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\u201cIt was like the devil had heard it in my voice. He\u2019d in some way figured out the worst thing he could ask me.\u201d<\/p>\n
Peggy Siegal<\/a>, the once omnipresent New York publicist, is describing her first conversation with Jeffrey Epstein<\/a>. It was a phone call \u2014 she believes in 2006 or 2007, sometime before his first criminal conviction. She says she\u2019s never before discussed it.<\/p>\n Siegal, now 78, was once the film world\u2019s most coveted publicity power broker. For four decades, beginning in the 1980s, she was the woman studio heads relied on to stir up Oscars buzz by hosting exclusive screenings and clubby dinners. She\u2019d worked for everyone in Hollywood \u2014 Steven Spielberg, Harvey Weinstein, Barry Levinson \u2014 and specialized in bringing together charming, influential people from disparate social worlds and especially the cultured classes of L.A. and New York. She was as known for her brash, bulldozing style as she was for her \u201cgolden rolodex\u201d \u2014 a catalogue of more than 30,000 VIPs, organized by industry and importance, how many houses they owned, and whether they were voting members of the Academy.<\/p>\n At the height of her power, Siegal\u2019s defenses seemed inviolable. She was confident and casually rude, inviting herself anywhere she wanted to go. She critiqued her own flaws before others could, once writing and sending out a booklet called How to Look Like Me at 60, which detailed every bit of cosmetic work she\u2019d had done and was passed from hand to hand up Park Avenue and into Beverly Hills. Siegal often said that because she\u2019d had the fat sucked out of her butt and injected into her face, anyone who was kissing her cheek was also kissing her ass. She was eternally single but swatted down pity by joking that she\u2019d give a Mercedes station wagon to anyone who found her a husband. She made it known that in reality she was wedded to her work.<\/p>\n But Epstein, the devil on the phone whom she\u2019d never once met, seemed to see through her. He had sent a \u201cvery expensive\u201d Cartier travel clock to her Upper East Side apartment \u2014 \u201cIt just appeared,\u201d she says \u2014 earlier the same day. \u201cI remember opening it up and saying, \u2018Who the hell is this guy?\u2019 And then he called, like he was my best friend \u2026 How am I? He proceeded to name-drop all these people we both knew, friends in common. He made it clear that he had numerous houses<\/a> and a jet and that he was a player and should be on my screening list.\u201d Then he asked her, \u201cHave you ever been married?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI instantly knew,\u201d she says, \u201cthat he collected information to use against you. I instantly knew that\u2019s what he did.\u201d She had not been married. \u201cIt was something I was very sensitive to. He wanted to find out some weakness in my makeup or my life. There was a sense of danger. It was like a warning bell.\u201d<\/p>\n That alarm was unsteady \u2014 it seems to have swelled and faded as they spoke. In nearly the same moments, Siegal says, Epstein \u201cwas charming and funny.\u201d Yet she \u201cknew from the beginning he was a creep.\u201d In the months and years that followed, he flattered her \u201cconstantly.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cHe thought I was terrific. He adored me,\u201d she says. \u201cHe couldn\u2019t get enough of me. He thought I was funny. He thought I knew everybody. That is sort of hypnotic.\u201d<\/p>\n She stops to make sure she\u2019s been understood: She means that Epstein was the one who was hypnotized \u2014 by her.<\/p>\n Siegal\u2019s career, and position in high society, were destroyed in 2019, when it was reported that she\u2019d been among, in the words of the New York Times, the \u201csocial guarantors<\/a>\u201d who greased Epstein\u2019s return to elite circles after his first stint in jail. Now, in a recent cache of files released by the Department of Justice<\/a>, more than 5,000 emails between Siegal and Epstein have been made public. Over a series of phone calls in late February and early March, Siegal told her version of events and described her relationship with Epstein. She was eager to defend herself, proud, and frequently panicked by the prospect of returning to this particular spotlight \u2014 of renewing her humiliation and her exile.<\/p>\n When the Times story broke, Siegal did not dispute that she\u2019d ushered Epstein into screenings and events and hosted a now-infamous dinner at his Upper East Side mansion with Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor<\/a> \u2014 then Prince Andrew \u2014 as the guest of honor. She told the press she\u2019d never formally represented Epstein as a publicist and initially said their relationship had not involved money. (Epstein was repped, for a time, by the late Howard Rubenstein, who also worked for Rupert Murdoch and Donald Trump; he later worked with Michael Sitrick, who represented R. Kelly and Harvey Weinstein.)<\/p>\n Within days of her first statements, Siegal revised her story, acknowledging that she\u2019d accepted funds from Epstein for travel but said that this arrangement had ended in 2010. She maintained she knew nothing of his crimes and that, because his 2008 sentence had seemed so lenient, she had not believed the charges against him \u201cwere very serious.