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Behind the scenes with the best supporting actor Oscar nominees ahead of the 2024 Academy Awards ceremony
Watch scenes from the performances nominated in the category of best supporting actor at the 96th annual Academy Awards, as well as interviews with the Oscar nominees below. The 2024 Oscars will be presented on Sunday, March 10.
Orion Pictures; Apple Original Films; Universal Pictures; Warner Brothers; Searchlight Pictures;
Sterling K. Brown, “American Fiction”
Sterling K. Brown, best known from the long-running series “This Is Us,” earned his first Academy Award nomination for “American Fiction,” playing Cliff, a plastic surgeon who has just come out of the closet, and who maintains complicated relationships with brother Monk (played by Jeffrey Wright) and sister Lisa (Tracee Ellis Ross).
Based on the novel “Erasure” by Percival Everett, writer-director Cord Jefferson’s satire delves into the struggles that Monk has both professionally and with his family. Cliff in particular tests this bond that the brothers share, with their strained communications covered over by the teasing that is a sibling’s wont.
In this scene, Cliff questions Monk’s girlfriend, Coraline (Erika Alexander), about her attraction to his brother:
Brown, who has won three Emmy Awards (for “American Crime Story,” “This Is Us,” and “Lincoln: Divided We Stand”), and four Screen Actors Guild Awards, told the Hollywood Reporter that the screenplay for “American Fiction” was one of the best he’d ever read. It was also a welcome change of pace after six years of “This Is Us.” “It was very important for me to find roles that did not feel Randall Pearson-esque,” he said. “Cliff was a lovely sort of comedic foil. He’s also a person who needs to be dealt with rather than the person who’s dealing with everything. It’s kind of nice to be the dude that has to be dealt with.”
When analyzing the character of Cliff, Brown described to Deadline the attitudes he faced when, as a student at Stanford pursuing a business degree, he decided to become an actor instead — a decision that most of his family did not understand. “It’s not a perfect comparison, but it’s the best one that I have to my own personal life experience regarding Cliff being gay, and not even a decision he was able to articulate because I think he knew not to articulate it because he probably had enough indicators around him that it wouldn’t be the thing to be,” he said. “I think everybody, to a certain extent, has this feeling of being on the outside, that everybody else understands what it’s like to be a part of the club, and then you feel like you’re on the outside of the club. I think I’ve had that feeling when choosing to be an actor. I think Cliff has that in being gay and finding a way of finding your tribe and acceptance and feeling comfortable with yourself.
“So, it really doesn’t matter if people agree with your decision or agree with your lifestyle, because your comfort allows you to be whatever you need to be, and to move through the world regardless,” he said.
“American Fiction” is available on VOD.
More on “American Fiction”:
Robert De Niro, “Killers of the Flower Moon”
Robert De Niro has collaborated with director Martin Scorsese on 10 films exploring the costs of physical and emotional violence, from “Mean Streets” — their breakthrough picture — to “Killers of the Flower Moon,” the true story of a wave of murders of Osage Indians in the early 20th century who held valuable oil rights on their Oklahoma land.
De Niro plays William Hale, a rancher and businessman known as “King of the Osage Hills,” seemingly a friend of the Native Americans — a benevolent member of the community who aids the Osage and even speaks their language. But when oil is discovered on Osage property, Hale schemes a series of murders that allow White men who marry Osage women to inherit their fortunes.
In this scene, Hale excoriates his nephew, Ernest (Leonardo DiCaprio), for a botched murder that was supposed to be made to look like a suicide:
In this scene, Hale is not exactly reassuring as he tries to persuade his nephew Ernest that he is safe from the law — or that Hale is merely looking after Ernest’s best interests by asking him to sign away rights to a potential fortune. [I mean, would you trust this guy?]
At a press conference at last year’s Cannes Film Festival, De Niro admitted he didn’t understand the duality of his character: “I don’t understand a lot about him,” he said. “He has to be charming, he has to win people over … Why he betrays them in this way?
“I think part of it with him, I guess, is sincere. It’s just the other part where he’s betraying them, there’s a feeling of entitlement, I guess you could say. We became a lot more aware after George Floyd with systemic racism, and so that’s what it is. … It’s the banality of evil.”
