Eliza Dushku pens a response to Bull sexual harassment scandal: "I didn’t want to be sexually harassed. I was fired"

The Boston Globe

"The narrative propagated by CBS, actor Michael Weatherly, and writer-producer Glenn Gordon Caron is deceptive and in no way fits with how they treated me on the set of the television show Bull and retaliated against me for simply asking to do my job without relentless sexual harassment," the actress writes in The Boston Globe. "This is not a 'he-said/she-said' case. Weatherly’s behavior was captured on CBS’s own videotape recordings." The actress writes that "CBS vigorously courted me" for several network shows before she landed on Bull. "CBS said it wanted (Bull) to pivot to a classic 'two-hander' (two main characters), a la Moonlighting," she writes. "After I accepted, the network even brought in (Glenn Gordon) Caron, who created Moonlighting, as the new showrunner for Bull. And so I was hired to finish the last three episodes of season one, with CBS’s expressed intention of my beginning season two as a series regular with an option for up to six seasons." She adds: "In explaining his bad behavior, Weatherly, who plays Dr. Bull, claimed I didn’t get his attempt at humor. That’s how a perpetrator rationalizes when he is caught. For the record, I grew up in Boston with three older brothers and have generally been considered a tomboy. I made a name for myself playing a badass vampire slayer turned tough LA cheerleader; I have worked with numerous leading men, including Robert DeNiro, Leonardo DiCaprio, even CBS’s own David Boreanaz. I can handle a locker room." Duskhu goes on to detail Weatherly's misconduct on set, and she points out that "Weatherly also bragged about his friendship with CBS chief executive Les Moonves. He regaled me with stories about using Moonves’s plane, how they vacationed together, and what great friends they were. Weatherly wielded this special friendship as an amulet and, as I can see now, as a threat." Dushku writes that "Weatherly never apologized to me. Instead, I was fired shortly after speaking with him." Dushku also writes that one of her conditions in settling the matter was to meet with Steven Spielberg, who produces Bull through his Amblin Television production company. "I have been a lifelong fan and assumed that if anyone could make changes, it would be Spielberg," she writes. Dushku has yet to meet with Spielberg.