\u201d (It was true that his penalty had been remarkably lax. For soliciting prostitution and \u201cprocurement of minors to engage in prostitution,\u201d Epstein had served only 13 months in a private wing of the Palm Beach County jail and a year of house arrest, during which he\u2019d been allowed freedom to travel, including to his property in the U.S. Virgin Islands. Siegal, however, had known of accusations against him as early as 2007, when she spoke to this magazine<\/a> for an article that detailed allegations of molesting a 14-year-old girl.) Siegal insisted her relationship with Epstein had been distant: \u201cI mean, I knew him,\u201d she told Vanity Fair in 2020, \u201cbut I didn\u2019t know much about him. I was never privy to his private life.\u201d<\/p>\n The latter may have been true, at least when it came to the worst of his secrets. But in the published emails, the two are shown to have remained in regular contact from April 2009 (around the time that Epstein\u2019s now public \u201cjeevacation@gmail.com\u201d account was created) until April 2019, exchanging money and access until three months before Epstein was arrested for the final time on federal sex-trafficking charges \u2014 almost a decade longer than Siegal had previously admitted. The two in fact seem to have lived, for a time, interdependent lives: Siegal relying on Epstein for large sums of money as well as legal assistance and financial advice, all of which allowed her to maintain a lifestyle that enabled her career; Epstein leaning on Siegal for far more than party invitations, depending especially on her skills in social maneuvering. The relationship reads as close, admiring \u2014 two famously cutthroat people privately paying each other a warm and strangely genteel attention.<\/p>\n Siegal was a locked box, friends and associates say. Personal details about her life escaped between the lines of self-effacing jokes: that she grew up in an upper-middle-class Jewish family in New Jersey with a father who invented varieties of lightbulbs; that she had a mother who once told her she couldn\u2019t have her portrait painted, and hung alongside her brother\u2019s above the mantle, until she was prettier.<\/p>\n Though there were hundreds of people Siegal called friends \u2014 associates say everyone was a dear one if it helped her social status \u2014 people who know her say she made no pretense of loyalty to anyone but herself. She was a member of the Harpies, an Upper East Side lunch club that once included Nora Ephron and Tina Brown, and the Tennis Girls of Southampton, who played together for 20 years and included Renee Rockefeller and Tory Burch. Siegal regularly broke the group\u2019s rule barring unkind gossip. She could be deeply cruel \u2014 as one friend put it, \u201cAlways looking over your head for the next best conquest.\u201d<\/p>\n Yet in communication with Epstein, she appears unguarded, voluble, and faithful. In return, Epstein, who seems to have held enormous power over countless people to whom he never expresses any warmth at all, devotes significant time and care to her concerns. Siegal confides her anxieties and seeks his approval: \u201cHow about this!\u201d she writes, forwarding an email in which a redacted sender compliments her writing. She rants about her work, and the two discuss how she can \u201cout maneuver\u201d her professional nemesis, another film publicist, whom she calls \u201ca nasty fag.\u201d Epstein advises her to be careful (\u201cas the fags stick together\u201d) and to hold onto her perch in \u201cclassic hollywood and leave the fadish trash\u201d to her rival. Siegal details a painful rift between her and her niece, whom she adores \u2014 \u201cIt broke my heart to see her cry and cry,\u201d she writes \u2014 and Epstein advises her not to send the niece any more money until the two are speaking again. When Siegal battles her brother, her mother\u2019s favorite child, for her inheritance, Epstein attempts to win the fight for her, bringing in his lawyers and overseeing a protracted, three-year negotiation. \u201cOnce again,\u201d Siegal writes, \u201cyou have saved my life.\u201d<\/p>\n By 2010, at least a dozen women had filed civil suits against Epstein, claiming he molested them when they were underage. The next February, Siegal was emailing him as her 87-year-old mother was dying of breast cancer. In a message titled \u201cMother Siegal \u2014 Still Breathing,\u201d she writes, \u201cYesterday at the nursing home \u2026 mother was half dead. It was beyond ghoulish to sit there and watch her take her last breaths. Is this what loving relatives do? They watch their parents die. I have seen enough of this suffering \u2026 Did you sit there till the very end?\u201d<\/p>\n Epstein had previously recommended an oncologist for her mother \u2014 the doctor was \u201cthe best,\u201d he wrote. He would later advise her on how to pay for the funeral and recommend she hire an assessor for her mother\u2019s estate, and the two discussed establishing Siegal\u2019s living trust. As to the question of staying by her mother\u2019s deathbed, he said, \u201cI suggested you no longer go. Those last images, like the ending of a movie, stick with you, you need no more unpleasantness.\u201d A few days later, Siegal requests his advice on a draft of a message announcing the death; it\u2019s \u201cperfect\u201d he tells her. \u201cI\u2019m here if you want to talk.\u201d<\/p>\n When asked if this relationship was a friendship, Siegal says, \u201cI don\u2019t know what the definition of a real friendship is. It was transactional.\u201d And there is no question that improbable gifts were exchanged. But this was not a simple trade of favors and cash.<\/p>\n \u201cEverything you do for me makes me feel there is a guardian angel watching over me,\u201d Siegal writes in late July 2018, less than a year before he entered a federal detention center in Manhattan. \u201cIt is beyond comforting to know you always have my back.