![]() ![]() Not long after, Dushku was written off the show. Weatherly, in turn, immediately set a meeting with the president of CBS to talk about Duskhu’s “sense of humor,” per text messages obtained by the Times. She eventually talked to one of Bull’s producers about her concerns, and on his advice, she went to Weatherly and tried to flatter him into backing off. When there is no clear mechanism for reporting harassment, it will continue to flourishĭushku told CBS’s lawyers that she didn’t feel there was a “safe person you could go to” with sexual harassment complaints at the network. If the culture at a company is set by the person at the top, Moonves certainly would have been in a position to make sexual harassment seem both normal and accepted. It is worth recalling that the most powerful person at CBS at the time was Les Moonves, whom multiple women have accused of sexual harassment, dating back decades. (Weatherly maintains that when he suggested a threesome, he was ad-libbing a joke in character.) ![]() When he demonstrated that it was fine with him to harass one of his co-stars, everyone around him heard the message loud and clear. In Dushku’s case, on the set of Bull, Weatherly - who has worked at CBS for 15 years and is well-liked - was extremely powerful. The person at the top of a company determines what the workplace culture will look like. This is the kind of pattern that can enable a culture of corporate harassment, in miniature. She says that after Weatherly suggested in front of the crew that Dushku have a threesome with him and another cast member, a crew member came up to her, laughing, and said, “I’m with Bull.” Then he suggested that he would also not mind having a threesome with Dushku. When someone at the top makes it clear that sexual harassment is okay by him, those below him follow suitĪccording to Dushku, Weatherly’s behavior toward her seemed to give Bull crew members tacit permission to harass her. In a statement to the Times, CBS affirmed its commitment to “a culture defined by a safe, inclusive and respectful workplace,” but allowed that Dushku’s experience demonstrates that “our work is far from done.”Īpparently to that end, CBS asked a team of outside lawyers to investigate “cultural issues at all levels of CBS.” But the Times obtained a draft of their findings - and what it reports about the details of Dushku’s case suggest that a culture of sexual harassment is baked into CBS, on all levels. But then, the Times says, star Michael Weatherly made a series of off-color comments about her: commenting on her legs, making jokes about a threesome, remarking in front of the crew that he was going to spank her, inviting her into his “rape van.” ( In a statement to the Times, Weatherly says he was ad-libbing jokes about his lines in the script and is “mortified” to have offended Dushku.) After Dushku complained about Weatherly’s comments, plans to make her a regular on the show evaporated.ĬBS eventually paid Dushku a $9.5 million settlement, a sum the network says is roughly what she would have earned over the course of four seasons of Bull, had she become a series regular on the show. She guest-starred in three episodes, and according to documents obtained by the Times, there were plans to make her a series regular. ![]() The New York Times reports that this January, CBS paid out a major sexual harassment settlement to actress Eliza Dushku - and what the details of the case suggest about CBS’s culture are damning.ĭushku was reportedly harassed on the set of the CBS legal procedural Bull. Just a few months after CBS ousted its CEO, Les Moonves, following accusations of sexual harassment, the network is facing a new sexual harassment scandal. ![]()
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