Notably, this is the first time that DiCaprio, who starred with De Niro in 1993’s “This Boy’s Life,” has worked with De Niro and Scorsese on the same feature, though they’d appeared in a short film together, 2015’s “The Audition.”
“The two of them are so incredible together,” DiCaprio told “Sunday Morning.” “Their shorthand, the way they communicate, it’s almost through sign language. It’s nods and, ‘I know, I know.’ I mean, it’s incredible to watch!” [Scorsese quipped that, unlike the shorthand he shares with De Niro, what he has with DiCaprio is “longhand.”]
This film marks De Niro’s eighth acting Oscar nomination; he’s won twice, for “The Godfather Part II” and “Raging Bull.”
“Killers of the Flower Moon” is streaming on Apple TV+, and is available on VOD.
More on “Killers of the Flower Moon”:
Robert Downey Jr., “Oppenheimer”
In “Oppenheimer,” Robert Downey Jr. engages in a bait-and-switch act in his performance as Lewis Strauss, board member at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, who brings J. Robert Oppenheimer on board after the famed physicist’s success at Los Alamos — and who later becomes Oppenheimer’s antagonist as head of the Atomic Energy Commission over Oppenheimer’s public stance against nuclear weapons.
In this scene, Strauss is pulled into an emergency meeting when it’s learned that radiation — sign of a nuclear test by the Soviet Union — has been detected over the North Pacific:
Strauss, aghast at the Soviet Union’s nuclear progress, is bent on building more and bigger bombs than the Russians — and believes Oppenheimer, who was outspoken against nuclear proliferation, stands in his way. His campaign to discredit Oppenheimer includes suggestions that he was a spy. A closed-door hearing by an Atomic Energy Commission security panel would vote to remove Oppenheimer’s security clearance, making it impossible for him to continue his research.
In this scene, Strauss vents with a Senate aide (Alden Ehrenreich) about the testimony made against him during a Cabinet confirmation hearing over the attacks on Oppenheimer:
The son of filmmaker Robert Downey Sr., Downey Jr. came to shoulder the massive Marvel Cinematic Universe in his role as Tony Stark/Iron Man, leader of the Avengers. But his resume had shown a wide range of characters in nearly 100 films, from “Chaplin,” “Good Night, and Good Luck,” and “Zodiac,” to “Tropic Thunder,” “Sherlock Holmes” and “The Judge.” With “Oppenheimer,” he plays effectively off his personal charm to hide the unscrupulous tactics of Strauss and the anger when his plans blow up in his face.
Downey, who won the Screen Actors Guild and Golden Globe Awards for his performance, told W Magazine that he “jumped at the chance” to appear in Christopher Nolan’s film: “Everything about playing Lewis Strauss was … I don’t want to say difficult, but it was counterintuitive for me,” he said. “I know that we’re all mixtures of what our persona is and who we really are. Nolan was inviting me to turn the mirror onto an unexplored portion of myself. And the character, to me, is everybody who has ever felt slighted by somebody who was more important than them. It gave me a lot of time to reflect. I wondered if I’ve come off like that to people in the past. And I wondered, if I were them, if I wouldn’t seek to destroy me.”
A big challenge was when the character called for acting contained: “Being still, which does not come to me easily all the time,” he said. “And part of it is, I’m middle-aged. If, at this point, I can’t sit on my hands and just stand there and tell the truth, then I’ve been doing something wrong for a long time.”
Discussing his role in the blockbuster film, Downey told The Associated Press, “One of the things about Nolan in particular that is now evident is big scale, big impact, thrilling cinema — but there’s also this exploration of the subtleties of all of us, including our frailties and our defects and all these things that are really difficult to describe. And painted this picture that’s historic and very personal and also shocking, in a cool way.”
“Oppenheimer” is streaming on Peacock and is available via VOD.
More on the making of “Oppenheimer”:
Ryan Gosling, “Barbie”
Greta Gerwig told “60 Minutes” that she wrote the role of Ken specifically for Ryan Gosling, even though she’d never met him — even going so far as to write him into the screenplay she co-authored with Noah Baumbach: “It said, “Ken Ryan Gosling,” she noted.
Warner Brothers
And you’d be hard-pressed to name an actor better suited to the role (even though there are a lot of Kens in the film). Gosling has been effective both in dreamy romantic roles (“The Notebook,” “Lars and the Real Girl,” “Blue Valentine,” “Drive,” “La La Land”), and in films playing men torn by loss or isolation (“Blade Runner 2049,” “First Man”).
