How did it end? With a final act of bullying.Īfter I addressed matters with Weatherly, he circulated a “memo” to the crew instructing not to comment on my appearance or beauty. He made every remaining day on the set somehow more awkward and oppressive. Following our conversation and up until the season wrapped weeks later, he barely spoke to me, making it clear he was icing me out. After I addressed it, Weatherly doubled down and ratcheted up his retaliation. Retaliation is illegal, not to mention unfair and painful. Specifically, Weatherly complained that I had a “humor deficit.” And this dread continues to come up whenever I think of him and that experience.Īfter 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. I was made to feel dread nearly all the time I was in his presence. This was classic workplace harassment that became workplace bullying. What is hardest to share is the way he made me feel for 10 to 12 hours per day for weeks. 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. In no way was it playful, nor was it joking with two willing participants. For Weatherly’s part, it looks like a deeply insecure power play, about a need to dominate and demean. Watching the recordings in the settlement process, it is easy to see how uncomfortable, speechless, and frozen he made me feel. His conduct was unwelcome and directed at me. Weatherly wielded this special friendship as an amulet and, as I can see now, as a threat. He regaled me with stories about using Moonves’s plane, how they vacationed together, and what great friends they were. ![]() Weatherly also bragged about his friendship with CBS chief executive Les Moonves. 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. The tapes show Weatherly routinely exclaimed “yellow card” after distasteful remarks. 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. 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.” 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 the tapes show, he liked to boast about his sperm and vasectomy reversals (”I want you to know, Eliza, I have powerful swimmers “). 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. Minutes later, a crew member sidled up next to me and, with a smirk, said in a low voice, “I’m with Bull. He made the threesome remark to me about himself and me in a room full of people. 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.
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