“In spite of my proper Southern mother’s admonition to always be gracious, I am all out of grace when it comes to Mr. Moonves,” Linda Bloodworth Thomason writes in a guest column for The Hollywood Reporter. After decades of staying silent, the “Designing Women” creator is speaking out about how the recently ousted CBS head and alleged serial predator Les Moonves made it his mission to derail her career. According to Bloodworth Thomason, her upward trajectory at CBS took a nosedive as soon as Moonves came into power in 1995.
Bloodworth Thomason had signed “the largest writing and producing contract in the history of CBS” three years prior. The $50 million deal would see her developing five new series, with penalties for each pilot passed on by the network. “‘Designing Women’ was my flagship CBS show, and ‘Evening Shade’ had just been lauded as the best new comedy of the season,” she recalls. “CBS chairman Howard Stringer and president Jeff Sagansky attended many of the ‘Designing Women’ tapings, reveling in the show, quoting the lines, and giving us carte blanche to tackle any subject, including sexual harassment, domestic violence, and pornography. They even greenlighted an entire episode satirizing Clarence Thomas’ Supreme Court nomination,” she adds. “It was, to say the least, exhilarating. Little did I know that it would soon all be over.”
Enter Moonves and his rumored affection for topless bars and reputed dislike of “Designing Women.” Bloodworth Thomason was working on another pilot, “Fully Clothed Non-Dancing Women.” (This starred Illeana Douglas, one of the first women to go on record accusing Moonves.) Moonves attended the first table read and obviously wasn’t into it. “He sat and stared at me throughout the entire reading with eyes that were stunningly cold, as in, ‘You are so dead,'” Bloodworth Thomason remembers.
The pilot wasn’t picked up and Bloodworth Thomason “would not work again for seven years.”
The rest of Bloodworth Thomason’s career at CBS followed a pattern: she would work on a pilot, get excited about it, and Moonves would seem enthusiastic but ultimately pass on it. When Bette Midler suggested working with Bloodworth Thomason, Moonves denied her request. He canceled Huey Lewis’ contract with the network when he chose her to write a pilot for him.
“It would have been so easy, not to mention honorable, to simply tell me he was never going to put a show of mine on the air. That was certainly his right. But instead, he kept me hopping and hoping,” Bloodworth Thomason details in her piece. “When I finally realized he was never going to put a show of mine on the air, I left. It was never really about the money anyway, I just wanted to work. People asked me for years, ‘Where have you been? What happened to you?’ Les Moonves happened to me.”
When Bloodworth Thomason officially parted ways with CBS, Moonves told her “to go fuck herself” when her agent tried to collect the penalties she was owed under contract.
All these years later, Bloodworth Thomason is still angry — not just for herself, but for the other women who have suffered because of Moonves, and all the women who have dealt with asshole men. She’s also — quite understandably — furious that Moonves could exit CBS with hundreds of millions. So, she has one last thing she’d like to say to him: “Go fuck yourself!”
Bloodworth-Thomason’s other credits include “Women of the House,” “Hearts Afire,” and marriage equality doc “Bridegroom.” She’s currently working on a “Designing Women” reboot.