In “Barbie,” set in a pink phantasmagoria known as Barbie Land, Ken is the epitome of Barbie accessories — the handsome hunk whose purpose seems to be making Barbie look good, whether it’s on the beach or riding shotgun in the Barbie car.
In this scene, Ken, eager to impress Barbie (Margot Robbie), goes head-to-head with Ken (Simu Liu), threatening a “beach-off,” which sounds violent:
But Ken begins to question his role after escorting Barbie to the Real World (that is, Santa Monica, California), where Ken witnesses a land in which men are powerful, rich, and ride horses. In fact, men appear to run the show. So, when it’s time to head back to Barbie Land, he aims to turn it into a patriarchy, with men ruling the roost and doing the sort of stuff bros do.
In one of the musical highlights of the film, Ken (in mink) leads a high-powered dance featuring all the other Kens of Barbie Land, to the Oscar-nominated song “I’m Just Ken,” written by Mark Ronson and Andrew Wyatt — one of this year’s nominees for best original song:
Gosling told Variety that he’d nearly passed on playing Ken, which earned him his third Oscar nomination. “It’s the hardest role I’ve ever had to play,” he said. “It was like a high-wire act — in tiny shorts and no shirt — with no net.”
“In some way, everything I’ve done led to [Ken],” Gosling continued. “And I can’t believe I’m saying that. There were moments when I would do it where I’d think, ‘I haven’t felt like I’ve worked this hard since “Blue Valentine.”‘ There were moments when I left ‘Blue Valentine’ just completely emotionally spent, laying on the floor of the car on the ride home just done — empty. And it was even harder to play Ken. And I thought, ‘How am I feeling that on this film?'”
Gosling worked out four hours a day and attended dance classes to garner those Ken washboard abs. He also restricted his diet to, basically, nothing. “It was just, like, coffee,” he said.
“Barbie” is currently streaming on Max, and is available via VOD.
More on “Barbie”:
Mark Ruffalo, “Poor Things”
The lineup of best supporting actor nominees for the Oscars matches up with the Screen Actors Guild’s nominees, except for one: From “Poor Things,” instead of Willem Dafoe, the Academy chose Mark Ruffalo, who’d previously been nominated for three Oscars (for “The Kids Are All Right,” “Foxcatcher,” and “Spotlight”).
A steam punk-inspired “Frankenstein” tale, Yoros Lanthimos’ “Poor Things” stars Emma Stone as the product of a mad scientist’s experimentation in which he implants the brain of a fetus into the body of a suicide victim, Bella (played by Stone).
When we are introduced to Bella, she is a toddler/fully-grown woman with minimal vocabulary just learning how to use her physicality. That tickles the interest of a lothario, Duncan (played by Ruffalo), who takes upon himself the task of “teaching” Bella, primarily in the area of physicality.
In this scene, as Bella excites in the discovery of dance, he tries to match her, beat by beat:
Duncan can be characterized by his jealousy and possessiveness, which come to the fore as the cad takes Bella around the world, only to find that the young woman learning how to become an independent thinker is, in the process, excluding him from her life.
In this scene, Duncan finds that Bella is maturing more rapidly than his jealousy appreciates:
In this Associated Press interview, Ruffalo compared “Poor Things” to other films in his career, whether they were small, independent films or Marvel superhero extravaganzas: “I love making movies, and I love pushing myself. Certain things, like this, are so much more expressive, and because it’s humor, it has a different kind of energy. It’s easier for an audience to watch, maybe … But I feel I put on the same amount of care and passion into all of them. Maybe it doesn’t come across like that, but I feel like I try!”
“People sort of start to see you in a certain way, and then you maybe start to see yourself a certain way, and that’s so boring. … I’m so happy that Yorgos and Emma saw me in this when I, maybe, didn’t even see myself in this.”
He told Deadline that the daring physicality of his performance as Duncan reminded him a lot of his early theater days, “where I was just very courageous and kind of dangerous. For some reason over the years, I’ve been keeping it very restrained, and all the parts I’ve been playing called for that. This is a part that no one would’ve expected me in.”
