‘True Blood’ Actress Sarah Scott Accuses Kip Pardue of Sexual Harassment — and SAG-AFTRA of Responding Too Slowly
Sarah Scott, an actress who’s appeared in such shows as “True Blood” and “Castle,” has accused actor Kip Pardue of placing her hand on his penis while filming a sex scene and then masturbating in front of her after it was done. She alleges that the latter incident took place in his dressing room just after they had shot a sequence for “Mogulettes,” a television pilot, in May.
“I literally froze,” the 35-year-old told the Los Angeles Times. “I said, ‘What are you doing?’”
His response, according to Scott: “This isn’t a #MeToo thing. I’m not your employer. It’s not like I can fire you.”
Pardue, best known for his roles in “Remember the Titans,” “The Rules of Attraction,” and Hulu’s Marvel show “The Runaways,” acknowledges that he placed Scott’s hand on his penis but denies her other accusations.
“I clearly misread the situation during a sex scene on set and have apologized to Sarah,” he said in a statement provided to the Times by his representative, David Shane. “I never intended to offend her in any way and deeply regret my actions and have learned from my behavior.”
Scott then did everything in her power to rectify the situation: She contacted the show’s producers, got in touch with both the Screen Actors Guild and the Time’s Up Legal Defense Fund, and filed a police report. The ensuing process has been slow-moving, she told the newspaper, leading to considerable frustration: “How can I be part of the solution? How can I do right by my community?” Scott said she thought at the time. “What can I do that’s actually going to make a dent in preventing this guy from doing this again?”
She received an email from Donna Reed, coordinator of SAG-AFTRA’s Equal Employment Opportunities and Diversity Department, on May 22. “While this is not intended to pass judgment on anyone involved, I am terribly sorry for what you experienced,” Reed wrote in the email, which Scott shared with the LA Times. “If anyone who believes they were subjected to unlawful harassment, the fact that they do not remain silent empowers us all to shine a light in the dark and take action against this behavior so that it is less likely to be repeated.”
Said Scott of the exchange: “I feel like her intentions were good, but it was clear that she was very inexperienced with this particular kind of process. If I had a question about confidentiality — ‘Can I talk to the media? Can I talk to agents and managers about this?’ — she kept saying, ‘I’m going to have to check on that.’”
She said she was also told by Delia Aparicio, senior counsel for SAG-AFTRA, that she was “probably not gonna be satisfied” if she filed a member-to-member union complaint against Pardue. Her reaction to all this was that going through the process, which she was told could take as long as nine months, was “not really worth you time.”
She chose to move forward with the member-to-member complaint anyway, and a disciplinary committee was originally scheduled to determine whether Pardue would be expelled or suspended from SAG-AFTRA on October 26, but that was postponed when both sides entered the meditation process.
“I am disappointed that Kip has chosen to hide behind his actions,” Scott now says. “Speaking out about this has been extraordinarily difficult for me, and now I understand why so many people don’t. My goal remains the same — my wish is for Kip to take full responsibility for all of his actions.”
Read her full account here.
