Yea and the reason he didn’t back down is because in real life she was every bit as bad as he portrayed Her in the movie. And that’s why the media couldn’t really attack him on that because she was really worse than he portrayed her and there was plenty of proof of that if they tried to
push it.
A book about Jewell’s story was written called “The Suspect” by Kent Alexander & Kevin Salwen. In it, they describe Scruggs (from interviewing those she worked with) and one would have to conclude that she was really a “wild child.”
from page 111-112 of “The Suspect”
“Her personal flair often captured more attention than her news stories. She thought nothing of asking a friend to shift her black Mazda Miata convertible while she held the steering wheel and a cigarette in her left hand and a Budweiser tallboy in her right. She starched and ironed her tight jeans. She wore leather miniskirts to the office.
Inside the sprawling AJC newsroom, Scruggs was the most colorful and divisive player among the rows and rows of desks. Many saw her as a delightful throwback to the 1930s newspaper wars. She was loud, she was profane. She would burst into the paper’s downtown offices in a rush, slightly disheveled, hair pulling from its tie. Her future colleague on the Olympics security team, Ron Martz, marveled that “Kathy never quietly entered into a room. She kind of exploded into it.” She lived in Technicolor while much of the newsroom was in black and white. Over time Scruggs accumulated often-conflicting descriptors among her colleagues: tenacious, bombastic, rude, unsparing, wild, authentic.
Scruggs adored newsroom banter, often dishing out an off-color barb about male colleagues’ body parts. ”
It also goes into her getting into cars and hiding in the back seat, but this book complements Eastwood’s portrayal of the character down to a tee.