End Sexual Violence Now

Peggy Siegal was not a peripheral figure in Jeffrey Epstein's world.

For four decades she was the most coveted publicity power broker in film. Studio heads called her when they needed Oscars buzz. She hosted exclusive screenings and dinners that mixed Hollywood with New York's cultural elite. Her rolodex had more than 30,000 names, organized by industry, importance, number of houses owned, and whether they were voting members of the Academy. She worked for Steven Spielberg, Harvey Weinstein, Barry Levinson. She was the woman who decided who got into the room and who didn't.

She was also, according to more than 5,000 emails now released by the Department of Justice, in regular contact with Jeffrey Epstein from 2009 until three months before his final arrest in 2019. A decade longer than she had previously admitted.

The emails show Epstein paying for her trips to Cannes, Kenya, and various film festivals. He gave her $100,000 for her 70th birthday. His team tracked down her unpaid invoices without her asking. He brought in his lawyers to fight a three-year inheritance dispute with her brother. In return, she secured his invitation to the Met Gala, added him to exclusive dinner lists, and quietly brought him to events when she thought hosts might object to his presence.

In 2011, Epstein asked her to find him a "baby mama" with "great genes."
She did not decline. She did not express concern. She sat down and wrote out a detailed profile of the ideal candidate.

The profile describes someone young, without much of a career. A professional student. Someone without much family. Someone who could be kept. A European, she specified, who would understand the arrangement.

She signed it "xoxo Peg" and told him she was looking.

This is not the behavior of someone who believed Epstein had changed his ways, as she later claimed. This is the behavior of someone who understood exactly what kind of man he was and what kind of woman he was looking for.

When the New York Times exposed her connection to Epstein in 2019, Netflix, FX, and Annapurna Pictures cut ties immediately. She sold her apartment. She says she has been completely destroyed by the association.

In a recent interview with New York Magazine, she said of the victims: "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."

In a follow up text, she noted that if her lawyers were as good as some of the victims', she wouldn't be so vulnerable.

Sources: DOJ Epstein Files / New York Magazine, March 2026