Ruffalo said he did not get notes from Lanthimos during filming about how out-there his performance should be, and if the director laughed, Ruffalo knew he was headed in the right direction. Otherwise, Lanthimos might offer, “That’s enough of that.”
By the end, Duncan is a broken soul, torn apart by the rejection of Bella. Ruffalo told Deadline, “I have women friends that I know that say, ‘I love Duncan. I was really pulling for him. I felt so bad for him,’ or guys were like, ‘Man, I didn’t know what to make of that dude. But at the end I was like, oh, God, poor guy. I felt a lot of sympathy for him.'”
“Poor Things” is streaming on Hulu, and is available via VOD.
More on “Poor Things”:
More on the 2024 Oscars:
Lengthy, complex diplomatic talks leading up to the largest prisoner exchange since the Cold War came down to one sticking point: Russian President Vladimir Putin wanted the release of notorious assassin Vadim Krasikov, who had been convicted of murder in Germany.
The negotiations ahead of the August deal were more than a year in the making. They began over Americans held by Putin, but over the months, the deal grew to involve Russian dissidents. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, who was at the center of negotiations, said German Chancellor Olaf Scholz was critical to the deal.
“Without him, this would not have happened. Because a central piece of the puzzle was the release of a Russian agent named Vadim Krasikov. Without Krasikov, there is no deal,” Sullivan said.
Who is Vadim Krasikov?
Krasikov was convicted in 2021 of the 2019 murder of Zelimkhan “Tornike” Khangoshvili, a Georgian citizen of Chechen descent in Berlin. Khangoshvili was a Chechen rebel who had fought Russian troops in Chechnya.
Krasikov was sentenced to life in prison in Germany.
In November 2023, Russia rejected a different prisoner swap offer, saying that Krasikov must be part of any trade.
Making the 2024 prisoner swap with Russia happen
Sullivan knew a deal wouldn’t happen overnight.
“None of it’s straightforward. There’s going to be twists and turns. There’s going to be false starts,” he said. “Persistence, relentlessness, that’s part of the name of the game of actually securing the release of these Americans.”
Sullivan said Scholz’s dilemma was being able to look his people in the eye and say, “We are releasing someone who has committed a grievous crime on German soil. And therefore, I can deliver something for the people of Germany.”
So the deal was broadened.
“That’s why we ended up thinking through enlarging the problem, not just trying to bring out Americans, but of course bring out some German citizens as well,” Sullivan said. “And then, the critical move of being able to say to the German people, the American people, and the world, ‘We are also getting Russian Freedom Fighters out,’ including people like Vladimir Kara-Murza.”
60 Minutes
Scholz said his long friendship with President Biden influenced his decision to release Krasikov.
“It is not an easy decision. And I discussed it with many people in my government, and especially with Joe Biden, who asked me to help,” Scholz said. “And my view was that this is something which we could do.”
Sullivan remembers the moment Scholz said he would try to make a deal.
“He said, and I remember it very vividly, on the phone with President Biden, ‘For you, Joe, I will do this,'” Sullivan said.
Prisoners released
On Aug. 1, eight convicted Russian criminals and spies were traded for several Germans, three Americans and eight Russian dissidents, including Putin critic Kara-Murza, who’d been sentenced to 25 years in Russia.
“You know, it’s one thing to speak about protecting freedom or protecting human rights,” Kara-Murza said, “but it’s quite another thing to actually do something to protect them. And whatever else President Biden and Chancellor Scholz will be remembered for years from now, they will be remembered for this.”
60 Minutes
Kara-Murza told 60 Minutes he quoted Jewish scripture to Scholz after his release: “He who saves one life saves the entire world.”
“It was very nice to hear it, to be very honest with you,” Scholz said. “On the other hand, I don’t feel that great. I did what I thought is the right thing to do.”
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Whistleblowers claim insurance companies shortchanged some Florida homeowners after Hurricane Ian
On Thursday night, Hurricane Helene and its 140 mile an hour winds made landfall in Florida’s Big Bend region. It was deadly. The full extent of the damage won’t be known for weeks and residents know rebuilding after the storm is likely to be as daunting as the storm itself.
