The New York Times’s Rachel Abrams and John Koblin reporting on how CBS Paid the Actress Eliza Dushku $9.5 Million to Settle Sexual Harassment Claims is, in many ways, the least surprising story you can imagine. A TV show where the main character is a libidinous man (CBS advertises the show with the tagline “He’ll get you off!”) has an on-set environment resembling a fraternity house as much as anything else. When a new actor joins the show, she points out inappropriate behavior and is swiftly fired. Tale as old as time, song as old as rhyme, etc.
But Dushku’s story is hilarious for one specific reason that I’m so, so glad made it into Abrams and Koblin’s story. After paying Dushku nearly $10 million to not sue, CBS launched an investigation into what exactly happened. Here’s how the Times describes the draft report from that investigation:
After considering a lawsuit, Ms. Dushku entered into mediation with CBS. Mark Engstrom, the chief compliance officer at CBS, participated, along with Bettina B. Plevan, a partner at the law firm Proskauer Rose, who was serving as outside counsel for the company.
Mr. Engstrom handed over outtakes from “Bull” in the belief that they would help the company’s cause, because they showed Ms. Dushku cursing on the set, investigators wrote in the draft of their report.
The strategy backfired. The outtakes were a “gold mine” for Ms. Dushku, the lawyers wrote, because they “actually captured some of the harassment on film.”
Although the investigators praised Mr. Engstrom for his “tremendous institutional knowledge” and described him as a “smart and very capable lawyer,” they said the company’s failure to recognize the instances of harassment caught on tape was a symptom of larger problems at CBS, according to the draft of their report. Mr. Engstrom declined to comment.
This is absolutely amazing. You have video evidence of the harassment occurring! Even if you think women like to make up instances of sexual harassment to complain about (hint: they don’t), you don’t have to take Dushku’s word against anyone else’s. You watched the sexual harassment happen on video! You know it happened! And then you gave that video to the harassed person’s lawyers thinking it was exculpatory because their client used a bad word.
You know, if CBS is looking for someone to help figure out if certain behavior is inappropriate, it seems like Eliza Dushku is at least as good at it as the folks they’ve got working on it right now. Oh, and what a coincidence: she’s unemployed at the moment, too. Win-win!