Last week, The New York Times reported that CBS paid actress Eliza Dushku a $9.5 million settlement after she accused her Bull co-star Michael Weatherly of sexual harassment and was written off the show, allegedly, as retaliation.
Among other allegations, the Times reported that Weatherly had once exhorted Dushku to climb into his “rape van” and had alluded to a threesome with the actress in front of colleagues. At the time, Weatherly responded to the Times story in an e-mailed statement that attributed the behavior to misguided attempts at humor. “During the course of taping our show, I made some jokes mocking some lines in the script,” Weatherly told the paper. “When Eliza told me that she wasnt comfortable with my language and attempt at humor, I was mortified to have offended her and immediately apologized. After reflecting on this further, I better understand that what I said was both not funny and not appropriate and I am sorry and regret the pain this caused Eliza.”
After initially staying quiet, Dushku on Wednesday wrote an op-ed for The Boston Globe, that paints a much different picture of how her alleged interactions with Weatherly and dismissal from the show played out. In the piece, the actress was unequivocal in her insistence that Weatherlys remarks were not playful, but instead seemed “like a deeply insecure power play, about a need to dominate and demean.”
“Thats how a perpetrator rationalizes when he is caught,” Dushku wrote of Weatherlys account, before citing a careers worth of interactions with men on set and in media. “I do not want to hear that I have a humor deficit or cant take a joke. I did not over-react. I took a job and, because I did not want to be harassed, I was fired.”
Dushku went on to write that Weatherly never apologized to her, and presented a more detailed account of her time on set and the circumstances of her dismissal than the initial Times report.
For example, when her now husband visited the set, Dushku wrote, Weatherly repeatedly shouted “yellow card” after making an off-color remark. “I learned from crew members that, because there had been previous harassment training on Bull, Weatherlys delight in yelling yellow card was his way of mocking the very harassment training that was meant to keep him in line,” she wrote. Dushku also wrote that Weatherly boasted to her about his sperm and claims that Weatherly bragged about being close with Les Moonves, the now-former CBS chairman. Moonves resigned himself earlier this year after claims of sexual misconduct, and this week was denied a $120 million severance package after CBS determined there were grounds for him to be fired for cause. (In a statement upon his resignation, Moonves wrote, “Untrue allegations from decades ago are now being made against me that are not consistent with who I am.”)
“Weatherly wielded this special friendship as an amulet and, as I can see now, as a threat,” Dushku wrote.
Read her full op-ed here.
Representatives for CBS and Weatherly did not immediately respond to V.F.s request for comment.
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Get Vanity Fairs HWD NewsletterSign up for essential industry and award news from Hollywood.Laura BradleyLaura Bradley is a Hollywood writer for VanityFair.com.
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