\u201d<\/p>\n \n Steve Kroft, George Clooney, Peggy Siegal, and Harvey Weinstein at the Four Seasons in New York City, in 2006. According to Siegal, Epstein wanted to know everything about Hollywood and New York parties and all other happenings about town. She was already in the habit of sending \u2014 to a vast list of friends and acquaintances \u2014 lengthy, dishy dispatches (her \u201cdiaries,\u201d as she called them), detailing and assessing various social scenes. Occasionally, she published editions of these notes in Avenue and Hamptons, society magazines. Following the advent of the BlackBerry, she often tapped them out late at night from the back seat of a Town Car on her way home from events in a stream of consciousness, full of typos.<\/p>\n As she traveled the city and the world, Siegal sent Epstein private missives of a similar style, providing him with precise knowledge of enclaves she knew far more intimately than he did. \u201cHe wanted to know what was going on,\u201d Siegal says, \u201cand I could not write these emails fast enough.\u201d The earliest of these messages, in the DoJ files, is sent in April 2009, while Epstein is still in the Palm Beach County jail.<\/p>\n From downtown Manhattan, Siegal writes, \u201cSaw Eva and Glen Dubin\u201d \u2014 Epstein\u2019s former girlfriend and her billionaire husband \u2014 \u201cand her cute teen daughter. We spoke about how much we love you, miss you and are devoted to you. We are all counting the days you get out.\u201d<\/p>\n From the Hamptons, in August 2009, shortly after Epstein\u2019s release: From Capri, a month later:\u00a0 From midtown the following February: The messages were in part a show of gratitude, Siegal says, in a form she loved. \u201cI had become obsessed with expressing myself in email, and if he would send me to Cannes or a film festival, a simple thank-you note was not in my vocabulary.\u201d The files show that Epstein paid for an equestrian safari in Kenya with her niece before their estrangement and for trips to Cannes multiple times (the cost in 2010 was $37,644 \u2014 Siegal sent him the budget). Though it\u2019s unclear if Epstein paid, she asked him to foot the bill for hotels at the Venice Film Festival in 2010 and a twin-engine charter flight to East Hampton in 2012. (\u201cIt costs $1,136. Would you be a doll and help me out?\u201d)<\/p>\n Siegal had wanted to be a writer; Nora Ephron was her idol. \u201cAt my mother\u2019s funeral,\u201d Siegal says, \u201cI wrote a eulogy that brought the house down. And Nora Ephron turned to Barbara Walters and said, \u2018She really has a voice.\u2019\u201d At one point, according to Siegal, she asked Ephron if she could publish her diaries under the title Notes to Nora. Ephron said \u201cno\u201d \u2014 that Siegal needed to write her own story. In crafting the emails, Siegal says, \u201cI was teaching myself how.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI can never ever thank you enough for giving me these fabulous, fun, smart and sunny days in Europe,\u201d she writes to Epstein from one trip to France, where she spent time on Paul Allen\u2019s \u201c414 foot boat, Octopus, that \u2026 is beyond anything I have ever been on \u2026 I see everyone in the industry \u2026 wear my chicest clothes and always have a funny story \u2026 and seem to get great feedback on my antics. My presense translates into jobs.\u201d<\/p>\n While Siegal took pains, repeatedly, in our conversations to emphasize that her relationship with Epstein was not romantic, not even \u201cplatonically romantic\u201d \u2014 \u201cThe idea that I had any affection for him is ludicrous,\u201d she says \u2014 she was unconcerned that his money appeared to enable her career. That was simply a fact. \u201cHe didn\u2019t buy me jewelry,\u201d she says. \u201cHe bought me plane tickets to go get work.\u201d<\/p>\n Epstein had come into Siegal\u2019s life at a time when film studios \u2014 her main source of business \u2014 were contracting and helped her to project the same high-class lifestyle as her clients. For Siegal\u2019s 70th birthday in 2017, Epstein gave her $100,000. In an email, she writes that she planned to spend $30,000 of it on a lavish party for herself in Southampton with 70 guests and a lunch overlooking the ocean. Fifteen-thousand dollars would be donated to Elton John\u2019s AIDS Foundation, she writes, \u201cenabling me to attend a party at his house in June.\u201d Another portion would go to her apartment renovation; she needed a temporary floor covering while she waited for \u201can amazing brown and beige leopard rug that is wall to wall carpeting for my whole apartment and being made in France.\u201d It would take four months to arrive. \u201cWhen the apartment gets done,\u201d she writes to Epstein, \u201cyou\u2019re my first visitor.\u201d<\/p>\n Siegal says now, \u201cI had no problem taking his money. He had lots of it.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYou have to put in,\u201d she says \u2014 meaning into this story \u2014 \u201cthat in 2007, we all had BlackBerrys. We never knew the power of this gizmo. No one ever imagined that what we were saying on a little typing machine had the ability to go global in 2026.\u201d<\/p>\n Later, in the same conversation, she cuts in: \u201cWait, I want to say something about the emails. I was known for my wit. And when I started to write my wit down in these emails, I had no filter. I had no filter because I wanted to amuse people.\u201d It was something for her to do when she got home at night. \u201cI\u2019d be living alone and had no one to talk to, so I\u2019d write an email to somebody. I can write a thank-you note that can make you weep with laughter and cry with joy,\u201d she says. \u201cI was famous for these emails. I\u2019m still famous for them.