Harvey Weinstein blamed bullying on M&Ms before Milk Duds bust

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Harvey Weinstein’s recent bust for smuggling contraband Milk Duds into prison was not the disgraced mogul’s first faux pas involving movie theater candy.

In 2004, well before the Miramax co-founder was sentenced to 23 years behind bars for rape and sexual assault, there was buzz from Tribeca to West Hollywood that a New York Magazine profile on Weinstein was going to blow the lid off his infamously volcanic temper and bullying.

But Weinstein managed to launch what should be known as the “M&Ms defense” in the piece, blaming his bad behavior on overindulging in candy and subsequently suffering blood sugar swings.

“You know, for years I used to read about myself. They’d say, ‘He has a temper’ or ‘He’s a bully’ or something like that, and it always bothered me,” Weinstein said in the 2004 piece, later adding, “But I found out, and I just share this with everybody, is … the relationship to sugar in my body.

“I would just eat M&M’s all day, sweets, you know, for what I thought was energy, which is not energy at all, now that I’m off of it,” he continued at the time. “And what happened was the glucose level would go from 50 to 250 in my case.”

He added, “That’s what caused these outbursts. … We had to find out through a specialized doctor.”

Weinstein assured the writer that “as soon as I started to recognize the sugar thing, there have been no outbursts,” adding, “My relationship with sugar has been the worst relationship of my life, but now I’ve tamed it. … I think so much of anger management might fortunately be related to one’s physical diet.”

The spin somehow worked, and the exposé was a dud.

A few years later, in a 2011 legal dispute between two filmmakers and Weinstein, the directors alleged in court papers as part of their suit that the movie mogul had “attempted to consume an entire bowl of M&M candies” at a screening — and that he even ate the treats off the floor when another exec tried to wrest the bowl away from him and they spilled.

Weinstein’s lawyers at the time called the claims “false, gratuitous, slanderous, preposterous and totally irrelevant.”

Harvey Weinstein siting in court with a face mask on.
Weinstein is serving 23 years behind bars for rape and sexual assault.
Pool

Either way, he seems to have gone off M&Ms and moved to Milk Duds.

Variety reported that LA County jail guards found and confiscated Milk Duds from Weinstein in November 2021 after the fallen movie mogul, 69, met with one of his attorneys.

His legal team was informed that their binders and laptop bags would have to be searched from then on, even while Weinstein claimed that he’d brought the Milk Duds with him when he was extradited from New York to Los Angeles last summer.

Weinstein told Variety of having the banned candy in jail: “This was an innocent misunderstanding. … It will not happen again. I have been a model inmate, following the rules and regulations, and I am sincerely sorry.”

He’s awaiting trial on sex-crimes charges in California and has pleaded not guilty.

One of Weinstein’s lawyers, Mark Werksman, told Page Six in response to Milk Dud-gate: “From what we’ve learned, this was the first and only time Mr. Weinstein was accused of violating the rules, and he has been a model prisoner throughout his ordeal here in Los Angeles.”

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