Rachel Uchitel is sitting at a table in her apartment in New York's Upper East Side, alternately stoic and tearful, surrounded by hundreds of pages of legal documents. For more than a decade these have been familiar company: the wallpaper of a room she can't seem to leave. In , days after the dramatic revelation of her affair with the golfer Tiger Woods, who was then married, Uchitel signed a nondisclosure agreement more than 30 pages long, prohibiting her from talking about Woods with anyone.
She was represented by the famed Hollywood lawyer Gloria Allred. Now, at 46, Uchitel β tired of not being able to defend herself against continued insinuations from tabloids and gossip websites β is ready to blow it all up. In she agreed to be interviewed about her relationship with Woods for an HBO documentary, Tiger.
One of Woods's lawyers, Michael Holtz, is challenging her protection from creditors, so he can bring a claim against her for millions of dollars on his client's behalf for violating it, he told her.
Holtz did not respond to a detailed email seeking comment, nor did Woods's agent, Mark Steinberg. According to her complaint, the company, which made headlines amid a US justice department investigation of the Florida congressman Matt Gaetz, said it would continue to pay her only if she signed a contract with a restrictive NDA, on top of a boilerplate confidentiality agreement she had already signed.
Seeking Arrangement denies any wrongdoing and is suing her too. She has been watching a public softening toward figures like Monica Lewinsky, Britney Spears and Meghan Markle and wondering if she can find similar empathy. Or at least some consideration that her name got pulped by a machine run by well-paid lawyers. Uchitel was perhaps predetermined for life in the gossip pages.