\u201d<\/p>\n \n Christie Brinkley, Euan Rellie, Peggy Siegal, Marshall Rose, and in the background, Ghislaine Maxwell, at Siegal\u2019s 60th birthday party at H\u00f4tel Plaza Ath\u00e9n\u00e9e in 2007. Maybe it was only a transaction when Epstein wrote to Siegal in the summer of 2011, telling her not to worry about the accountant he recommended to help in her legal dispute with her brother. \u201cYou shmooze and find me a baby mama,\u201d he says. Siegal, in Southampton at Tory Burch\u2019s, writes back: \u201cA baby Mama \u2026 if I wasn\u2019t 102 I would take that job in a nano second.\u201d Epstein replies: \u201cI need great genes. smart pretty , funny if you were fifty years younger , whoops \u201eforty.\u201d<\/p>\n Maybe it was only work when Siegal took his request seriously, writing: I am thinking this is a position for a European who understands the mistress (in this case baby mama) mentality. You need someone young without much of a career. Maybe a professional student \u2026 someone who is kept and can just keep going to school. Also, who doesn\u2019t have much of a family herself. A wanna be socialite is NOT the way to go. Looking and looking. xoxo Peg.<\/p>\n Maybe all of it is playing at intimacy \u2014 another way to keep each other hooked in their mutually beneficial arrangement. But their correspondence, taken as a whole, also reads like a reciprocal fantasy: for Siegal, a strong and steady man, a provider, who guarded against her antagonists. For Epstein, the affection of a woman of appropriate age (his senior in fact), a truer respectability than he could buy, a decorous life.<\/p>\n Siegal\u2019s description of the relationship is not so different. \u201cJeffrey Epstein was \u2026 I don\u2019t want to use the word infatuated,\u201d she says. He saw her as she saw herself.<\/p>\n \u201cJeffrey Epstein actually knew exactly who I was,\u201d she says. \u201cBeing a poor Jewish boy from Sea Gate\u201d \u2014 the southernmost reach of Brooklyn \u2014 \u201cwhose father swept up the parks and whose mother was a housemaker.\u201d Siegal had grown up in Englewood Cliffs, an affluent suburb on the western bank of the Hudson; her best friend was Claudia Cohen, who became the editor of \u201cPage Six\u201d; nearby was Ellen Levine, who became second-in-command at Hearst Magazines.<\/p>\n Epstein\u2019s family, she said, was \u201creally poor. They were not middle class. So he invented himself. And when he came upon me \u2014 that yes, my grandfather came over from Warsaw, Poland, in 1905 as a stowaway on a boat and went to work for Thomas Edison, who was a huge antisemite, and that when he died, he owned the fourth largest lightbulb company in America \u2014 Jeffrey loved that story. He loved that the daughter in the family was the go-getter. I was obsessed with success, as was he.\u201d<\/p>\n Siegal likened herself as a young woman to Brenda Patimkin, the headstrong, beautiful daughter of assimilated nouveau riche Jews in Philip Roth\u2019s Goodbye, Columbus, played by Ali MacGraw in the film adaptation from 1969. \u201cI was very much Brenda,\u201d she says, whose father doted on her, whose mother was \u201cchic, domineering, and demanding.\u201d She had the same jewelry, the same fur coats. \u201cMy father made lightbulbs,\u201d she says, \u201cand I lit up the room when I came in.\u201d (In a later text, she called herself \u201cthe Light Bulb Princess of Englewood Cliffs.\u201d) Siegal also \u201cidentified a little bit with Marjorie Morningstar\u201d \u2014 the ambitious, \u201csort of lovesick, sort of gorgeous\u201d daughter of an Upper West Side Jewish family, played by Natalie Wood in the film of the same name from 1958.<\/p>\n \u201cJeffrey knew about Marjorie Morningstar,\u201d Siegal says. \u201cAnd Brenda Patimkin. He knew because he was a poor Jew.\u201d<\/p>\n Epstein looked after her. \u201cHe was my protector,\u201d Siegal says. \u201cIf someone owed me money, he was the first one to go after them.\u201d His team would track down her unpaid invoices, sometimes without her knowing. \u201cHe loved to go after people. A female publicist \u2014 any female, single woman in a business \u2014 the men try to take advantage of you. And Jeffrey was very aware of that with me, and he tried to help me,\u201d she says. \u201cAnd as he was helping me, he was destroying my life, destroying my credibility.\u201d<\/p>\n \n Mamie Gummer, Natalie Portman, Zoe Kazan, Peggy Siegal, and Paul Dano, at a dinner party at Christies in 2008. Siegal contends that she and Epstein spent little time together during the roughly 12 years they were in contact. She never went to his island, she never flew on his plane, and, she says, she was at his house exactly twice \u2014 once for the dinner for then-Prince Andrew, once for breaking the fast on Yom Kippur. But there is no question that following his time in jail, she undertook a type of social engineering on his behalf. One former close associate said that she became \u201cthe linchpin\u201d in the wheel of Epstein\u2019s public life. According to the emails, Siegal secured his invitation to the Met Gala in 2013, to the New York Observer\u2019s 25th-anniversary party at The Four Seasons that same year, and she ensured he was on the list for exclusive dinners alongside names such as Martha Stewart, Lorne Michaels, and Google CEO Eric Schmidt. Siegal added him to screening lists; on occasion, she stealthily brought him to events when she thought hosts might balk at his inclusion.<\/p>\n \u201cHe was demanding, demanding, demanding to be invited all over,\u201d says Siegal. But he rarely attended. \u201cHe didn\u2019t want to leave his house.\u201d By his house, she meant his five homes, especially his vast townhouse on East 71st Street in New York. \u201cHe wanted everyone to come to his mansion so he could be in control,\u201d she says. \u201cSo he could manipulate his audience under this palatial roof where he lived. In order to look like the smartest person in the room, he had to be in his room.