Henry Ian Cusick, on a happier day
A member of the LOST production crew filed a lawsuit yesterday in Los Angeles Superior Court, suing Henry Ian Cusick, ABC, and Grass Skirts Productions for sexual battery, hostile work environment, and wrongful termination. She alleged that in October, 2007, Cusick, among other things, “placed his hand on Plaintiff’s buttocks … then began to caress the back of Plaintiff’s body while making moaning sounds,” and that he put his face on and squeezed her breasts. She complained to her supervisor, and a week and a half later, she was fired.
Read the papers filed in the lawsuit (PDF)
Photo of Henry Ian Cusick (c) USA Today
I have no exact idea of the facts or the incident that really happened.. I just want to say that hope the truth will soon come out.. Hope that the girl is not inventing some stories.. I was just wondering why she didn’t do anything when Cusick allegedly did those acts to her… Why didn’t she slap him or push him away or rather scream to stop the harassment.. Why did it come to a point of massaging her breasts.. Just wondering.. Hope the truth will soon come out..
Think of it this way. Cusick is a big star. We don’t yet know what the woman’s job was, but whatever it was, she must have been far lower on the Lost totem pole than he was. So she’s not going to hit him or scream. She’s going to ask him to stop — which, if her claims are true, she did and he ignored.
As far as what point it got to, it sounds like all of it could have happened very quickly, maybe in just a few moments.
It’s certainly possible that it happened the way she said. But I hope it’s not true. I like to imagine the LOST creators as one big happy family — and if the claims are true, it’s not even so much the harassment itself that would destroy that illusion — it’s that the company fired her for reporting it to her supervisor.
Also, selfishly, I hope it’s untrue because I want Cusick to be around next year. It seems like Desmond is going to play a key role in the ending — he’s special, different from everyone else, and that has to be important in the way the plot wraps up. If Cusick is fired, will the writers have to change the show’s ending?
They already changed the direction of the show once, when the actor playing Mr. Eko didn’t want to stay. But now, with only one season left, it seems too late to make any major plot changes without doing a lot of damage.
I really hope this story isn’t true, for all the reasons you mentioned. I think if it turned out to be true, it would tarnish the story of Desmond, and probably tarnish the Carleton Cruz love.
Unfortunately, sometimes when actors (anyone really) start to get an inflated sense of themself due to having a huge fanbase or receiving a lot of accolades from various sources, they get cocky and lose perspective. And this kind of thing happens.
The only thing I can see though is that if the powers that be really did try to cover this up, that they probably also made a plan for the worst-case scenario where this came out in the open. If that were the case, then when Ben shot Desmond on the pier would have been the perfect out for them, in letting Desmond die. (although that would have created a lot of fan backlash.)
I guess time will tell.
I would be shocked if the higher-ups knew about this, if word got any higher than a low-level supervisor in the production company.
The Complaint says she was fired by a second assistant director, so that’s a long way down from Lindelof and Cuse.
It would be SO incredibly stupid of the higher-ups to try to cover this up, that I can’t believe they would do it.
Then again, I’m always being shocked by the stupid things that people do. 😉
Maybe there will be some news on Monday. So far everyone involved is making a point of not saying anything.