CBS chief Les Moonves has been accused of sexual misconduct by six women — including actress Illeana Douglas — in a new bombshell report that claims the toxic culture is widespread through the network.
According to The NY Post, the “Six Feet Under” star told the New Yorker she was called into a meeting with the TV titan while working on a pilot in 1997, where he pinned her down on the couch, kissed her “violently,” then pulled up her skirt while thrusting his aroused groin into her.
“It’ll just be between you and me. Come on, you’re not some nubile virgin,” the married 68-year-old allegedly told Douglas.
When she tried to escape, she says, he blocked her path and said menacingly: “We’re going to keep this between you and me, right?”
The following week, she says, she was fired, with Moonves telling her she wouldn’t “get a f–king dime” and would “never work at this network again.”
“What happened to me was a sexual assault, and then I was fired for not participating,” Douglas told writer Ronan Farrow.
When she told then-boyfriend Martin Scorsese, the famed filmmaker, and threatened to sue, she was offered a role in a miniseries.
In a statement, Moonves acknowledged trying to kiss Douglas, but denied “any characterization of ‘sexual assault,’ intimidation, or retaliatory action.”
But four other women claim they were also forcibly kissed or touched by the longtime CBS honcho in business meetings from the 1980s through the late 2000s — and all said their careers suffered after rejecting him.
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