As Shari Redstone steps away from studio mogul life following the sealing of the $8 billion deal to transfer ownership of Paramount Global to Oracle heir David Ellison and his Skydance Media, she’s now ready to go public on that 13-month process.
And Redstone is particularly candid about what she says she didn’t know about some of the dealmaking that needed to get done to clear the merger. In a series of interviews with James Stewart, who specializes in longform CEO retrospectives at The New York Times, Redstone spoke freely with a condition that the story couldn’t be published until after a deal closed.
One of the biggest hurdles to closing the deal with Ellison and Skydance was President Trump’s lawsuit filed against CBS News’ 60 Minutes over its interview with Kamala Harris. (Trump claimed that the Harris interview was “deceptive doctoring,” most media observers saw it as a typical TV interview edited for multiple airings.)
In the interview with Stewart, Redstone said, “I believed it was always in Paramount’s best interest to settle … We may not like the world we live in, but a board has to do what’s in the best interest of shareholders.” Trump had sued Paramount for $10 billion over the interview and, as President, now controlled the Federal Communications Commission, which could approve the Skydance merger, and was now scrutinizing media deals under the leadership of Brendan Carr.
Over the course of early 2025, news had leaked of wildly different settlement figure ranges but ultimately Paramount came to terms with Trump’s team for $16 million and no admission of an apology. (“A settlement offers a negotiated resolution that allows companies to focus on their core objectives,” then Paramount co-CEO George Cheeks stated. Trump’s legal team blared at the time that the studio “had no choice but to settle.”)
Redstone told Stewart for the Times story that she was “blown away by the price,” meaning that the settlement figure was low at $16 million. “How did they do it?” Redstone said to the paper. “I don’t know, and I didn’t ask.”
And, when Trump himself later told reporters that there’d been a side deal for the Ellison-led Paramount Skydance to air public service announcements on issues of the White House’s choosing, a new round of scrutiny began. Ellison himself, at a press conference in Manhattan the day of the deal closing on Aug. 7, repeatedly declined to get in to whether there was any sort of side deal with Trump. “I’ve watched others wade in to the political spectrum,” Ellison said. “I just want to be transparent, I have no interest in doing that.” He also cast the legal settlement with Trump in terms of the prior Paramount leadership.
But that prior leadership is staying quiet aside from its initial statement on the $16 million settlement. Redstone, in the interview with Stewart for the Times, also professed not to know about a side deal with Trump, and was quoted saying only: “I hope it isn’t true.”
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