By Daily Mail (U.S.) | Created at 2025-03-14 13:26:22 | Updated at 2025-03-14 16:37:41
3 hours ago
Harvey Weinstein, the disgraced movie mogul now rotting behind bars, will spend his birthday next week at Rikers Island and offered a grim prediction that this may be his last.
'I turn 73 next Wednesday and I'm in a place where I don't think I'll get to 74,' the convicted sex offender told DailyMail.com Thursday in an unsolicited phone call to DailyMail.com from the notorious New York jail.
'I'll talk to my friends on the phone,' he said in revealing his pathetic birthday plans. 'But there's no celebration here. There's never any celebration at Rikers Island. It's absolutely horrifying.'
A day earlier, the poster boy of the #MeToo movement flashed a gap-toothed smile in a criminal courtroom at a hearing ahead of his upcoming rape retrial in New York City.
Back at Rikers, Weinstein brought up his tooth problems to DailyMail.com as he lamented the sorry state of his health.
He has been plagued by numerous health problems including chronic myeloid leukemia, heart issues and diabetes, and his lawyers have filed a legal claim accusing the facility of 'ongoing medical negligence.'
'People say why did you smile yesterday?' said Weinstein, who obviously had been reading news reports describing him 'yucking it up' in court. 'The reason I smiled was because Rikers Island, they don't treat your teeth, they just pull your teeth.
'And that's just dentistry,' he continued. 'They get the medicine wrong. The nurses change every five minutes. I've caught so many mistakes. I had four emergency trips to Bellevue (Hospital), including a heart operation that if they didn't get right away, I would die. I mean, I've had double pneumonia.
Harvey Weinstein, the disgraced movie mogul now rotting behind bars, will spend his birthday next week at Rikers Island and offered a grim prediction that this may be his last
A gap in his teeth was plainly visible when he appeared in court in New York on Wednesday
Weinstein has been plagued by numerous health problems including chronic myeloid leukemia, heart issues and diabetes, and his lawyers have filed a legal claim accusing the facility of 'ongoing medical negligence'
Rikers Island where Weinstein is being held. He said he's hopeful he'll be able to get out and spend the rest of his years as a free man
'The conditions here are unbearable and I speak not just for me but for the other people who don't have a voice,' he said. 'This is inhumane, horrifying and needs to be torn down.'
But he remains hopeful that he'll get out of Rikers and be able to live out the rest of his years a free man.
He returned to Rikers form state prison last April after a New York appeals court overturned his 2020 rape and sexual assault conviction. The retrial is expected to begin next month.
He also has an appeal pending in California, where he received a 16-year-sentence for a separate rape conviction in Los Angeles in 2022.
He said he may testify on his own behalf at the retrial in New York.
'My lawyer's talking about me testifying and it's certainly not out of my purview to take that serious because I'm innocent and every act with these women was consensual,' he said.
On that front, he lavished praise on an unlikely ally, far-right provocateur Candace Owens, who has recently been defending him on her YouTube channel.
She argues he got railroaded by the #MeToo movement, which erupted in 2017 when women began going public with accounts of his behavior.
Weinstein has an appeal pending in California, where he received a 16-year-sentence for a separate rape conviction in Los Angeles in 2022
The disgraced movie producer reached out to DailyMail.com in hopes the media would do more reporting like Candace Owens who's said on her platform that she believes he's 'innocent'
This was his primary reason for his wanting to call DailyMail.com, hoping other media will follow Owens's 'reporting' and help shift public opinion in the lead-up to his retrial.
'We disagree on almost everything, but her level of reporting is unbelievable,' he declared. 'She is not treating me like a hero. She is treating me like a guy who cheated on his wife and was amoral, but didn't sexually assault anybody.
'I believe she's convinced I'm innocent, and I am innocent,' he argued. 'And I got caught up in this turmoil of a movement.'
Weinstein co-founded the film and television production companies Miramax and The Weinstein Company and was once one of the most powerful people in Hollywood, having produced films such as Pulp Fiction and The Crying Game.
He has long maintained that any sexual activity was consensual.
He is being retried on charges that he forcibly performed oral sex on a movie and TV production assistant in 2006 and raped an aspiring actor in 2013.
An additional charge, filed last September, alleges he forced oral sex on a different woman at a Manhattan hotel in 2006.
