The important part of this story is Eliza Dushku appears to have made an honest attempt to resolve the issue privately. It only became a lawsuit when she was then punished for expressing her opinion. CBS management failed big time. Even if the argument that Dushku had a thin skin as merit they had an obligation to at least mediate the disagreement.
Well said.
This bears some similarity to the Jian Ghomeshi situation (the workplace harassment complaints against him and CBC, not the sexual assault stuff that he was charged with and acquitted of.)
The "Bull" TV show is built around the popularity of Michael Weatherly that he established during many years on the enormously successful "NCIS" tv show. Weatherly was basically the meal-ticket for everybody working on that program. "Q" was CBC Radio's most successful program, one that I gather was actually popular and had some profile, unlike just about every non-news item on CBC (I can hear an accusatory
hmmmm from Ana-Maria Tremonti as I write that) and Jian Ghomeshi was seen as the star of the show-- a ballsy interviewer with a sense for what's current.
In both cases, management decided that keeping their star happy was more important than the concerns of the other employees. Maybe they're right. Obviously "Bull" doesn't exist without Weatherly. And I gather CBC's attempts to replace Ghomeshi on "Q" have not been very successful. On-air personalities and sports stars are somewhat unique in that sense. You can't just hire a different Ben Roethlisberger or a different Michael Weatherly and continue business-as-usual. Most other employees are somewhat more replaceable.
The other thing is that Dushku was in a pretty unique position. She has had a pretty long and pretty successful career and seems content to walk away from the business at this point-- move back to Boston, enjoy her new marriage, and finish her college degree-- so the showrunner's threat of blacklisting her from the industry might not have been very intimidating to her. It makes you wonder what happens to younger actresses who'd be risking their futures by speaking out. Every few years some young actress comes along who people think is going to be "the next big thing" and so many of them just vanish from the industry. In the case of Mira Sorvino and Ashley Judd, we now know what happened behind the scenes to make them just disappear like that.
-k