CBS was forced to pay actress Bobbie Phillips millions of dollars in a legal settlement after allegations of sexual harassment she made against former executive Les Moonves were leaked to the New York Times, a report said on Wednesday.
The deal was reached after CBS hired two law firms – Debevoise & Plimpton and Covington & Burling – to investigate allegations of sexual misconduct by several women in the network against Moonves, Vanity Fair reported.
A draft of the investigation report and a host of other details about the internal investigation – including Phillips’ claim that Moonves forced her to have oral sex with him at a 1995 meeting – leaked to the Times in 2018.
As a result, CBS and Covington were forced to pay Phillips millions of dollars because they violated their confidentiality agreement by allowing the information to leak to the newspaper, according to Vanity Fair.
“Debevoise is not part of any agreement with any party regarding its work for CBS,” said a spokesman for Debevoise & Plimpton.
The agreement was “rumored to be in the tens of millions” and signed in the fall of 2019, the report said.
Moonves, the former CEO of the broadcasting giant, was forced to step down in 2018 after New Yorker reporter Ronan Farrow published an explosive article detailing the sexual harassment charges against him.
At the 1995 meeting with Phillips, Moonves reportedly pulled his pants down in front of her and said, “See how hard you make me,” according to the Times report in 2018.
“Be my girlfriend and I will put you on any show,” he added to the actress, who has appeared on shows like “Boy Meets World”, “The X-Files” and “Baywatch”
Moonves then grabbed her by the neck and forced her to perform oral sex on him, according to the report.
She managed to break free by grabbing a baseball bat after he was interrupted by a phone call, which he said was from an “ER” casting director.
Moonves later said to former Phillips agent in Hollywood, Marv Dauer, “if Bobbie speaks, I’m done,” reported the Times.
Dauer told Vanity Fair that he was aware that she had reached an agreement on the leak of the investigation because “she felt her confidentiality was breached as a result of the leak”.