Bull drops showrunner Glenn Gordon Caron and costar Freddy Rodriguez following workplace investigation
Bull is charging ahead with a sixth season on CBS—but showrunner Glenn Gordon Caron and costar Freddy Rodriguez are not going with it.
EW has confirmed that Caron and Rodriguez are leaving the Michael Weatherly series after a workplace investigation was conducted by CBS. A rep for CBS Studios declined to share the findings of the investigation.
Bull writers Kathryn Price and Nichole Millard will become co-showrunners of the drama that stars Weatherly as Dr. Jason Bull, a psychologist and trial-science expert. Rodriguez played Benny Colón, Bull's in-house counsel while Caron has been the drama's showrunner since the second season.
In 2018, CBS vowed to have trained HR professionals visit sets on a regular basis after Weatherly was accused of sexual harassment by Dushku. The actress wrote a 2,300-word account for the Boston Globe slamming Weatherly and Caron, saying Weatherly's harassment went beyond jokes (some of which were captured on tape by production). "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."
At the time, insiders said it was Caron who didn't like Dushku's character because he "wanted to write Bull, not Moonlighting." Caron actually created the 1985 TV show Moonlighting that starred Bruce Willis and Cybill Shepherd.
Dushku's character was written off Bull and she was paid $9.5 million—the amount she would have earned had she remained on the show as a potential love interest for Weatherly. Several months later, Amblin Entertainment stepped down as producers on the series.
At the time, CBS Entertainment president Kelly Kahl defended his decision to keep Bull on the air by saying star Weatherly was "honest in his remorse" and we "personally believe he can make a mistake and he admitted to that mistake." Weatherly and Caron received leadership training, he added.
"When it came time to make a decision, we looked at it through a fresh lens, with new eyes, because a lot of us were learning about it for a first time," Kahl told reporters in 2019. "We reassessed what happened. First and foremost, Michael made a mistake in his comments, he owned that mistake, he apologized at the time. He was remorseful and he apologized again when it came out. He indicated he was willing to take any kind of coaching, whatever training deemed necessary to create a positive environment."
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