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.
Stanger even told The Post in 2016, when Redstone was 93, “He [Sumner] flirts with everyone and loves busty, blue-eyed brunettes. I was the look.”
She connected Redstone with Holland, then 29, and less than a year later, in 2011, he proposed with a nine-carat diamond ring.
Holland moved in with him, “taking on the roles of wife, secretary, business manager and, increasingly, nurse. She redecorated the mansion. She arranged visits there with Sumner’s longtime friends Charlie Rose, Michael Milken and Sherry Lansing, not to mention the women she imported for his sexual gratification. She oversaw his dealings with CBS and Viacom.”
Redstone’s other girlfriend, Herzer, also allegedly helped cater to his sexual appetites.
One particular passage describes a moment when she arranged for a woman to visit 92-year-old Redstone and try to “engage sexually with him” while under the watch of his home nurse. The woman later said in a sworn affidavit that the nurse “orchestrated the encounters, ‘directing me and telling me what sex acts to perform,’” as Redstone, who was descending into dementia, appeared barely conscious.
Finally, according to the book, Herzer and Holland fell out after Holland began sleeping with convicted felon and former soap actor George Pilgrim. Holland often booked nearly $8,000 round trips by private jet — paid for by Redstone — to have sex with Pilgrim in Arizona and Los Angeles. After the affair was revealed, Holland was ejected from the mansion, followed by Herzer, after an intervention by the Redstone family and nursing staff.
In a following elder abuse lawsuit filed by Redstone, it was alleged that Holland and Herzer “manipulated and emotionally abused Redstone to get what they wanted — jewelry, designer clothing, real estate in Beverly Hills, New York and Paris, and money, lots of it.”
Holland allegedly racked up more than $2 million on Redstone’s credit cards in 2014, including a $58,461 charge at Saks Fifth Avenue, according to court papers. That same year, Herzer’s charges totaled $1.5 million, including $128,780 at Barneys and $82,624 at Hermes, the court records said.
Holland and Herzer filed their own suits also, accusing Shari of conspiring with her father’s nurses to spy on them and turn her father against them. Holland claimed in her lawsuit that Shari bribed Sumner’s nurses to secretly record “intimate” discussions about his sex life, which Shari denied.
Holland settled her case with Redstone in June 2018. Herzer battled on, and in 2019 finally agreed to pay the Redstone family $3.25 million to reimburse them for some of the gifts that she had received. The court dismissed the case following settlement.
The settlement decreed Herzer would no longer be a beneficiary of Redstone’s will, which would have allowed her to receive $50 million and the mogul’s $20 million mansion. Redstone passed away in 2020, at the age of 97.
Holland and Herzer did not participate in the book, Page Six is told. Herzer’s lawyer Ronald Richards told Page Six, “The book is a fiction that categorically defames my client … The matter is closed for my client and she will address what really happened in her own forum and her own terms.”
An attorney for Holland didn’t immediately get back to us, and she did not return phone calls.
The book also describes the demise of powerful CBS boss Les Moonves following allegations of sexual misconduct and how Redstone’s daughter Shari — now president of National Amusements and non-executive chairman of Paramount Global — managed to stabilize the business for the merger of CBS and Viacom in 2019.