\u201d<\/p>\n According to the emails, Epstein had become particularly interested in befriending Woody Allen<\/a>, another man accused of child molestation. Allen, who was never charged with a crime, had weathered the extraordinary scandal of allegedly molesting his 7-year-old adoptive daughter and had then also survived the ignominy of marrying Soon-Yi Previn (another daughter of his former girlfriend, Mia Farrow) without social ruin. In fact, Allen was still considered the epitome of a certain casual sophistication and the rejection of puritanical mores; Epstein might have hoped association with him could cast his own disgraces in a different light.<\/p>\n When Epstein suggests to Siegal that they invite Allen to the dinner for Andrew, she replies, \u201cWoody is a great idea. Do you know Woody? I do.\u201d She seems to briefly consider the potential fallout of bringing the two men together for an evening \u2014 \u201cCould there be any resistance because he had a public issue with Soon-Yi? \u2026 just thinking ahead\u201d \u2014 but she moves on quickly. To make Allen comfortable, she says, they could invite the art dealer Lorinda Ash, his close friend: \u201cHe may feel better if people he knows arc around [him]. On the other hand a royal may intrigue him.\u201d She instructs Epstein to email Ash, while she will contact Allen directly herself. She also suggests enticing the director with a DVD of The King\u2019s Speech, a Harvey Weinstein production, which Siegal was publicizing.<\/p>\n Siegal explains to Epstein that Allen could anchor the respectability of the evening. \u201cIf you get Woody,\u201d she writes, \u201cyou can probably then build to Charlie Rose, Fareed Zakaria, Rick Stengel (editor of Time) \u2026 Cynthia McFadden (Nightline), George Stephanopulous [sic], Chris Cuomo and Cristina Cuomo, she is beautiful and smart \u2026 Christiane Amanpour \u2026 Katie Couric\u201d and then filmmakers, \u201clike David Koepp, Tony Gilroy, Stephen Daldrey [sic] who is hilarious. We can find out where Oliver Stone is. I know all those people.\u201d<\/p>\n Siegal says now that that dinner was a \u201ctotal exception\u201d \u2014 that she never helped host any other parties for Epstein and she hadn\u2019t wanted to do it. The real reason she took it on, Siegal says, was to try to get a copy of Weinstein\u2019s film into the hands of Queen Elizabeth, to show her the depiction of her father, this \u201clove song to her family.\u201d \u201cHarvey had been trying to get a quote from the queen,\u201d she says, to help market the movie. \u201cIt was ridiculous.\u201d But Weinstein didn\u2019t have any connections to Buckingham Palace. \u201cHe hated Jeffrey\u201d \u2014 Siegal doesn\u2019t say why \u2014 so behind his back, she came up with the scheme to f\u00eate Andrew and give him a DVD.<\/p>\n Looking back on the dinner, she says, \u201cI totally jeopardized my relationship with all these important people \u2014 they did not know who he was. All of Jeffrey\u2019s illegal, immoral behavior was in Palm Beach, and he went to jail in Palm Beach, and the New York Times never wrote about him.\u201d (The Times had in fact written a feature on his first arrest two years earlier; it appeared on the cover page of the \u201cBusiness\u201d section.) \u201cWorld-famous newscasters didn\u2019t know who Jeffrey Epstein was,\u201d Siegal continues. \u201cAnd they counted on my relationship with them to invite them to an interesting evening, which I had many, many times before. They came on my say-so.\u201d<\/p>\n Siegal has often said that she cast each of her events \u2014 lunches, teas, salon-style film screenings at MoMA, parties at the Grill and the Royalton \u2014 as if she were casting actors for a movie. Talent was spread equally around the room, and each guest was seated, she\u2019s said, next to their best friend on one side and their \u201cnew best friend\u201d on the other. Frequent guests included Barbara Walters, the directors Darren Aronofsky and Sofia Coppola, the actors Michael Douglas and Bob Balaban. \u201cThey weren\u2019t flashy, but they were certainly chic,\u201d says one repeat attendee.<\/p>\n Most of the members of the press she invited to the Andrew dinner, Siegal says, would be covering the upcoming marriage of Prince William and Kate Middleton. \u201cThey were told that there would be no palace guards around Andrew at dinner,\u201d Siegal says. \u201cThey could ask him anything they wanted to know about the wedding.\u201d<\/p>\n In the end, it was an 10-person dinner; Epstein served lasagna. In attendance was his Charlie Rose, and George Stephanopoulos. Katie Couric, who brought her partner of the time, Brooks Perlin (her \u201cidiot cute boyfriend,\u201d writes Siegal), reportedly spoke to Andrew about the upcoming wedding, asking if he would send her details of the ceremony from inside the church. She sat next to Chelsea Handler, who likes to tell the story of sitting across from Allen and Previn that night and asking them, over what she believes was blueberry cobbler, \u201cSo how did you two meet?\u201d<\/p>\n Siegal says Previn came to meet the prince and that Allen had attended, in part, because he\u2019d been told he \u201ccould wear his chinos and his bucket cap.\u201d \u201cI don\u2019t think he would have come if he knew who Jeffrey was,\u201d she says. Of the members of the press, she says, \u201cwhen they realized later whose house it was, they were furious at me and rightly so.\u201d<\/p>\n \n Siegal at a dinner hosted by Larry Gagosian at Mr. Chow in Beverly Hills in 2010. Siegal repeats often that she has already paid a serious price for her relationship with Epstein. She says she doesn\u2019t want to call it unfair, but that\u2019s what it is.