Randall Emmett was a movie producer of schlocky action films who was about to hit the big time. Then the accusations came.
Randall Emmett had built a career for himself in Hollywood over the past decade as a producer of schlocky action films featuring cameos of iconic actors like Bruce Willis and Al Pacino. But in recent years, he was at the cusp of finally gaining mainstream respect. He had a recurring role on the reality TV hit “Vanderpump Rules” and produced Martin Scorsese’s last two films. But a Times investigation found that multiple former assistants and people who worked for Emmett alleged improper behavior.
Today, we get into the rise and fall of Emmett, and what it says about the Hollywood of today. Read the full transcript here.
Host: Gustavo Arellano
Guests: L.A. Times corporate media reporter Meg James and L.A. Times senior entertainment writer Amy Kaufman
More reading:
The man who played Hollywood: Inside Randall Emmett’s crumbling empire
Bruce Willis halts acting career after diagnosis with cognitive disorder
Randall Emmett’s drive to produce films is paying off
GUSTAVO: Ok. Confession time. I love, love, love the Bravo TV reality show Vanderpump Rules. It's about the young good looking staff of a restaurant in West Hollywood.
[00:01:01]CLIP: I told you I had a bite of her pasta and then the whole thing was devoured, that’s why you go out…
Get over the damn pasta. Read between the lines. It ain't about the pasta.
[00:01:14] GUSTAVO: So you know, that means nonstop drama and chisme galore.
CLIP: It's not about the pasta.
THEME MUSIC IN
GUSTAVO: One of the stars is Lala Kent, who I'm not the biggest fan of. She's kind of stuck up.
Theme mux out/clip in
[00:01:59] CLIP LALA KENT: I am engaged to my soulmate, Randall, Emmett. He is kind he's generous. He makes me feel on a daily basis that I am the best person on the face of the earth.
Theme mux back in
[00:02:14] GUSTAVO: And her boyfriend, then fiance on the show was a film producer, Randall Emmett, a guy who was always flashing his money and power around.
[00:02:21]CLIP: Randall Emmett: if you want $50,000 to produce this movie that starts next week. Let me know.
[00:02:27] GUSTAVO: But little did I know that Randall would turn out to be the biggest drum of them all with scores of lawsuits, allegations of abuse against women and assistants and messing with the career of Bruce Willis. I'm telling you folks, Vanderpump Rules is the chisme galore.
Beat drop
[00:02:42] I'm Gustavo. You're listening to THE TIMES. Daily news from the LA Times. It's Thursday, July 7th, 2022. Today the rise and fall of a C-list movie producer. And what it tells us about the Hollywood of today.
MUX bump to fade out
GUSTAVO: Joining me are two LA Times colleagues who just published an investigation into Randall Emmett. Meg James covers corporate media, while Amy Kaufman is a senior entertainment writer. Meg, Amy, welcome to The Times.
Meg/Amy: Thank you Gustavo
[00:03:20] GUSTAVO: Okay, so.. I'm all about Vanderpump rules, but had either of you ever seen the show until you co-wrote this investigation about Emmett?
[00:03:29] MEG: Um…no, not really. I've, uh, I'm not as big of a reality TV fan as Amy.
[00:03:34] AMY: I had seen the show. I'm a big reality TV fan, but Vanderpump is not one of my go-to staples .
[00:03:42]GUSTAVO: So Meg, what is Randall Emmett's background? Like where is he from and how did he first start in Hollywood?
[00:03:46] AMY: Yeah, I mean, he came out to Hollywood, he's a guy from Miami. He went to film school and then he came out here, he // kind of did the assistant grind that most people do, you know, working at agencies. And then he ended up as Mark Wahlberg's assistant. And that was a really formative experience for him, by, you know, what he said in interviews. And he became friends with Mark Walberg and sort of from there decided I'm gonna really dive into the film world and try to take a shot at becoming a film producer and Meg, that was when he teamed up with George Furla.
