Actress Eliza Dushku testified in front of the House Judiciary Committee about being “fired in silence” after her former “Bull” co-star Michael Weatherly sexually harassed her on the set of his CBS hit.
The network quietly paid Dushku a $9.5 million settlement for writing her character off of the show, when she told showrunner Glenn Caron about the “Bull” lead’s ongoing harassment and spoke to Weatherly about it.
She alleged that Weatherly had targeted her with sexually charged comments when she joined the cast in 2017, which came to a boiling point when he made a crack suggesting that she wanted a threesome with him and another male co-star in front of the entire production crew.
Dushku was written into the show as a co-lead and love interest for Weatherly’s character Bull, and had entered into a six-year contract. When she confronted Weatherly about his behavior, he texted the CBS president about her “sense of humor.” Her character was subsequently written out.
The former “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” actress was prohibited from discussing the confidential settlement due to a non-disclosure agreement, but an investigation into former network head honcho Leslie Moonves made the terms of her departure public. CBS said the payout was reflective of the amount she would have received for her entire contract.
Dushku testified to a congressional committee on Tuesday about ending forced arbitration, which she said was a standard clause buried in Hollywood contracts that compelled the silence of workplace harassment victims. The actress was only able to “break the silence” because she was responding to a congressional subpoena to testify.
She detailed allegations that Weatherly frequently referred to her as “legs,” smelled her, and once said his sperm were “powerful swimmers” on set.
“Off script, in front of about 100 crew members and cast members, he once said that he would take me to his ‘rape’ van and use lube and long phallic things on me and take me over his knee and spank me like a little girl,” she testified.
“These were not lines in the script, they were incessant and demeaning and directed at me in the middle of what was supposed to be a professional workplace.”
During the threesome incident Weatherly and a male co-star “began mock penis jousting while the camera was still rolling.” Directly afterwards, a male crew member whispered to her that he was with Bull… “I want to have a threesome with you too, Eliza.’”
After her firing, Dushku discovered she had “signed her rights away” upon accepting the job and that the mandatory arbitration clause in her contract “would be used to keep what had happened to me a secret and would protect CBS and the sexual harassment perpetrator who had blatantly retaliated against me for trying to stop the harassment in my workplace.”
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