March 4, 2026

Peggy Siegal, the once indomitable film publicist, did not want to talk. Known, for four decades, for connecting the disparate cultured classes of New York and Hollywood through chic dinners and exclusive screenings, Siegal had been pushed out of her career and position in high society in 2019, when the New York Times reported that she’d been among the “social guarantors” who’d aided Jeffrey Epstein’s return to elite circles after his first stint in jail. She had already paid a severe price — more than her fair share, she believed — for their past relationship. Now that more than 5,000 emails between the two had been released, she was panicked at the prospect of returning to this particular spotlight. “Will it be another seven years? How many times do they have to discredit me?” she asked. She meant the press. 

And yet she talked — at length, over the phone, through voice-mail, and in text messages. She told us about her very first conversation with Epstein, who was then a financier; she described what drew him to her; she tried to parse what she’d known and what she hadn’t, stepping around holes in her logic, torn between mounting a sympathetic defense and portraying herself as glamorous, undefeated, and blameless. “I have been a student of media mind games as a film publicist for decades,” she wrote in a text. The idea seemed to be that she knew exactly what she was doing.
—Katie Ryder, features editor, New York

By Jessica Bennett and Katie Ryder

Photo: Gillian Laub

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