Eliza Dushku: I worked at CBS. I didn’t want
to be sexually harassed. I was fired
By Eliza Dushku
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. This is not a “he-said/she-said” case. Weatherly’s behavior was captured on CBS’s own videotape recordings.
I feel compelled to chronicle what actually happened after The New York Times published a story about how CBS handled my allegations. I declined to be interviewed for that piece because I wanted to honor the terms of my settlement with the network. I was under the impression that Weatherly and Caron would also not respond per our settlement. Instead, both commented to the Times in what amounted to more deflection, denial, and spin.
Before I get into what actually happened, here is some background. CBS vigorously courted me for several network shows. When presenting the offer to co-lead on “Bull,” CBS made the case to my team that the whole Dr. Jason Bull M.O. of bedding every female interest and winning every case needed strong female balance. CBS said it wanted to pivot to a classic “two-hander” (two main characters), a la “Moonlighting.” After I accepted, the network even brought in 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.
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 De Niro, Leonardo DiCaprio , even CBS’s own David Boreanaz. I can handle a locker room. I have been on Howard Stern and was hired by Kevin Smith for a film where I wore a black leather cat suit and played a member of an international diamond-thief-gang-ring. I do not want to hear that I have a “humor deficit” or can’t take a joke. I did not overreact. I took a job and, because I did not want to be harassed, I was fired.
THE HARASSMENT
Weatherly harassed me from early on. The tapes show his offer to take me to his “rape van, filled with all sorts of lubricants and long phallic things.” There was also his constant name-calling; playing provocative songs (like “Barracuda”) on his iPhone when I approached my set marks; and his remark about having a threesome. He made the threesome remark to me about himself and me in a room full of people. Minutes later, a crew member sidled up next to me and, with a smirk, said in a low voice, “I’m with Bull. I wanna have a threesome with you too.” For weeks, Weatherly was recorded making sexual comments, and was recorded mimicking penis jousting with a male costar — this directly on the heels of the “threesome” proposal — and another time referring to me repeatedly as “legs.” He regularly commented on my “ravishing” beauty, following up with audible groans, oohing and aahing. As the tapes show, he liked to boast about his sperm and vasectomy reversals (“I want you to know, Eliza, I have powerful swimmers”). Weatherly had a habit of exaggerated eye-balling and leering at me; once, he leaned into my body and inhaled, smelling me in a dramatic swoon. As was caught on tape, after I flubbed a line, he shouted in my face, “I will take you over my knee and spank you like a little girl.”
One day, when my now husband, Peter Palandjian, visited the set, Weatherly made us all watch as he pretended to urinate on an indoor office plant, then spun around pretending to shake himself off and pull up his zipper. The tapes show Weatherly routinely exclaimed “yellow card” after distasteful remarks. I learned from crew members that, because there had been previous harassment training on “Bull,” Weatherly’s delight in yelling “yellow card” was his way of mocking the very harassment training that was meant to keep him in line.
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.
Weatherly did all this. His conduct was unwelcome and directed at me. Watching the recordings in the settlement process, it is easy to see how uncomfortable, speechless, and frozen he made me feel. For Weatherly’s part, it looks like a deeply insecure power play, about a need to dominate and demean. In no way was it playful, nor was it joking with two willing participants. It was not “Cary Grant ad-libbed lines,” an incredulous Weatherly excuse which, even if true, asks us to believe that Hollywood behaviors from 70 years ago might be acceptable today. What is hardest to share is the way he made me feel for 10 to 12 hours per day for weeks. This was classic workplace harassment that became workplace bullying. I was made to feel dread nearly all the time I was in his presence. And this dread continues to come up whenever I think of him and that experience.
There was daily undeniably demeaning conduct that is unacceptable in an absolute sense. Everyone should be allowed to work without harassment. Weatherly sexually harassed and bullied me day-in and day-out and would have gotten away with it had he not been caught on tape, and had the CBS lawyers not inadvertently shared the tapes with my counsel, Barbara Robb. Reflecting on the whole ordeal, it often makes me think with sadness of the majority of victims who do not have the benefit of the fortunate evidence — the tapes that I had.
THE RETALIATION
Weatherly never apologized to me. Instead, I was fired shortly after speaking with him.
