Brad Pitt has two big movies to promote this fall for Academy Awards consideration, including the hotly anticipated “She Said” about Harvey Weinstein, the launch of the #MeToo era and culture’s evolving views on believing women when they say they have been abused.
But Pitt’s hope to generate Oscar buzz could be derailed by his ex-wife, Angelina Jolie, who went “nuclear” this week in the couple’s bitter and protracted fight to settle custody and finances after the end of their marriage, according to Hollywood industry and legal experts Matthew Belloni and Eriq Gardner. For the first time, in her own words, Jolie offered up explosive new details about Pitt’s allegedly abusive behavior towards her and their six children during a long and tense private plane ride in September 2016.
It’s long been reported that Pitt was drinking too much and got into some kind of altercation with their oldest son, Maddox, then 15. But in court documents released Tuesday, Jolie claimed that an out-of-control Pitt choked one of their children and struck another across the face as he terrorized his entire family for hours on the flight from France to Los Angeles. Whatever happened on that plane ride prompted Jolie to file for divorce a few days later.
Belloni and Gardner, authors at Puck and speaking on The Town podcast, agreed that Jolie’s claims, which come in a document related to the sale of the ex-couple’s French winery, could have serious implications for Pitt’s long-cultivated image as a thoughtful, charming and easy-going movie star.
Gardner referred to Jolie pulling “the nuclear option” by going public with specifics on how Pitt may have physically hurt his children. She essentially declared war on Pitt, Gardner said, with the legal and public-relations battle between them likely to escalate. “We’re going to start seeing Pitt mentioned in a whole different way,” he said.
Belloni added that Jolie mounted “a pointed attack on a person that she knows will get picked up all over the world.” While Belloni questioned why Jolie’s new claims were coming now — several years after the exes were officially declared single — he and Gardner agreed that Pitt will be asked some “hard questions” in the coming months, especially as he tries to sell his films to critics and audiences.
“Right now, he’s the producer of a movie about Harvey Weinstein, and I think that during the release of this film, there could very well be hard questions that are asked about, you know, his own behavior,” Gardner said.
“She Said” follows the efforts of two New York Times reporters, Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey, to expose Weinstein’s extensive history of rape and other forms of sexual misconduct against women in Hollywood. One of the narratives surrounding Pitt’s involvement in “She Said” is that he confronted Weinstein in 1996 after he learned that the producer tried to coerce Gwyneth Paltrow, Pitt’s girlfriend at the time, into having sex with him.
In a 2019 interview with CNN, Pitt said, “I think the interesting thing is that we, Hollywood specifically, but the workplace, men and women’s dynamics is being recalibrated, recalibrated in a very good way that is long overdue. And I do think that’s an important story to tell.”
But Jolie definitely doesn’t see Pitt as a hero when it comes to Weinstein. Jolie told The Guardian in 2021 that Pitt continued to work with the producer on two films, “Inglourious Basterds” and “Killing Them Softly,” even though he knew Weinstein had harassed Paltrow. Jolie also participated in the Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times investigation of Weinstein, alleging that the producer made unwanted advances toward her in his hotel room in the late 1990s. She said it “hurt” that Pitt continued to work with Weinstein and they argued over it.
Pitt’s other “big” movie coming out before the end of the year is “Babylon.” He co-stars in the film, directed by Damien Chazelle, about Hollywood decadence at the end of the silent era of the 1920s. Belloni said that questions about Jolie’s allegations also are expected to be “front and center” during any of Pitt’s press events for that film.
“It’s not going to be great for him,” Belloni said.
Jolie’s detailed allegations didn’t come out as she was fighting Pitt over custody of their children, who now range in age from 14 to 21. Instead, these claims have emerged as millions of dollars are at stake over the sale of the French winery that the ex-couple purchased in 2008, Gardner and Belloni noted.
Jolie wants to sell her share of their Château Miraval winery to a subsidiary of the Stoli Group, the conglomerate owned by Russian ex-pat and vodka billionaire Yuri Shefler, the Los Angeles Times reported. To block the sale, Pitt said that when he and Jolie first purchased the chateau, where they also had a family home, they “impliedly” agreed they would never sell their respective interests in the property without the other’s consent.
In documents filed Tuesday, Jolie’s legal team denied that any such agreement existed, the Los Angeles Times reported. The cross-complaint said that Jolie offered to sell her interest in Chateau Miraval to Pitt. But in exchange for his purchase, Pitt demanded that she sign a nondisclosure agreement “that would have contractually prohibited her from speaking outside of court about Pitt’s physical and emotional abuse of her and their children.” When Jolie refused to agree to such a provision, Pitt walked away from the deal.
Bringing up this dispute over the non-disclosure agreement appears to have given Jolie reason to detail the abuse she says that Pitt wanted kept under wraps.
“When one of the children verbally defended Jolie, Pitt lunged at his own child and Jolie grabbed him from behind to stop him,” Jolie’s cross-complaint said, according to the New York Times. “To get Jolie off his back, Pitt threw himself backwards into the airplane’s seats injuring Jolie’s back and elbow. The children rushed in and all bravely tried to protect each other. Before it was over, Pitt choked one of the children and struck another in the face. Some of the children pleaded with Pitt to stop. They were all frightened.”
The complaint also said that over the course of “many tense hours,” Pitt “poured beer on Jolie” and “poured beer and red wine on the children.”
Gardner noted that the abuse allegations, only mentioned in vague terms, have long been in the public domain. An investigation by the Los Angeles Department of Child and Family Services concluded with no findings of abuse. The FBI also investigated but decided to not file criminal charges against Pitt.
Pitt always denied physically hurting his children. As he promoted his 2019 film, “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood,” and successfully campaigned to win a best supporting actor Oscar, he opened up in interviews about overcoming problems with alcohol abuse and managing his anger. He reportedly agreed to supervised visits with his children and fought to win 50-50 custody.
But a private judge’s ruling, granting him more access to his children, was overturned last year by a higher court. Sources close to Pitt have complained to news outlets that Jolie has campaigned to turn their children against him. Meanwhile, Gardner agreed with other legal experts who said this week that Jolie may have raised the stakes in her legal battle with Pitt because so much money is involved.
“She says that her assets are all tied up in this wine estate,” Gardner said on the podcast. “It’s like 60 million dollars, and she’s basically been frozen out of her fortune. So, as much as the two are trying to walk away from each other, they have to figure out this whole situation with the wine business, because it’s really the biggest asset of their marriage.”