<\/p>\n \u201cSeven years ago, I was trashed on the front page of the New York Times, alongside Clinton and Dershowitz,\u201d she says. \u201cI was trashed in Vanity Fair. No studio would ever work with me again.\u201d Almost overnight, Netflix, FX, and Annapurna Pictures cut ties. Shortly after Epstein died, she says, she went to the Telluride Film Festival. \u201cNo one would let me in their screening. I had to buy a pass for $5,000 to go see a movie. No one would talk to me \u2014 they would walk across the street to avoid me.\u201d She was unable to make a living and sold her apartment, a prewar two-bedroom on East 74th Street that once belonged to John Vernou Bouvier III, father of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.<\/p>\n \u201cWhy,\u201d she says, \u201cdoes Peggy Siegel, who is 78 years old, who did nothing her entire life but work as a single woman, and make a success as a result, have to suffer so badly for this story, when heads of state and royalty and presidents have done far worse than I have?\u201d<\/p>\n Many people close to Siegal say that the Epstein opprobrium was less a catalyst for her expulsion than an excuse \u2014 that there was very little goodwill left for her by the time the news broke. With the exception of Siegal\u2019s longtime pal Roger Friedman \u2014 the journalist and gossip blogger and the only person willing to go on the record in her defense \u2014 Siegal\u2019s friends and associates say the emails provide only a tiny window into just how venomous she could be. (In the messages, she calls her contractor, with whom she\u2019s feuding, an \u201cAsian cunt\u201d; her PR nemesis, whom she believes is trying to steal her clients, \u201ca slimball [sic] who deserves to be but fucked to death.\u201d)<\/p>\n In one conversation, Siegal says, unprompted, \u201cThere were people I know who always had a smile on their face, and always had a kind thing to say about everybody. That was not me.\u201d<\/p>\n Her old friends and acquaintances did feel sorry for her. One, who\u2019s known Siegal for decades says, \u201cI think she truly believed Epstein cared for her.\u201d Graydon Carter, the longtime Vanity Fair editor, who\u2019s crossed paths with Siegal for many years, says, \u201cI have begrudging admiration for her.\u201d (Carter noted that he had \u201ca perfect record of having never RSVP\u2019d \u2018yes\u2019 to any of Peggy\u2019s invitations.\u201d) \u201cShe gave up so much to gain so little,\u201d he said \u2014 her livelihood and most of her friends for some flattery, shinier toys and a chance to reach a higher perch. \u201cIt\u2019s kind of a classic American story in a way.\u201d<\/p>\n He didn\u2019t seem to be wrong. In February 2010, Siegal had written to Epstein, flying high:<\/p>\n Had three events last night – a personal best \u2026\u00a0If these friggin dinners do not cement my social ambitions, nothing will!!! Have amazing turnouts \u2026 you will be very proud..but no Nobel \u2026 xoxxo Peg<\/p>\n \u201cPeople have always asked, \u2018Didn\u2019t you know? Didn\u2019t you know?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Siegal is talking about the underage girls. \u201cHe didn\u2019t want me to know. And even though it was in the paper, I didn\u2019t \u2014 I couldn\u2019t conceive it. I couldn\u2019t believe it.\u201d<\/p>\n Epstein lied to her about his first arrest and conviction, she says. \u201cHe said that a girl lied to him \u2014 that she wasn\u2019t 17.\u201d (She stops and asks if that was the legal age. When told it varies by state, she says, \u201cWell, we have to find out.\u201d) Epstein had said he made a deal with prosecutors in exchange for pleading guilty to something he didn\u2019t knowingly do. \u201cHe told me,\u201d she says, \u201cthat he hired very expensive lawyers to manipulate the politicians. And from then on, I was led to believe that there was a governmental conspiracy against him.\u201d<\/p>\n When pressed on the specifics of that government conspiracy, Siegal says she actually meant that the government had conspired with Epstein to cover up his crimes. \u201cThere were officials that were paid off to protect him,\u201d she says. He bragged to her about their collusion.<\/p>\n Epstein eventually began to grate on Siegal. \u201cHe became a pain in the ass,\u201d she says. \u201cHe became annoying. He started acting like I was his personal social secretary.\u201d She was displeased when he brought the young women he was dating to screenings. \u201cThese were tall, lanky European girls, or some from Third World countries, who were like 18, 19, 20 \u2014 hopeful models,\u201d she says. \u201cHalf of them didn\u2019t speak English, and nobody had a last name, which would infuriate me.\u201d She believed many were sent over by Jean-Luc Brunel, the French model scout \u2014 \u201cJeffrey\u2019s purveyor,\u201d in her words \u2014 who was also accused of child-sex trafficking and rape and in 2022 killed himself in jail. \u201cLike Jeffrey,\u201d Siegal adds, \u201cwho did not kill himself in jail.\u201d<\/p>\n Siegal says she now believes Epstein divided the women and girls around him into two tiers: the young women he brought out in public \u2014 whom she calls \u201cthe hostesses\u201d \u2014 and then the underage girls. \u201cI guess, from what I\u2019ve read,\u201d she says, \u201cthey\u2019re the ones you got massages from. But I don\u2019t know for a fact.\u201d<\/p>\n As for the massages, \u201call the guys with jets got massages,\u201d she says. She later clarifies that she meant legitimate sports massages: \u201cWhat do guys with jets do? They play golf, they play tennis, they run marathons.