After weeks of enduring Weatherly’s harassment, I resolved to deal with it directly. I aimed to be my diplomatic best. This was not easy for me, since there were plenty of other things I would like to have said to him. Framing my request as a plea for “help” in setting a different tone on the set, I asked him to “be my ally” and to “help ease the sexualized set comments.” Weatherly responded with, “Eliza, no one respects women more than I do,” citing his many sisters and his professed history of being “too respectful of women.”
After I left his trailer, I went straight back to my own trailer and wrote down everything I could remember about the conversation in a text to my manager, adding, “I hope he actually received it well & doesn’t run back to the studio telling them to fire me lol.” Then, as I came to learn months later in the settlement process, Weatherly texted
CBS Television President David Stapf about 40 minutes after our conversation and asked for what amounted to my being written off the show. Specifically, Weatherly complained that I had a “humor deficit.’’
Retaliation is illegal, not to mention unfair and painful. After I addressed it, Weatherly doubled down and ratcheted up his retaliation. Following our conversation and up until the season wrapped weeks later, he barely spoke to me, making it clear he was icing me out. He made every remaining day on the set somehow more awkward and oppressive.
How did it end? With a final act of bullying.
After I addressed matters with Weatherly, he circulated a “memo” to the crew instructing not to comment on my appearance or beauty. I do not know if it was a written memo or a general verbal edict, but everyone called it “the memo.” Weatherly’s message was clear to all: Eliza Dushku was offended by comments on her looks. (For the record, I love a good compliment).
As it turned out, the “memo” was a prop for Weatherly’s final act of retaliation against me. At the wrap party held on the last day of the season, Weatherly insisted that I stay for the champagne toast. It was odd to me for several reasons: Weatherly knew I was sober, and he had not spoken to me this warmly for weeks. Nevertheless, I also wanted to say goodbyes to friends and pay my respects to the crew. Weatherly emceed the toast. So when he called me up in front of the entire cast and crew to pick the winning party raffle tickets, Weatherly was actually going out of his way to humiliate me and said something along the lines of: “I need a beautiful woman to come pull this ticket.” He laid it on thick. “A truly beautiful woman . . . hmmm, who could that be?” He was performing, pretending to search the room. I immediately clocked what was happening, my breath tightened. “Eliza! Yes, the most beautiful woman of all. Yes, Eliza, you have to come pull the raffle ticket!” he instructed, dripping with sarcasm and in direct violation of his own edict not to comment on my physical appearance. No matter that I’ve acted in more than 30 films and starred in two network series, Weatherly had to let everyone know he was the boss, that he had won and no one would come on that set and reject what he thought should be his unfettered right to do and say whatever he wanted. There are crew members on record as witnesses to corroborate what for me was one of the most cruel, most aggressive humiliations I have ever experienced. It was I who was mortified.
Glen Gordon Caron
As for Caron, the “Bull” showrunner, he was undaunted to do Weatherly’s bidding. The fact is that Caron wrote me off the show within 48 hours of my complaints about Weatherly. According to what top production brass at CBS told my agent, Caron had gotten rid of me without the knowledge or consent of that CBS team. Caron personally fired me as I was filming on set one afternoon. It is highly unusual to get fired in the middle of a shooting. I immediately phoned my manager and agent, who in turn phoned the high-ups at CBS. The CBS execs were baffled. They said that they didn’t believe that Caron had the authority to fire me this way and suggested that it could not be true. What’s more, as was documented in several e-mails and texts, they and the production company, Amblin Television, were reportedly loving my work and called what I was doing for the show “fantastic’’ and that they “love this dynamic.’’
My talent representatives spoke to Caron about my firing months later. Caron defended Weatherly, explaining he had simply exhibited “frat” behavior and added, “What does [Eliza] expect, she was in Maxim.” On the subject of my legal rights, Caron said to my manager, “If Eliza wants to be out of the business by suing CBS, she can be out of the business.”
The boys’ club remains in full force at CBS. The bullying continued. In the settlement process, CBS used as defense a photo of me in a bathing suit, pulled from my own Instagram, as if this suggested I deserved or was not offended by the sexual harassment I experienced.
