A new book about the power struggle to control the Paramount media conglomerate reveals a host of shocking details about sex-obsessed mogul Sumner Redstone and his dogged pursuit of women.
The book — “Unscripted: The Epic Battle for a Media Empire,” by New York Times reporters James B. Stewart and Rachel Abrams — reveals how the late horny billionaire even hit up his own grandson to introduce him to women and showered his female companions with millions in money, stock options and offers of work in his empire.
It describes how Redstone’s two girlfriends, Manuela Herzer and Sydney Holland, reportedly moved into the increasingly infirm mogul’s Beverly Park mansion and took over his life and health care decisions. The book alleges the women changed his will to benefit themselves, blocked family access to him, “and threatened to abandon him, leaving him to die alone if he denied their requests.”
The authors describe how the two allegedly siphoned off more than $150 million from Redstone’s bank accounts and stock holdings — and could have gained control of his empire, had they not had a bitter falling out and his daughter Shari Redstone successfully fought back.
The book, out Wednesday from Penguin Random House, also claims Redstone called President Barack Obama the N-word and that he hated President Donald Trump so much, his computer had a button to say “F–k you” whenever anyone mentioned the former chief executive.
In 1987, Redstone, a former Army officer, became one of the country’s most powerful media moguls in a $3.4 billion hostile takeover of Viacom, the parent of the cable networks MTV and Nickelodeon. He controlled Viacom and CBS almost until his death in 2020 at age 97.
One of his most unusual courtships was with 26-year-old Malia Andelin, who was working as a CBS private plane flight attendant in 2008 when Redstone allegedly asked her, “I hear women like to be spanked … Do you like to be spanked?”
According to the book, he later lunged at her in his limo and tried to get his hand under her blouse, according to the book, and also left her a bizarre “Mission: Impossible”-themed voicemail saying, “Some say I created ‘Mission: Impossible,’ and some say that this mission is impossible … But I made this mission possible.”
Redstone told her she didn’t need to work on the CBS private jet and instead could accompany him to dinners plus Hollywood premieres, galas and benefits, giving her millions of dollars to do so.
“Andelin felt it was more that he wanted his cronies, like Bob Evans and Larry King, to think he was sleeping with attractive young women,” the book states.
But Andelin also admitted how she found Redstone “foul-mouthed and crude.” The book describes a dinner at e. baldi restaurant in Beverly Hills during which “Sumner complained that the director Steven Spielberg had been pushing him to be nicer about Barack Obama. Obama was wildly popular with the Hollywood elite, but Sumner was no fan of the president. ‘Obama is a n—-r,’ Sumner loudly said.” Andelin was horrified.
Meanwhile, Redstone continued his womanizing, insisting his grandson Brandon Korff introduce him to women — including Korff’s own girlfriends. The mogul sometimes called Korff at 3 or 4 a.m., it is claimed. Korff, who is the son of Redstone’s daughter Shari, cooperated with the book “and during fact checking,” as did his mother, the authors claim.
Shari, the authors wrote, “responded to all our questions either directly or through a spokesperson, and participated in fact-checking, as did [her adult sons] Tyler and Brandon Korff.”
Following the 2009 MTV awards, where Redstone openly flirted with his grandson’s girlfriend in front of Viacom execs, Korff, then 25, enlisted Bravo’s “Millionaire Matchmaker” Patti Stanger to find a suitable romantic match for the mogul. “I can’t deal with him,” Brandon is said to have confided in Stanger, who was paid $120,000 for a year for the pleasure of setting Redstone up.