[00:04:21] MEG: Right. In the late ‘90s, he was producing a movie called Speedway Junkie and he was impressed by this former // stock trader and former hedge fund manager, George Furla. Who just without hesitation invested $30,000 in his movie. And this is in the late 1990s. And from there, the two of them have been partners // almost in until now, actually.
[00:04:47] GUSTAVO: And Randall Emmett got into this interesting niche. I mean, there's so many different niches in Hollywood. But in this case, he would get like these big actors from like the ‘80s, ‘90s legends – Al Pacino, Robert de Niro, Bruce Willis – cast them for about, you know, on screen roles, about 15 minutes or whatever, pay him a bunch of money. And then have these films that were critically just destroyed, but became hits in like Turkey, Latin America across the Middle East. How did he get into that specific genre? And then how did he get that money to bank all these actors?
[00:05:18] MEG: There was a person who sort of mined that niche. His name is Avi Lerner. He was the first one to really dig into this whole genre of aging action stars, and Randall sort of picked up where Avi Lerner left off and then really took it into a higher gear. So Randall's been working in this space for almost 15 years. And really his go-to star was Bruce Willis, but he also turned to Robert DeNiro, Mel Gibson, Al Pacino, as you said, Sylvester Stalone, and occasionally our former governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.
[00:06:02] GUSTAVO: And as he started making these movies, that's where I encountered Randall, you know, this big-shot persona — a jerk, mostly on Vanderpump Rules. And Amy, the two of you talked to former personal assistants of Randall’s who confirmed that Randall’s attitude on the show was similar to how he was off camera.
[00:06:21] AMY: I think there is an idea in Hollywood of the executive who sort of Lords their power over assistants. And that was certainly the experience we heard from those ass istants // who’d worked for him. We talked to 10 of them and we heard countless stories of honestly many employees who said they were traumatized by working for Randall.
MUX
AMY: They were chewed out over things as small as // getting the wrong ice cream sandwich. But then as we detail in the story, Randall was allegedly having the assistants retrieve drugs for them. Um, cocaine for them, some of them told us and then pay women on his behalf allegedly.
MEG: One of the things that struck me was that Randall would quote unquote “soft fire” them. There were times where they would do the smallest thing that he didn't like. And he would say you're fired in text and in person they'd send him home. And so several of these assistants said that having this threat of being fired always hanging over their head also was unnerving. They said, you know, really traumatized them.
Mux beat
[00:07:48] MEG: One of the assistants whom we spoke with Martin G’Blae came to Hollywood, he'd been working at agencies and he got what he felt like was gonna be this dream job in early 2020 before the pandemic even started. And he became an executive assistant for Randall Emett.
GUSTAVO RETRACK: Randall actually sent voice memos to Martin, which his former assistant provided to the LA Times.
Randall Emmett: Martin. I'm asking you to call me, please. Okay. I'm just asking you to call me on the phone. I’m offering you to go next week and produce this movie. I’m a good person. Please. Just call me, Ok?
Mux hard out
[00:08:27] MEG: Suddenly, his job took what he said a very dark turn. He was asked to retrieve drugs for Randall on a movie shoot in Puerto Rico. Allegedly, we did talk to another assistant who corroborated Martin's account.
Mux in
[00:08:47] MEG: Martin said that over the course of his tenure at Emmett CHECK productions, there were many expenses he wasn't reimbursed for, which was an allegation that several assistants had made. So many of these assistants were asked to put personal expenses on their credit cards. And these are people who were not being well paid. They were being paid, you know, $30, $40,000 a year. And several said they went into debt, including Martin.
Mux beat
[00:09:18] GUSTAVO: Gustavo: Randall’s representatives said that Martin and the others were reimbursed for their expenses.
Mux beat
Coming up after the break…Randall Emmett finally is about to break through into serious Hollywood…then controversy
Mux out
<>
GUSTAVO: Amy, Randall Emmett was doing these like C-list action movies. But before the pandemic, some of the projects that he backed, they were actually getting serious respect. What were they?