CBS ultimately paid me $9.5 million earlier this year to settle the allegations — an amount that represented a portion of what I would have earned had I finished my potential six-year contract. But this wasn’t just about money; I wanted a culture change. A significant settlement condition was my requirement that CBS designate an individual trained in sexual harassment compliance to monitor Weatherly and the show in general. CBS did not want to do this, but I wouldn’t settle without this condition. Another condition I insisted on was that I be allowed to meet with Steven Spielberg, whose Amblin Television coproduces “Bull,” so I could talk with him about what occurred on his set. I have not yet had my meeting with Spielberg, but I cannot help but wonder where the legendary Hollywood director was throughout all of this. I have been a lifelong fan and assumed that if anyone could make changes, it would be Spielberg. Watching the Golden Globes and seeing Spielberg front-and-center wearing a “Time’s Up” pin shortly after my settlement made me especially eager to meet with him.
The condition CBS required of me was that I not speak about what happened. I really struggled with this and still do. Some online “posters” have called it hush money. Headlines have called it a “secret settlement.’’ How was I to get paid? I have worked in this industry for close to 30 years. I faced a wrongful termination, the prospect of a three-to-five year lawsuit, and million-dollar legal fees for a war with a massive corporation. And where would that war have been fought? According to the fine print in my contract with CBS, I was required to submit to a “confidential” arbitration, where all “proceedings will be closed to the public and confidential, and all records relating thereto will be permanently sealed.” No judge, no jury, and no chance of anyone finding out what really happened (or so they hoped).
In the end, I found uneasy solace in the important conditions I imposed on CBS, and that I would get paid for at least some of my contract. I am still trying to make sense of how this could happen, especially in these times. The last thing I want at this point in my life is to be in the news. I am recently married and very happily finishing my college degree at home in Boston. But I do feel it is my duty to respond honestly and thoroughly to CBS, Michael Weatherly, and Glenn Gordon Caron’s latest revisionist accounts.
There are very few shows on TV that I watch regularly, so when Weatherly left NCIS, I reluctantly checked out his new show. Two characters on that show captured my attention and they were the character played by Eliza Dushku, and Cable, played by Annabelle Attanasia. When they killed off Cable on the first show of the 2018-19 season, that was enough for me.
Cable's departure is, apparently, so she can direct a feature film. I wonder if that is all there is to the story?
Kevin Spacey charged with indecent assault in Massachusetts
The Associated Press
Kevin Spacey has been charged with groping the 18-year-old son of a Boston TV anchor in 2016 — the first criminal case brought against the Oscar-winning actor since his career collapsed amid a string of sexual misconduct allegations over a year ago.
Spacey, 59, is due in court Jan. 7 on the resort island of Nantucket to be arraigned on a charge of indecent assault and battery, Cape and Islands District Attorney Michael O'Keefe said in a statement Monday.
Spacey could get up to five years in prison if convicted.
A criminal complaint was issued by a clerk magistrate at a hearing Thursday, O'Keefe said.
Shortly after the charge became public, Spacey posted a video on YouTube titled Let Me Be Frank and tweeted a link to it, breaking a public silence of more than a year.
In the bizarre dramatic monologue delivered in the voice of Frank Underwood, his character on Netflix's House of Cards who was killed off after sexual misconduct allegations emerged, he says,
"I know what you want. You want me back."
He goes on to say, "Of course some believed everything and have just been waiting with bated breath to hear me confess it all, they're just dying to have me declare that everything they said is true and I got what I deserved. ... I'm certainly not going to pay the price for the thing I didn't do."
It is unclear whether Spacey is referring to the charge he faces.
He later adds, "Soon enough, you will know the full truth" before the three-minute video ends with a burst of dramatic cliffhanger music.
Allegations from 2016
A message seeking comment was left Monday with Spacey spokeswoman Laura Johnson.
Former news anchor Heather Unruh came forward in November 2017 and said the actor stuck his hand down her then-18-year-old son's pants and grabbed his genitals at the Club Car Restaurant on the resort island of Nantucket in July 2016.
Her son fled the restaurant when Spacey went to use the bathroom, Unruh said at the time.
Unruh said her son didn't report the assault right away because he was embarrassed.
"The complainant has shown a tremendous amount of courage in coming forward," Mitchell Garabedian, a lawyer for Unruh's son, said in a statement Monday. "Let the facts be presented, the relevant law applied and a just and fair verdict rendered."
