The accuser at Harvey Weinstein's rape retrial has finished five days of fraught, often tearful testimony with defence lawyers challenging her credibility and the timeline of allegations.

"I'm not doing too good right now, so I'm really trying to remember," Jessica Mann said as a defence lawyer resumed scrutinising her communications and get-togethers with the former Hollywood movie magnate after the alleged 2013 rape.

She added: "I feel like I said a lot, and I'm trying to get through this."

But Mann went on to respond to hours of questions, at times seeming exhausted or asking for queries to be repeated.

On Friday, Weinstein lawyer Teny Geragos took her back through various friendly and complimentary emails that she sent to or about Weinstein over the years.

In one May 2013 text, she told a friend that "I like the Harvey we know. I feel some sense of protection."

Mann told jurors he helped her navigate the movie industry, and "there was a time when I felt he did protect me."

Through testimony centred on events 13 years ago, Mann often said she couldn't recall various events and particulars, especially dates.

As questioning came to a close, prosecutor Nicole Blumberg sought to cement that Mann had accurately remembered the alleged rape.

"Are those details clear in your mind as you sit here today?" Blumberg asked.

"I remember," Mann said, and was told there were no more questions. She walked, sobbing, from the room.

Mann, 40, and Weinstein, 73, are in the midst of the third trial about her accusation that he forced himself on her in a New York hotel room. Weinstein's lawyers say everything that happened between the two was consensual and part of a four-year, caring relationship.

He was initially convicted in 2020, but an appeals court overturned that verdict, and jurors at a retrial last year stopped deliberating on the rape charge when the foreperson refused to participate further. That left the case unresolved and led to the ongoing re-retrial.

Weinstein was a high-flying film producer until allegations about him fueled the #MeToo movement against sexual misconduct in 2017. He has said he "acted wrongly, but I never assaulted anyone."

He and Mann met in early 2013, when he was a studio boss and she was a 27-year-old hairstylist and actor trying to build a movie career. She has testified that he soon started making advances, and although she was taken aback, she decided to embark on a relationship with the then-married Weinstein.

She alleges that in March 2013, he trapped her in a Manhattan hotel room, angrily ordered her to undress as he loomed over her, ignored her protests and raped her.

Weinstein's lawyers have seized upon a reflective note she wrote to herself two days later. In it, she talked about her emotional attachment to a man she didn't name and her conflicted feelings about their nonexclusive relationship, asking herself: "Do I love him or the idea of him?"

The note, which wasn't mentioned at Weinstein's previous trials, doesn't mention any alleged sexual assault.

Asked on Friday why it didn't, Mann paused and said: "I don't have to write that down."

Her relationship with Weinstein continued, on and off, for years afterward.

Mann has testified that she loved "a part of him" and "always tried to see the good in him," but she was wary of crossing a well-connected man who flexed his power.

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