[00:10:12] AMY: So he started to work on a few movies that maybe some of your listeners would be familiar with. There was Lone Survivor, which was a movie he made with Mark Wahlberg .If you remember, we told you he worked with him, as his assistant.
[00:10:26] MEG: Uh, the Lone Survivor was about a Navy Seals’ mission to take out a Taliban leader and universal pitchers released, the film in 2013. It did more than $150 million // box office worldwide. It really established Randall as someone who produced more than these schlocky action films.
[00:10:48] GUSTAVO: Yeah. Then he started getting in with Scorsese, right? Amy?
[00:10:51] AMY: So in 2016 comes this movie Silence.
[00:10:57] CLIP: Silence Trailer: Ferraro is lost to us. He denounced God in public…
[00:12:24] AMY: And basically that was a movie from Scorsese. It was a passion project that Scorsese had been trying to get made for years and years. I’m not sure how many of your listeners have seen it because it wasn't that widely seen even though it did get a pretty strong,, positive, critical reaction. it had Andrew Garfield and Adam Driver in it. And basically just because of the content, Scorsese couldn't get financers interested, and Randall got wind that Scorsese could not get the money, to push this film over the finish line.
MUX in
AMY: In his words, he did an interview talking about this where he goes to meet Scorsese in New York and he's perspiring and hyperventilating. And basically he says, you know, Scorsese is like, okay, well, why should I, you know, make this movie with you? And he's like, because I'll do whatever the F you want, basically, is the way he put it.
Mux bump to fade out
AMY: Scorsese was convinced to go to the Cannes film festival where filmmakers go sometimes to help raise financing for their movies and schmooze with foreign film investors who are gonna release the movie in their country, which as we've discussed // is a as a niche Randall is very well-versed in, and that's how they secured the last bit of the money to make Silence. And in exchange for that, Randall got to be one of the 20, I believe, producers on the Irishman, which came out in 2019 starring Robert DE Niro, Al Pacino; was a huge hit and nominated for an Oscar.
[00:13:57] GUSTAVO: And then Randall gets in a public fight, with of all people, rap legend, 50 cent.
[00:14:02] SPACE: Oh, the fofty gate. Okay. Let's discuss fofty gate
MUX BEAT CHANGE, hip hop music
AMY: So…what happened was… 2019, 50 cent and Randall have been business partners for around a decade at this point. At first 50, whose real name is Curtis Jackson, was in a bunch of movies with Randall when he sort of went from, you know, rapping to acting and, and Randall helped him with that transition.
BEAT
AMY: Then they became producers together. They teamed on that show Power, which is on Starz, it was a very popular show.
CLIP: Power trailer. The boss is here. This banging tonight (8 sec)
AMY: It was a very popular show. Then they went on to do BMF, which is Black Mafia Family on Starz. But in 2000, 50 on his Instagram and he's like, yo Randall, you owe me $1 million dollars. And you've owed me $1 million dollars for six years. And basically they get into this back and forth where 50 goes all out. He puts the tax exchanges with Randall about the alleged missing money on his Instagram. He says money by Monday, he's getting personal with Lala Kent Randall's fiance at the time making really, you know, insulting digs towards her. And then he puts the texts up where Randall is begging 50 to stop posting the text. And he says, he means to say 50, please, and he says, fofty. We reviewed a lot of texts from Randall and he is not the best with spelling, just from our review. So he writes Fofty instead of 50 and all these memes pop up, but he's like Fofty, please. I'm having chest pains. I needed to go to the hospital. And, um, no one was really taking Randall's claims seriously because they just became this viral meme.
[00:15:47] CLIP: 50 cent on Andy Cohen show: Okay. Has Randall always called you Fofty? Was that a typo? That was, yeah, it was speed. That was a typo….
[00:15:59] AMY: And eventually, 50 did get paid because he took it public. I think that helped it. And we discovered in the course of this investigation, they actually, behind closed doors, had signed a settlement agreement to sort of put this to rest. And as part of it, 50 or Fofty said, you cannot even come within a 100 feet of me at the premiere of Black Mafia Family. So..