Multiple accusations
Spacey remains under investigation of sexual assault in Los Angeles for an incident that allegedly occurred in 2016. Prosecutors declined to file charges in a 1992 allegation because of the statute of limitations.
Spacey had also faced accusations of sexual misconduct while artistic director of London's Old Vic Theatre.
The two-time Oscar winner was among the earliest and biggest names to be ensnared in the #MeToo movement that was sparked by sexual assault and harassment allegations against Hollywood studio boss Harvey Weinstein in October, 2017.
His first accuser, actor Anthony Rapp, said Spacey climbed on top of him on a bed when Rapp was 14 and Spacey 26. Spacey said he did not remember such an encounter but apologized if the allegations were true.
Spacey also used the statement to disclose he is gay.
Other accusers followed Rapp's lead.
Spacey was subsequently
fired from House of Cards, the political drama in which he starred for five seasons, and his performance as the oil tycoon J. Paul Getty was cut from the completed movie All the Money in the World and reshot with actor Christopher Plummer. Some other projects he was involved in were shelved.
The case against Spacey represents a rare criminal prosecution in the #MeToo era. Weinstein is awaiting trial in New York, but many other cases have been too old to prosecute, and some accusers have declined to co-operate with authorities.
Former Disney actor charged after allegedly
soliciting a minor for sex
Stoney Westmoreland was fired following his Dec. 13 arrest
The Associated Press
Former Disney Channel actor
Stoney Westmoreland has been charged with
six felony counts after authorities said he tried to have sex with a 13-year-old boy.
Prosecutors say
Westmoreland, 48, was on the dating app Grindr when he found a profile operated by a police detective in Salt Lake City, near the location of the show Andi Mack.
A message left with Westmoreland's agent, Mitchell Stubbs, was not immediately returned. No attorney was listed for Westmoreland in court records.
The actor was arrested Dec. 13 after he took a car from a ride-hailing app to meet the boy so they could go back to his hotel room, authorities said.
He had previously sent explicit photos and asked for nude photos in return, authorities said.
Westmoreland acknowledged to police that he had sent nude photos, and knew the person he was speaking with said he was 13 years old, charging documents state.
Westmoreland was charged Friday with enticing a minor, attempted exploitation of a minor and four counts of dealing in material harmful to a minor by an adult.
A $100,000 warrant was issued for Westmoreland, who had previously bailed out of the Salt Lake County jail. A public safety assessment filed with the court found he was a low risk to public safety. No new court date was immediately set.
Westmoreland has been dropped from his role as grandfather of the teenage title character in Andi Mack, a Disney show.
Westmoreland's other acting credits include Scandal and Breaking Bad.
R. KELLY’S BROTHER REVEALS CHILDHOOD SEXUAL ABUSE,
CLAIMS SINGER DIDN’T HELP HIM
by
SHARON LYNN PRUITT
“When I told him what happened to me he didn’t really respond to it like I felt that he should,” Carey Kelly said in Lifetime's explosive new docu-series,
"Surviving R.Kelly."
Lifetime’s “Surviving R. Kelly” docu-series continues to pull back the curtain on one of the most controversial performers of our time. One shocking moment in particular asserted that
R. Kelly, a victim of childhood sexual abuse himself, may have failed to support his younger brother when he learned that he, too, was being abused.
That's not unusual for a CSA victim to be fatalistic about another victim's suffering.
Kelly’s brothers, Bruce and Carey, were among the many people close to the singer who were interviewed for "Surviving R.Kelly," and among the many jaw-dropping assertions that have been made so far in the six-part special is
Carey’s claim that he, too, was sexually abused as a child but was deterred from telling his mother after R.Kelly reacted badly to the news.
R. Kelly, born Robert Sylvester Kelly,
has spoken out about being molested as a child before, first in his 2012 memoir “Soulacoaster,” and again in a 2016 interview with GQ, during which he revealed that the person who molested him was a blood relative.
Carey, too, was molested by a relative, though he did not name the perpetrator during his Lifetime interview. He said that it was R. Kelly’s unexpected reaction to his confession that led him to keep the information a secret from their mother.
“I was molested by a family member and that shook my world,” Carey said.
“I knew it wasn’t right even though I was 6 years old at the time. I was afraid to tell my mom because of the person and who they were, I don’t know if she was going to believe me.”