It’s been two years since Hurricane Ian hit Southwest Florida and an estimated 50 thousand homeowners are still locked in battles with their insurance companies. Tonight, you will hear from insurance insiders who say after years of diligently paying premiums, homeowners are being misled by their insurance carriers. The whistleblowers, who are all licensed adjusters, tell us after Hurricane Ian, several insurance carriers were using altered damage reports to deceive customers.
As Hurricane Ian slammed into Florida with 150 mile an hour winds, Jeff Rapkin took this video from the porch of his home… about 40 miles south of Sarasota.
Jeff Rapkin: (on recording): “All the trees are coming down… they don’t normally look like this, everything’s coming apart… My name is Jeff Rapkin, I live in North Port, Florida…”
Rapkin, an adoption attorney and his wife, Ginny, raised three children in this home and weathered more than a half dozen hurricanes inside it. But Ian, they say, was different.
Jeff Rapkin: It just– it sat above our heads. It wouldn’t move. I mean, it was a nightmare.
Sharyn Alfonsi: And it went on for how long?
Jeff Rapkin: Eleven hours.
Sharyn Alfonsi: Eleven hours.
Jeff Rapkin: It felt like the hurricane was inside the house. We couldn’t keep the windows closed.
60 Minutes
That is the Rapkin’s house. A neighbor just happened to be filming when their steel roof was ripped off. When the storm finally passed, the Rapkins could see clear skies through the new hole Hurricane Ian punched in their ceiling. There were trees on and around their house, the roof was shredded, and everything inside was soaked.
The Rapkins lined up their losses on the curb and called their insurance company, Heritage, to begin the claims process. It sent a licensed adjuster to the house to assess the damage.
Sharyn Alfonsi: Did you get the feeling, speaking to him and showing him around the property, that he understood —
Virginia Rapkin: Oh yeah.
Jeff Rapkin: Yeah.
Sharyn Alfonsi: — what was happening here, that this —
Virginia Rapkin: Oh yeah.
Sharyn Alfonsi: — was serious?
Jeff Rapkin: He was really nice. He was thorough and he said, “your house is probably gonna need to be completely rebuilt.”
Which is why the Rapkins were floored when they finally got a check from their insurance company three months later.
Jeff Rapkin: They sent us a report from the adjustor which said that it would cost $15,000 to put our home back to pre-hurricane conditions.
Sharyn Alfonsi: They sent you $15,000?
Jeff Rapkin: $15,000. And so– the– the deductible was taken out, so it was $10,000 dollars. And then our public adjuster took $1,000 out, so we had $9.
Sharyn Alfonsi: When you called and said, “$9,000? Are you kidding me?” What was the reaction?
Jeff Rapkin: The reaction was– “This is the decision we’ve made.” And I started to pray for– for Mr.– Jordan Lee’s untimely demise because I was so angry.
We found Mr. Jordan Lee… very much alive.
60 Minutes
Sharyn Alfonsi: Do you remember the Rapkin family?
Jordan Lee: Yes, ma’am.
Lee is the adjuster who went to the Rapkin’s home after the storm.
Sharyn Alfonsi: What do you remember about them?
Jordan Lee: Their property, a two-story home, metal roof that was blown off by Hurricane Ian. And the interior of the home was just– it was soaked.
Jordan Lee has been a licensed adjuster in Florida since 2017. After major disasters, most insurance companies use third-party firms who hire adjusters, like Lee, to help them with the thousands of claims.
Lee says after he assesses a home, he always leaves his cellphone number with the homeowners so they can call him if they have any questions. After Hurricane Ian, homeowners did.
Sharyn Alfonsi: What were they sayin’?
Jordan Lee: Cussin’ me out left and right, up and down. You know, “how could you do this to us?” It was really bad, actually. And out of the– the– thousands of claims that I’ve handled, I’ve never had phone calls like that.
Confused, he went back to compare the damage report he wrote for the Rapkins to the one the insurance company sent to them.
Sharyn Alfonsi: That’s your work?
Jordan Lee: Correct.
Sharyn Alfonsi: And this is what they were given?
Jordan Lee: Totally different. Totally different.
Sharyn Alfonsi: You said they needed a new roof.
Jordan Lee: I did.
Sharyn Alfonsi: And this report says what?
Jordan Lee: It reads as a repair.
Sharyn Alfonsi: Was that roof able to be repaired in your opinion?
Jordan Lee: Not in my opinion, no.