\u201d And while Epstein\u2019s interest in young women was distasteful, it didn\u2019t seem so exceptional. In her circles, she says, especially Hollywood, \u201cthere were many scoundrels, and we all knew it. Every day, these heads of these film companies were caught with their pants down someplace else.\u201d<\/p>\n Friedman says that it was common to not know anything at all about Epstein\u2019s crimes in the years before his second arrest; he said he knew nothing himself. \u201cThis was happening in Florida,\u201d Friedman says. \u201cIt was before social media. There were other things going on.\u201d That might have been true for a time, other friends and associates said. But at a certain point, one said, \u201cyou could not be in his close orbit and not know.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe warned her for years,\u201d says another. \u201cWe told her how dangerous it was to affiliate with him.\u201d But it was unclear to many if she had been in denial, if she had been willing to overlook it, or if she had believed, as she\u2019d told the Times in 2019, that \u201che\u2019d served his time\u201d and \u201cchanged his ways.\u201d<\/p>\n Presented with these possibilities, Siegal says, \u201cIt\u2019s all true.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI was in denial, but\u201d \u2014 she stutters slightly as she plays out the logic \u2014 \u201cif I tell you that he told me he changed his ways, then that\u2019s telling you I knew that he was a pervert.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI mean, obviously I had a sense that he had done something wrong if he had gone to jail,\u201d she goes on. \u201cI wasn\u2019t oblivious that he was morally compromised and a con man. But I don\u2019t know how to say this to you: The idea of child pornography is so heinous that you can\u2019t even think about it.\u201d She seems to mean child sexual abuse generally. \u201cYou can\u2019t even discuss it. I know it sounds crazy, but it\u2019s nothing I wanted to deal with.\u201d<\/p>\n \n Siegal, in March. There are moments in Siegal and Epstein\u2019s long correspondence, as the second investigation of the former financier closed in and as rumors circulated, when it appeared that Siegal might be drawing away \u2014 when we can imagine we see Epstein worrying that she\u2019s begun to view him differently or to reconsider their unspoken bargain.<\/p>\n In January 2018, he sends her a series of messages:<\/p>\n On the 15th: \u201cyou good?\u201d \u201cI have risen from the dead!\u201d Siegal finally replies. It was then four months after rape and sexual-harassment allegations against Weinstein had sparked the Me Too movement, and Dylan Farrow had recently penned an op-ed<\/a> reasserting the accusations she made against Woody Allen as a child. \u201cI am sick about Woody,\u201d Siegal writes. \u201cThis \u2018#Me Too\u2019 witch hunt is out to destroy an 80 year old global cinematic treasure and it makes me so sad.\u201d<\/p>\n In November, Epstein again sends a series of unanswered messages.<\/p>\n November 1: \u201call good?\u201d Nine days later, the Miami Herald would publish a damning reexamination<\/a> of the 2008 charges against Epstein and the infamous sweetheart deal brokered by Alex Acosta, who would become President Trump\u2019s secretary of Labor in his first term, despite evidence that Epstein had molested dozens of teenage girls. He waited to email Siegal again until December 10. His message is sent at nearly three in the morning: \u201cpress brutal , but I\u2019ve been through it before. hope your holiday is peaceful.\u201d<\/p>\n Siegal replied later that day; she had not abandoned him: \u201cI have been thinking of you for days and apologize for not writing sooner. We are living in very weird political and social times and technology has become a weapon of accusation, punishment and righteousness. This is not going to get any better.\u201d She is careful to add \u2014 perhaps knowing the wagons are circling \u2014 \u201cI am not defending wrong doing \u2026 just can\u2019t understand why there is no legal second act of redemption.\u201d<\/p>\n She is also angry, for perhaps the only time in their ten years of messages \u2014 not for his crimes but for ignoring her PR advice years before. She\u2019s still considering how he should play his hand. \u201cI told you a few years ago to be the poster boy for making amends,\u201d she writes. \u201cI suggested inventing a support system to aid disadvantaged young women. I do not know if this too late but this self inflicted nightmare is not going away. You need to own a recovery program. No one has the guts to do this. It has to start somewhere.\u201d Siegal and Epstein would not communicate again directly for nearly three months. In March, he sent her a link to a letter to the editor in the Times from his attorneys, arguing that he\u2019d received a fair deal in 2008. Siegal\u2019s frustration seems to have dissipated. \u201cI have been thinking about you for months,\u201d she writes. \u201cYour situation is nothing more than political shananagans to extort more money from you and discredit competitive government officials. What deal the government made \u2026 there is no \u2018do over\u2019 ten years later. You have behaved impeccably. You paid your price to society. More later.\u201d<\/p>\n Epstein replied within two minutes: \u201ci can use your help this is not wht i do . people are suggesting i treat all women badly, you are the perfect example of its falsity.\u201d<\/p>\n Maybe this had been what he was doing with her all along: being the good man to a woman who could be counted on to spread the news.<\/p>\n She\u2019d have to call him later, she told him. She was running to a Skip Gates lecture, then a party for Julianne Moore. It was their last exchange.