Roy Price resigned as Amazon Studio’s programming chief on Tuesday, mired in sexual-harassment allegations and continuing fallout over the Harvey Weinstein scandal. According to a new Hollywood Reporter story, as other bidders made straight-to-series offers for Big Little Lies (Amazon passed), Price asked a group of staffers at a company holiday party if the two stars — Nicole Kidman and Reese Witherspoon — would “show their tits.†Later, according to the magazine, he talked about why he’d green-light the show even if they didn’t.
While getting drinks with three female executives after a Good Girls Revolt table read in August 2015, Price reportedly made the women very uncomfortable. TriStar TV executive Suzanne Patmore Gibbs told the magazine that the evening was “awkward and uncomfortable†when Price wanted to discuss drug use and their sexual histories. Even as Amazon hasn’t had a big TV win like Hulu’s Handmaid’s Tale or Netflix’s Stranger Things, Price was developing a series called Shanghai Snow based on his own idea:
In the draft written by [aspiring script writer Yale] Hannon, obtained by THR, Shanghai Snow follows a young woman named Cindy who is sold into sex slavery. Under the control of a “psychotic imperial Thai dwarf†named Mr. Goodtimes, Cindy is drugged, beaten with a machete and told she will be “fucked like a dead fish.â€