who is badgering her, we feel she is entirely warranted in releasing the pent up, vicarious rage she has carried on behalf of women everywhere.
The film creatively threads the needle of describing horrible events without crossing into voyeurism. Reviewer Kaitlyn Huamani agrees in her review of the film for Annenberg Media. Though it is rated R and deals with descriptions of sexual assault and harassment, “She Said” does so in a way that continues the focus of the story — the journalistic process and heroism of Jodi and Megan. No sexual coercion is featured on screen.
The film tells us that one of the NYT’s sources in this investigation, Ambra Battilana Gutierrez, had collaborated with the NYPD and wore a wire during an encounter with Weinstein. In one scene, the camera moves through posh hotel hallways, giving the impression we are eavesdropping on a conversation which eventually moves behind closed doors, as the wire’s recording plays.
We are not told in the film, but the audio that plays in this scene is the actual recording of Gutierrez’s voice as she interacts with Weinstein.
Imagine if, instead of procuring the tape of Gutierrez’s encounter, Shrader had simply decided to use an actor voiceover — or one made using AI. Using an actor’s voice would be fine, but how to incorporate AI is another question entirely. Depending on the ethical rules governing her filmmaking, perhaps a disclosing note in the film would be warranted. What if the storyline were disrupted by this? How might the original victim be disrespected if artificial intelligence, rather than human empathy, bore witness to the weight of portraying her story?
This scene brings to mind another recently released film that uses archival content in a similar way. “Dead Man’s Wire” (2025) flashes at times between actor portrayals and video clips which journalists actually gathered from the events that inspired the film. This cinematic strategy causes the viewer to realize just how much work has gone into recreating the essence of the original events, and how flawlessly the costumes and characters embody the actual people they purport to represent.
So too, when the storyline of “She Said” is about giving voice to the voiceless, using the actual voice of a victim is a powerful choice.
Another subtle influence throughout the film is the choice to use only music without lyrics. This too, serves to augment the theme; the voices of the victims are our concern, and we ought not be distracted from them.
In the end, “She Said” may be idealistic at times, but it makes your heart swell with admiration for the way journalists confront the powerful and give voice to the vulnerable.