<\/p>\n Siegal was sitting on a beach four months later when a friend called and told her, \u201cJeffrey Epstein just died. He hung himself in jail.\u201d She was in Patmos, a tiny Greek island in the Aegean Sea \u2014 \u201cVery far away, very hard to get there and a lot of very hip, very cool, very sophisticated, cool people go there,\u201d she says. \u201cI don\u2019t know whether it was this profound sense of relief\u201d \u2014 she pauses \u2014 \u201dor sadness, but definitely a chill went through me. Like it was finally over.\u201d<\/p>\n When asked what this sadness was, she says, \u201cHe had been hounded by the police towards the end of his life. They were after him.\u201d She couldn\u2019t make sense of the fact that he\u2019d let himself be apprehended in the first place, flying from Paris into Teterboro. \u201cWhy would he do that?\u201d<\/p>\n Siegal is in Palm Beach now. She says she still splits her time among New York, the Hamptons, and Florida, though friends say she\u2019s been living down there for some time. She\u2019s been writing a memoir and jokes that the Justice Department has published it for her.<\/p>\n A few years ago, she was diagnosed with lymphoma; \u201cWeill Cornell cured me,\u201d she says. Friedman and others knew she\u2019d been sick but not the details; they thought it was leukemia or maybe blood cancer. This is how she usually was, some said \u2014 evasive when it came to herself, unless to boast. With Epstein, it appears to have been different.<\/p>\n Her self-awareness flickered in and out as she spoke. \u201cI was the happiest human being in the world when everybody got COVID,\u201d she says at one point. \u201cBecause they weren\u2019t talking about me.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI feel completely victimized by the media,\u201d she says. \u201cIt\u2019s tragic, absolutely tragic, that someone of my talent and my business acumen and my friendships and my contribution to the film industry would be so maligned.\u201d She offers more worthy leads to follow: \u201cHe told me he worked for the Israeli government,\u201d she says of Epstein. \u201cHe boasted.\u201d (Later, she emphasized that she never knew when he was lying. He \u201cloved\u201d to say he was working for Israel, \u201cbut I had no proof.\u201d)<\/p>\n As she put it in a text message, Siegal has been \u201ca student of media mind games\u201d for decades. She couldn\u2019t quite settle on how to present herself \u2014 if it was better to appear weaker and sympathetic or strong but somehow guilty. In one conversation she said, \u201cI was alone; I was a single middle-aged woman in a very tough business.\u201d Two days later, she sent the same idea via text message, amended: \u201cI was an attractive and articulate middle-aged woman trying to make a living in a man\u2019s corporate world.\u201d<\/p>\n Her self-conception was consistently grand. She described her years working for filmmakers\u00a0 \u2014 Brian De Palma, Paul Schrader \u2014 as a type of apprenticeship: \u201cThey were all my mentors \u2026 All these guys taught me to look and listen and learn,\u201d she said. \u201cWith all this amazing education, and amazing proximity to the greatest cinematic minds in our country at the time, I still was a jerk when it came to Jeffrey Epstein.\u201d<\/p>\n Toward the end of one conversation, Siegal remembered herself. \u201cOne last thing,\u201d she said. \u201cI have said nothing about the girls. At the end of the day, I have felt so victimized myself that I have neglected to say that the real victims were the girls.\u201d Some days later, in a text, she implied that the victims had had an advantage she had not. \u201cIt\u2019s possible if I had a killer lawyer as some of the victims have, I would not be so vulnerable.\u201d<\/p>\n Thank you for subscribing and supporting our journalism. Want more stories like this one? 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\u201cLame outdoor screening \u2026 of \u2018Every Little Step\u2019 in Sagaponack for Film Society of Lincoln Center \u2026 stopped by for business \u2026 only with, Philip Seymour Hoffman.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHarry Benson, the photographer who was standing right next to Bobby Kennedy when he was shot and got those world famous shots of him bleeding to death on the hotel kitchen floor is on the boat too. His is the most annoying human being I ever met.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cMartha Stewart hostel [hosted] a dinner \u2026 for us for \u2018Food Inc\u2019 documentary and then came to my dinner for Lord and Lady Astor both at Monkey bar \u2026 Will send all social\/business info tomorrow on way to DR \u2026\u201d<\/p>\n![](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/def9912063459dee30e9f9d734abbea94f-PSiegal-3.rhorizontal.w700.jpg\")
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\n Photo: Jemal Countess\/WireImage\/Getty Images\n <\/p>\n![](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/ca7af1ada8d3822ea2679bd9409e87131d-PSiegal-4jpg.rhorizontal.w700.jpg\")
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\n Photo: Gillian Laub\n <\/p>\n
The 24th: \u201cyou missed my birthday\u201d
The 27th: \u201cwhere are you?\u201d<\/p>\n
Three minutes later: \u201cinstead of the friars club , can we do a pariahs club dinnr. woody me moonves wynn charlie matt. Louis ck. Etc:\u201d
November 19: \u201call good?\u201d<\/p>\n
And then she addresses the issue of his \u201cgirls\u201d directly. She seems to suggest that Epstein could become their mentor rather than whatever it was she believed him to be already. \u201cEducation is your roots from math at Dalton,\u201d she writes. \u201cThese young girls need help to learn how to make a living and not be prey to men.\u201d<\/p>\n
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