Later, Jordan Lee learned a desk adjuster – who’d never been to the Rapkin’s home – had deleted entire sections of his report… but left his name and his license number on it – making it look like his work.
Sharyn Alfonsi: Did anybody ever alert you, “Hey, we’re making a change to this report”?
Jordan Lee: No. Nobody told me. The only way that I knew was the homeowner calling me.
It is standard procedure for field adjusters to collaborate with those back in the office to make minor edits. But Jordan Lee says, that is not what happened with the Rapkin’s report.
Sharyn Alfonsi: Did you put a dollar amount on how much you thought they were owed?
Jordan Lee: $231,368.57.
Sharyn Alfonsi: What did the insurance carrier come up with?
Jordan Lee: $15,469.48. So uh, quite a bit of difference.
Sharyn Alfonsi: Mmm. That’s not a difference of opinion.
Jordan Lee: No.
Jordan Lee says as he dug further into his work from Hurricane Ian… he was stunned to discover the Rapkins weren’t the only family whose report was altered.
Jordan Lee: It was basically all of ’em. I mean, I handled 46 of them. 44 of them were changed.
Sharyn Alfonsi: Were any of your reports changed to give the policy owner more money?
Jordan Lee: No.
Sharyn Alfonsi: It was always down?
Jordan Lee: It was always down.
Down… by as much as 98%. One estimate he wrote for $488 thousand was changed to $13 thousand. another, from 239 to 3 thousand. On December 13th, 2022…
Jordan Lee (at hearing): “My name is Jordan Lee. I’m an independent insurance adjuster and I work for the insurance companies.”
Jordan Lee and two other adjusters testified to Florida lawmakers about what one watchdog group called “systematic criminal fraud” by the insurance companies.
Ben Mandell (at hearing): “The scheme was repeated over and over again, not only on my estimates but on estimates written by other adjustors.”
Ben Mandell has been a licensed adjuster since 2017. He did not work for Heritage but says 18 of the 20 reports he wrote for another carrier after Hurricane Ian were altered. And he says he, and other adjusters, were instructed by some of their managers to leave damage off reports.
Ben Mandell: It was a deliberate scheme to do this. And it wasn’t just with one carrier doin’ this. This was six carriers that we discovered were doing this in the State of Florida, they all got the memo.
Sharyn Alfonsi: Which was?
Ben Mandell: Which was, “we’re not going to replace roofs, asphalt shingle roofs. We’re not going to replace them, we’re going to repair them.”
Mandell says he refused to leave off roofs.
Ben Mandell: They were asking me to do something that was illegal.
Sharyn Alfonsi: And why was it illegal?
Ben Mandell: It’s illegal because when I go out to make a damage estimate, I have to put what the damage is, not what they want the damage to be. And so if I leave something off that’s supposed to be on there, I could be prosecuted for that.
Sharyn Alfonsi: So the company’s telling you, “Leave the roofs off, we’re not paying for roofs.” But you keep writing these–
Ben Mandell: That’s correct.
Sharyn Alfonsi: — roofs into your reports.
Ben Mandell: I wrote the way they’re supposed to be.
Sharyn Alfonsi: And you get fired.
Ben Mandell: And I got fired.
Now, Ben Mandell and five other whistleblower adjusters are represented by attorney Steven Bush. Bush worked as a public adjuster for more than a decade.
Steven Bush: What the carriers are doing, in some instances, what they’ve said was, “if the policyholder needs a new roof, then we’re gonna make them make us pay.” In other words, “File a lawsuit, and then we’ll pay you for your roof.”
60 Minutes
Sharyn Alfonsi: But unless they do that, they’re not getting their roof paid for?
Steven Bush: They’re not getting it, they’re not getting it. Most people will not stand up and fight. I cannot tell you how many people come to me and say, “hey, what was I gonna do? I had to replace my roof.”
Sharyn Alfonsi: And do you think the insurance companies know that? They’re betting on —
Steven Bush: Absolutely.
Sharyn Alfonsi: — that those people are just gonna roll over?
Steven Bush: No question they know that. They’re playing the odds and they are winning.
Florida’s insurance market has been a risky gamble for years. After a decade of costly storms, several national carriers exited Florida. Smaller, regional carriers stepped in… but not all were up to the job. Since 2021, at least nine insurance companies in Florida have collapsed and some of the remaining ones, Steven Bush says, altered damage reports.
