Eliza Dushku says she was treated shamefully on the set of Bull and fired for "simply asking to do my job without relentless sexual harassment." In a Boston Globe op-ed, Dushku says she decided to speak out to counter "deceptive" claims made by CBS, Bull star Michael Weatherly, and writer-producer Glenn Gordon Caron in reports on her $9.5 million settlement with the network. Dushku describes her co-star's behavior, including "exaggerated eye-balling and leering," and rejects Weatherly's suggestion that she simply "didn't get his attempt at humor," which included jokes about his "rape van." "There was daily undeniably demeaning conduct that is unacceptable in an absolute sense," she writes—and it was caught on tape.
Dushku says that after she asked Weatherly to change his behavior, he complained she had a "humor deficit" and she was fired within days. "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," Dushku writes. She says Weatherly wielded his friendship with then-CBS chief executive Les Moonves "as an amulet and, as I can see now, as a threat." Despite promises to change the culture, "the boys’ club remains in full force at CBS," she writes. "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 says Moonves will not get his $120 million severance package.)