In December 2018, the New York Times reported that Eliza Dushku was allegedly fired from her role on Bull after confronting Michael Weatherly regarding "jokes" about rape, spanking, and threesomes that he told her or directed toward her on the set. His behavior set the tone for other cast and crew members, who also started to make harassing comments to Dushku. Though Dushku cooperated in a mediation process with CBS, the company tried to sabotage her story: Mark Engstrom, the chief compliance officer at CBS, supplied to investigators some filming outtakes that he thought would be damning to Dushku because they showed her using curse words. Instead, this strategy backfired on CBS, because the outtakes clearly showed some of the instances of harassment and verified Dushku's version of events. Engstrom and other CBS executives were unable to recognize what he saw on the outtakes as harassment; the Times reported that the investigation determined that the company's failure to recognize the instances of harassment caught on tape was a symptom of larger problems at CBS. After that, CBS paid Dushku a $9.5 million settlement in return for her silence. Dushku honored that agreement; the New York Times discovered the story not from Dushku but from their research into the larger investigation into CBS's handling of sexual harassment in the wake of Les Moonves's firing.
