Oprah Winfrey dragged into major hip-hop star’s rape case

Oprah Winfrey has been dragged into hip-hop icon Russell Simmons’ high-profile rape case.

The billionaire, 71, has been subpoenaed by Drew Dixon, one of Simmons’ alleged victims, in her ongoing defamation lawsuit against the rapper, 67, according to Page Six.

Dixon is suing Simmons over remarks he made in a 2023 interview about her rape claims and about Winfrey dropping out of executive producing a 2020 documentary on the scandal.

Simmons claimed that Winfrey had backed away from the project after discovering ‘inconsistencies’ in Dixon and other alleged victims’ stories and that she had recordings that revealed those ‘inconsistencies.’ 

Now, attorneys for Dixon have commanded that Winfrey handover documents, recordings and other ‘tangible things,’ giving the talk-show icon a March 18 deadline.

They also commanded Winfrey appear for a deposition that ‘may be videotaped’

‘You are hereby commanded… to produce the books, records, papers, data, documents, evidences, writings, and all other tangible things as described more fully in the attached Schedule A at [law firm] Boies Schiller Flexner LLP, 55 Hudson Yards, New York, New York 10001, or electronically to undersigned counsel, on or before March 18, 2025,’ the subpoena begins.

‘You are further commanded to… to appear and attend before a notary public or other person authorized by law to administer oaths… and at any recessed or adjourned date, to testify and give evidence, as a witness on an examination before trial by deposition upon oral questions.’

The documented concludes with: ‘This deposition may be videotaped and will continue from day to day until complete.’ 

According to Page Six, it remains unclear if Winfrey complied with the demands laid out in the subpoena by the March 18 deadline or if her lawyers worked to fight them.

It’s also unclear what assets were called for.

Dixon launched her defamation case in 2024 after Simmons spoke on her rape allegations during a sit-down interview with Graham Besinger in 2023.

He seemingly suggested that Dixon was ‘[thirsting] for fame’ and seeking ‘notoriety’ by accusing him of raping her back in 1995 at his apartment 

He also insisted that he’d only ever had ‘consensual’ relationships with women and that he’d ‘never been forceful in any of [his] relationships.’ 

In this same interview, he said Winfrey’s exit from On The Record, a documentary about Simmons’ alleged crimes and rape accusers, was the result of her finding ‘inconsistencies’ in Dixon and others women’s stories.

Simmons also made mention of the recordings of conversations with accusers that Oprah allegedly has that reveal the alleged inconsistencies in their stories.

‘I didn’t watch [the documentary] because it’s not true and I think that Oprah said the stories don’t add up,’ he said of On the Record during his sit-down with Besinger. 

He said that Winfrey wanted more time to shift her focus on the project and ‘wanted to change the entire thing to a documentary about men in general [and] about the whole music industry.

‘I couldn’t be a subject anymore, because she had found too much contradictory evidence about the stories about me,’ Simmons alleged.

Winfrey withdrew herself as executive producer of On The Record in January 2020.

While appearing on CBS This Morning to address her departure, Winfrey said that her decision to leave the project was ‘not a victory’ for Simmons in any way.

‘I unequivocally say that I did not pull out because of Russell,’ she said at the time. ‘This is not a victory lap for him. I cannot be silenced by a Russell Simmons after all I’ve been through.’

She said that she believed and stood in support of the women in the documentary who made the accusations against Simmons, which he has repeatedly denied.

Oprah said that professional differences with collaborators on the documentary led her to make the ‘hard decision’ to disengage with the project.

‘I had said to them, “Houston, I think we have a problem here’ because new information had come forward” … I just care about getting it right, and I think there’s some inconsistencies in the stories that we need to look at,’ she said.

‘I wanted the context of the story to be broadened, I wanted more women brought into the story.’

She said the lesson she gleaned amid her work on the project was that you ‘don’t put your name on anything that you do not have creative control over.’

The film, which was acquired by HBO after being dropped by Winfrey and Apple TV+, is centered around former Def Jam A&R executive Dixon’s allegation of rape against Simmons during her two-year stint at the company.

It focuses on how Dixon wrestled with the decision to bravely come forward and speak out about Simmons.

She finally decided to do so in 2017 when she went on the record in an interview with the New York Times.

What made her mind up was when she saw other women speaking out in the #MeToo movement and cited how Mike Tyson’s rape accuser Desiree Washington wasn’t believed when she spoke out.

Tyson was later convicted of raping the 18-year-old. ‘I couldn’t let them dangle in the wind,’ Dixon says in the film.

The doc went into detail about what happened to Dixon that fateful night in 1995.

Then a 24-year-old music industry executive Dixon was flying high having recently assembled the chart-topping soundtrack for the hip-hop documentary The Show.

After a night with her boss Simmons at Manhattan’s Bowery Bar, she was about to get a taxi home when he offered to call her a car and suggested she wait in his apartment.

He enticed her in with the promise of listening to a hot demo CD. Once inside, Simmons sent Dixon to retrieve the demo from a player in his bedroom.

But when she did Simmons followed her in and she turned around to find him naked wearing a condom. Dixon remembers him pinning her down on his bed, talking with a ‘cold, menacing’ voice and raping her.

She then ‘blacked out,’ she says, and the next thing she recalls is waking up naked in his bath tub. ‘I was reduced to nothing in that moment,’ she said on the film, breaking down in tears. ‘I was trash.’

Dixon left the apartment, walking the 20 blocks back home, before taking a shower and sobbing uncontrollably on the floor.

She later resigned from Def Jam after just two years before joining Arista Records in 1996.

There she claims her new boss L.A. Reid, who joined Arista in 2000, also stepped over the mark, making sexual advances towards her before making life difficult when she didn’t comply.

As well as Dixon another half a dozen other women went on camera to say Simmons sexually assaulted them. In total 20 women have come forward to accuse Simmons of rape or sexual assault.

The documentary states that both Simmons and Reid both declined to take part in the film and both denied the allegations.

The film ends by saying Simmons, 62, has moved to Bali, Indonesia – a country that doesn’t have an extradition treaty with the US.