“Robert, being my big brother — I brought that to him and told him what happened to me,” he said. “And when I told him what happened to me he didn’t really respond to it like I felt that he should.
He said, ‘Naw, that didn’t happen to you.’ I said, ‘Yes it did.’ Robert said, ‘No it didn’t.’ Then I left it alone, I really knew not to take it to my mom.
My brothers was the test. If they believed me then maybe I could have took it to an adult.”
Carey and R. Kelly have long had a contentious relationship, it seems.
Carey alleged during a 2006 interview with MTV News that his famous brother tried to get him to take the blame for the infamous sex tape that landed him on trial for child pornography charges in 2002.
Kelly’s attorney at one point claimed that it was actually Carey, not R. Kelly, who was filmed having sex with and urinating on an underage girl — accusations that his brother never apologized for, even though it “destroyed” his life, Carey said.
R. Kelly even offered him thousands of dollars, a record deal, and a house if he took the blame, Carey claimed in another 2006 interview that was released on DVD by Drahma Magazine, according to MTV News.
R. Kelly was ultimately found not guilty on all counts.
Carey, a rapper also known by the name Carey Killa Kelly, released a diss track about his famous sibling in August, shortly after the release of R. Kelly’s 19-minute denial track, “I Admit.”
Carey’s “I Confess” consists of the younger Kelly brother accusing R. Kelly of having relationships with men and spreading STDs to various women — an alleged act that Kelly has been sued for in the past.
Carey most recently accused his brother of molesting their 14-year-old cousin during an interview with YouTuber “unWinewithTashaK” in September.
Talk about one screwed-up family!
'It Was a Horrible Life': 8 Women Who Accuse R. Kelly of Painful Abuse Share Their Stories
In this week's issue of PEOPLE eight women detail the abuse they claim they or their loved ones suffered at the hands of music star R. Kelly
JANINE RUBENSTEIN
'We Won't Be Silent Anymore'
Did the musician once crowned the King of R&B abuse women and girls for decades? In this week’s issue of PEOPLE and in Lifetime’s new documentary Surviving R. Kelly, eight women who escaped his world—or tried to help loved ones they say were trapped—share their shocking stories, alleging physical and sexual abuse at the hands of the 51-year old star.
Representatives for R. Kelly, born Robert Sylvester Kelly, responded “no comment” to PEOPLE’s request for a response to allegations in our story and in
Surviving R. Kelly.
Kevin Spacey pleads not guilty to
sexually assaulting 18yo busboy
Actor Kevin Spacey entering Nantucket District Court on Monday amid a barrage of waiting media.
© Reuters / Brian Snyder
Kevin Spacey’s lawyers entered a plea of not guilty on the actor’s behalf at a Massachusetts court in connection with the high-profile allegations that he groped an 18-year-old at a bar in 2016.
The 59-year-old is facing charges of felony indecent assault and battery over the alleged incident involving a busboy at ‘The Club Car’ bar on Nantucket island two years ago.
The judge ordered the disgraced star to stay away from the young man who accused him, and his family.
He also granted a request by Spacey’s lawyers to preserve six months worth of data from the victim’s cell phone which they say contains evidence that is “likely exculpatory” for the actor.
Another hearing was set for March 4 which Spacey does not have to attend, but must be available by phone. If convicted, Spacey faces up to five years in prison.
The allegations were made in November 2017 when a former
Boston TV anchor, Heather Unruh, held a press conference and accused the actor of sexually assaulting her son, then 18, in the crowded bar after the teen’s shift finished in July 2016.
The complaint alleges Spacey bought the teen alcoholic drinks and groped him both in and outside of his pants for about three minutes – part of which was allegedly filmed by the busboy on Snapchat and sent to his girlfriend. The 18-year-old left the bar when Spacey went to the bathroom.
This is the first criminal case to be brought against Spacey, whose career was derailed by a litany of sexual abuse allegations when the #MeToo movement erupted in 2017.
His first accuser, actor Anthony Rapp, claimed Spacey climbed on top of him on a bed when Rapp was 14 and Spacey 26. Spacey said he did not remember the encounter, but apologised if the allegations were true.
After the charge was announced last month
Spacey posted a ‘House of Cards’ like video in the voice of his character Frank Underwood in which he said: “I’m certainly not going to pay the price for the thing I didn’t do.” It’s unclear whether he was referring to the charge in question.