Sharyn Alfonsi: And is it just in Florida?
Steven Bush: I now have evidence in six different states of where carriers are manipulating the estimates, changing them, and then misrepresenting to policyholders that it’s the work product of the field adjuster.
Sharyn Alfonsi: And did, most times, the policyowner have any idea?
Steven Bush: Policyowner has no clue.
Doug Quinn: Yeah, there’s almost no transparency in the claims process.
60 Minutes
Doug Quinn is the executive director of the American Policyholders Association, an advocacy group he started after his home was destroyed by Hurricane Sandy in 2012.
Doug Quinn: The victims of insurer fraud are the last people to find out that they were victims of insurer fraud.
Sharyn Alfonsi: So when the insurance carriers say, look, it’s our right, we’re allowed to go back in there and do what we want to these adjuster reports, you would say?
Doug Quinn: You are not allowed to take somebody who has dutifully paid premiums for years, and when they need their insurance, cheat them. And shave 70%, 80%, or 90% off their claim. You are not allowed to do that. You are allowed to disagree with, you know, the minutiae. But coming in to that degree and faking the facts on a claim is not acceptable and there should be legal consequences for that.
Steven Bush: If you really want to see change in the industry, put somebody in handcuffs.
Attorney Steven Bush says he turned over what he says is evidence of insurer fraud to state investigators and Florida opened a criminal investigation. but two years after the storm, Florida has made no arrests.
Sharyn Alfonsi: We know fraud’s investigated all the time when it comes to homeowners, right? You know, that if you put–
Doug Quinn: And contractors–
Sharyn Alfonsi: –a false claim–
Doug Quinn: –and public adjusters. Everybody’s who’s aligned with the consumer who costs the insurance industry money. Those cases get investigated and prosecuted rather quickly. And aggressively. All we are asking is that cases that are alleged to be perpetrated by the insurance carriers or the vendors that they hire are just as aggressively investigated and prosecuted when fraud is found.
Quinn says it’s difficult to know how many policyholders may have been given less money than they were owed. But two years after the storm, every unrepaired home and tarp tells a story. At the Rapkins, mold and mother nature are gnawing away at what’s left of their home. And upstairs?
Sharyn Alfonis (in attic): Oh, well, there’s the sky! This isn’t a hole, this is a crack down the middle of your house, I can put my whole arm up through here.
That split roof is an open wound for the Rapkins, who still have to mow the lawn and make mortgage payments on their rotting home every month. They’re also paying rent on an apartment nearby and $4,000 a year to Heritage for home insurance.
Sharyn Alfonsi: And you’re still paying?
Jeff Rapkin: I’m still paying.
Virginia Rapkin: Oh, yeah.
Jeff Rapkin: The premiums went up. (laugh) So we’re still paying– we’re still paying and the premiums went up. And I can’t get another insurance company, obviously.
Jeff and Ginny Rapkin filed a lawsuit against heritage accusing it of breach of contract and fraud.
In a statement to “60 Minutes,” Heritage said it couldn’t comment on specific policyholders but aims to “pay every eligible claim” and had no intention to deceive. The company says, in its own random sample, about 42% of damage reports were revised downward and 26% were revised upward.
Heritage says that since Hurricane Ian, it has made “many reforms,” including updating its claims processing software, which it blames for not including the names of desk adjusters who altered reports.
Sharyn Alfonsi: Do you think that was a mis– like, just an innocent mistake?
Jeff Rapkin: Originally I did. I said, “Oh, maybe they made an error.”
Sharyn Alfonsi: And what do you think now?
Jeff Rapkin: I think they did it on purpose. And I think people are getting letters that say they’re not covered when they are. This is a con. That’s what this is. This is: make them go away at all costs. We’re not paying.
Prior to 60 Minutes’ Sept. 29, 2024 broadcast, which featured correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi’s report on Florida insurance, we reached out to Heritage Insurance for comment on our story, “After the Hurricane.” The company responded to 60 Minutes with the following statement:
Produced by Oriana Zill de Granados. Associate producers, Emily Gordon and Kit Ramgopal. Broadcast associate, Erin DuCharme. Edited by Robert Zimet.
