From: daviderl31@yahoo.com   
      
   https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/eliza-dushku-hits-back-micha   
   l-weatherly-cbs-bull-settlement-revealed-not-want-harassed-fired   
   210900863.html?.tsrc=daily_mail&uh_test=1_02   
      
   Eliza Dushku is breaking her silence following last week’s New York Times   
   report that the actress was paid millions by CBS to settle sexual harassment   
   claims from her stint on Bull. In an opinion piece for the Boston Globe,   
   Dushku writes she feels “compelled” to come forward as she “declined to   
   be   
   interviewed for that piece because I wanted to honor the terms of my   
   settlement with the network.”   
      
   “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,” Dushku begins. “This is not a ‘he-said/she-said’ case.   
   Weatherly’s behavior was captured on CBS’s own videotape recordings.”   
      
   Dushku was hired to play Weatherly’s love interest on the show in 2017. She   
   appeared in three episodes with the promise of becoming a series regular the   
   following season, but was abruptly fired after confronting Weatherly about   
   sexually explicit comments he made to her on set.   
      
   Weatherly apologized in the Times piece, but he dismissed his earlier   
   comments to Dushku as jokes: “During the course of taping our show, I made   
   some jokes mocking some lines in the script. When Eliza told me that she   
   wasn’t 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.”   
      
   Dushku slams how Weatherly, who plays Dr. Bull, rationalized his bad   
   behavior. “I do not want to hear that I have a ‘humor deficit’ or   
   ‘can’t   
   take a joke,” she writes. “I did not over-react. I took a job and, because   
   I   
   did not want to be harassed, I was fired.”   
      
   In her piece, Dushku gives a first-hand account of the disparaging comments   
   allegedly made by Weatherly.   
      
      
   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.”   
      
   Dushku makes it clear his “conduct was unwelcome and directed at me.” The   
   actress recalls confronting Weatherly after weeks of enduring his   
   harassment.   
      
   “I aimed to be my diplomatic best,” she says of their meeting, which took   
   place in his trailer. “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.’”   
      
   She was written off the show almost immediately after their talk. Dushku   
   continued to film what would unknowingly be her final episodes, but she says   
   Weatherly retaliated against her on set.   
      
   “Following our conversation and up until the season wrapped weeks later, he   
   barely spoke to me, making it clear he was icing me out,” she remembers.   
   “He   
   made every remaining day on the set somehow more awkward and oppressive.   
      
   “What is hardest to share is the way he made me feel for 10 to 12 hours per   
   day for weeks,” she notes. “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.”   
      
   Dushku continues, “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   
    [lawyer.]”   
      
   CBS ultimately paid Dushku $9.5 million to settle, about the equivalent of   
   what she would have earned if she had stayed on as a cast member for four   
   seasons.   
      
   “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,” Dushku reveals. “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.”   
      
   The meeting with Spielberg has yet to happen.   
      
   On her end, Dushku agreed to “not speak about what happened.” But, after   
   seeing CBS and Weatherly make statements last week, the actress wasn’t   
   afraid to come forward.   
      
   “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,” she   
   concludes. “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.”   
      
           [sounds like Weatherly is just as misogynistic, and snarky and   
   sarcastic as he was on NCIS]   
      
      
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
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