Cutting ties. Steven Spielberg exited his role as an executive producer of Bull following the CBS series’ season 4 renewal. The news comes nearly five months after star Michael Weatherly was accused of sexual harassment by former costar Eliza Dushku.
A source confirms to Us Weekly that Spielberg, 72, as well as his production company Amblin Television and fellow executive producers Darryl Frank and Justin Falvey parted ways with Bull. The procedural drama was renewed for season 4 on Thursday, May 9.
The director has been a vocal proponent of the Time’s Up movement. Dushku, 38, also revealed in a March interview with Deadline that she and Spielberg “sat and brainstormed and discussed possible solutions for this systemic imbalance of power, the abuse and harassment that we’ve been seeing and hearing and experiencing and both in our industry and beyond.”
The Buffy the Vampire Slayer alum received a $9.5 million settlement from CBS after she claimed that Weatherly, 50, made sexually suggestive comments to her while appearing as a guest star on season 1 of Bull. The New York Times reported in December 2018 that Dushku was written out of the show after confronting the NCIS alum about his behavior, although producer Glenn Gordon Caron expressed that he wanted to make her a series regular.
The network agreed to confidentially pay the actress the equivalent of what she would have made had she stayed on the show for four seasons.
Weatherly apologized in a statement to the Times. “During the course of taping our show, I made some jokes mocking some lines in the script,” he said. “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.”
The Bring It On star later alleged in an essay for The Boston Globe that “because I did not want to be harassed, I was fired.”