[00:16:21]CLIP: 50 cent on Andy Cohen show: Do you regret taking your beef with Randall to social media? No. I got me paid right away. He paid right away. You said what's your friendships? What is your friendship status with them? With Randall and Lala currently? I, I don't, you know, I don't have a problem with 'em. Have you spoken to them since? No. Will you be attending their wedding? No, I won't be there.
[00:16:40] GUSTAVO: I remember all of that going down on social media. My wife and I were all over that. And then on Vanderpump rules the show, Lala Kent, Randall's fiance at the time, accused him of infidelity. But Amy, the two of you also began to hear from multiple women who had accused Randall of pursuing them in inappropriate ways which Randall denies.
[00:17:00] AMY: In 2017, I had heard from some women who alleged that Randall had been inappropriate with them,// but when we started diving into the world of Randall Emmett, this year, we found a number of claims against him, including a settlement agreement that was, allegedly made between Randall and a woman represented by Gloria Allred, // the attorney who's been involved in many // sexual misconduct lawsuits and has represented bill Cosby's victims., and the like. In this settlement, this actress was told that if she were to allegedly perform sexual favors for Randall, that she would receive acting work in his movies. And so from 2012 to 2015, they had this sort of relationship. And eventually the actress realized what she said had happened to her and how she had been traumatized by it and retained counsel.
[00:19:03] GUSTAVO: How has Randall responded to all of these allegations allegations of, uh, verbally and mentally abusing his assistant sexual harassment allegations, everything that you and Amy detailed?
[00:19:15] MEG: Randall responded quite // aggressively saying that no, he did not do any of these things that // our sources alleged, and what the story has alleged. The pushback was pretty hard, but we really painstakingly documented so many of these instances and, um, had corroboration and had documentation that backed it up. But Randall has denied all the allegations. His spokesperson pushed back sometimes in sort of a weird way. In fact, we had one of the few female assistants, she beat Randall in a ping pong match. Randall threw the paddle against a door and cracked the glass. The pushback was Randall never threw a paddle, but yet another one of Randall's assistants went on the record to say yes, in fact, he witnessed the incident, although he characterized it less as being sort of a menacing scary incident, more of just sort of like a good-natured thing.
[00:20:13] GUSTAVO: Yeah. Uh, cracking, uh, window with, uh, paddles, always a good natured thing. And Amy wasn't there also someone who claimed that you, uh, misquoted her, even though you never actually interviewed her?
[00:20:29] AMY: Yes. There was a woman I spoke to who made some allegations in an interview. And then when we brought our comments to Randall to have him respond to all the allegations that we were preparing to put in the story, he responded by sending a number of sworn declarations, basically with people coming to his defense. And then there was one from a woman named Grace McCarthy, who said, I spoke to Amy and in fact, I lied to her about everything that I told her in the interview. And so she was then an unreliable witness and we could not use anything she had said in the interview. But what was interesting about that was that in the interview she had mentioned something that happened with a friend of hers named Samantha Rakell.
Mux in
AMY: And I, of course, when she told me about this, tried to reach out to Samantha Raquel, but was never able to conduct an interview with her. // But what Randall's team sent in their declaration bunch was a declaration from Samantha Rakell, similar to the one from Grace McCarthy saying I spoke to Amy Kaufman as well and I also lied to her in our interview, but I had never interviewed Samantha Rakell.
Mux beat
AMY: // Nothing like that has ever happened in reporting a story.
Mux beat
[00:22:02] GUSTAVO: Yeah. The chisme is real here. More after the break.
Mux bump to hard out
<>
GUSTAVO: Meg and Amy, Randall Emmett wasn't really a name outside of the reality TV or this niche world of action // films until March. That's when Bruce Willis’ family announced that the movie star was retiring because of a cognitive disorder. And the both of you wrote that when finances were tight for Randall, that sources would often hear him discussing making quote, another bullshit Bruce Willis movie, and Randall had denied this through a spokesperson. But, was there exploitation of Bruce Willis by Randall?
[00:23:23] MEG: This is a really tough question to get an answer to Gustavo. Amy and I did, a ton of reporting actually before Bruce's family and made the announcement. So we had a story that was published by the LA Times, back in late March in which we had spoken to more than two dozen people who had worked on film sets and they were really distressed and disturbed by the decline that Bruce Willis had shown. He's been diagnosed with aphasia, which is a condition where it makes it hard to communicate, both speak and understand. But what was showing in this current story was that Bruce Willis's condition was really // deteriorating more than two years ago. And on this one particular movie that Randall Emmett produced, “Midnight on the Switch Grass,” he was unable to kick open a door to a scene to come in and rescue this actress, Megan Fox, who was playing against him in this movie. And they tried and they tried, and they tried to have this scene where Bruce would actually kick open the door, and they could not get him to. And I think that our reporting back in March showed that many people were concerned about Bruce's health and also our most recent stories showed that even after it was clear that Bruce Willis was struggling, Randall Emmett made five more movies with Bruce Willis as the star.
MUX in
MEG: Now the reason why Bruce Willis was so important to Randall's company was, Bruce is loved around the world. His films will sell. Just having Bruce's name and his picture in a movie poster or a little thumbnail on a streaming service is golden for any movie producer. So having Bruce perform in Randall's movies was hugely important and also Randall. Really good money for Bruce to perform. He, you know, Bruce was making like $1 million a day, usually he'd shoot for two days. So he'd be making, you know, $2 million for two days of shooting. And it's hard to really figure out if there is exploitation, Bruce's attorney has said that Bruce wanted to work. He was capable of working and that because he worked, these films could get financing, which is all true. So the exploitation question is really a thicket. As the LA Times, we can't diagnose when somebody should be working and shouldn't be working. I think what we did hear from numerous people on movie sets was like, they felt really squeamish and, and really uncomfortable with the situation.
MUX fade out
GUSTAVO: Yeah. Concerned, totally. So what do you think the rise and fall of Randall Emmett teaches?
[00:26:18] AMY: I think that the rise and fall of Randall Emmett is… well, it's a few things. Um, I think that the reason we wanted to tell this story is maybe you know him from Vanderpump Rules, but it's not someone that maybe we would spend four months diving into just based on the name alone. The reason we wanted to tell the story is because we thought it was important in the wake of Me Too, in the wake of Pay Up Hollywood, which was the movement where assistants were // trying to get fair wages for their work to show that this type of alleged behavior is still going on. And that people use their association with movie stars, even as limited as it may be, or as schlocky as it may seem to engage in this kind of alleged misconduct.
Mux in
[00:27:17] MEG: The parable is that alleged bag behavior eventually catches up with you. I mean, the sort of the bigger takeaway is, you know, how you treat people is important.
Mux beat
[00:27:36] GUSTAVO: Meg James, Amy Kaufman. Thank you so much for this conversation.
[00:27:41] AMY: Thank you, Gustavo.
MEG: Thanks Gustavo. We'll have to watch Vanderpump together sometime.
MIX BUMP
<>
Outro mux in
GUSTAVO: That's it for this episode at THE TIMES, daily news from the LA Times.
Denise Guerra, David Toledo and Surya Hendry were the jefas on this episode. and Mario Diaz mixed and mastered it.
Our show is produced by Shannon Linn, Denise Guerra, Kaha Broussalian, David Toledo and Ashlea Brown. Our editorial assistants are Madalyn Amato And Carlos De Loera. Our intern is Suyra Hendry. Our engineers are Mario Diaz, Mark Nieto and Mike Heflin. Our editor is Kinsee Morlan. Our executive producers are Jazmin Aguilera and Shani Hilton. And our theme music is by Andrew Eapen. //
I'm Gustavo Arellano , we'll be back tomorrow with all the news and desmadre. Gracias.
Mux out