Nearly a decade after sustaining severe injuries on the set of CBS’s The Good Wife, Kristin Chenoweth is speaking out about the incident’s long-term impact—and why she waited so long to talk about it publicly. While shooting the legal drama in Brooklyn on July 11, 2012, “a piece of lighting equipment crashed down on top of me and knocked me back into a curb,” Chenoweth writes in My Moment: 106 Women on Fighting for Themselves, a book of essays out May 24, an excerpt from which was shared with Marie Claire.
“I was rushed by ambulance to Bellevue Hospital in Manhattan,” she continues. “My injuries were severe. My ribs were cracked. My nose and some of my teeth were broken, and I had a skull fracture. And those were just the injuries that actually showed up on X-rays; never mind the nerve, tissue, and muscle damage I’d have to face in the weeks, months, and years that followed.”
Chenoweth had joined The Good Wife for a multi-episode arc in its fourth season. However, she was forced to bow out of the series after a single episode due to the severity of her injuries. “It is with deep regret to inform everyone that due to my injuries, I am unable to return to The Good Wife,” Chenoweth said in a statement at the time. “Getting better slowly, and thank you everyone for your concern.”
At the time, CBS Television Studios confirmed that “a gust of wind blew a lighting silk out of place” and that Chenoweth had received medical care. “All of us at the studio and the show are thinking about Kristin and wishing her a quick recovery,” the company said in a statement.
Almost 10 years later, Chenoweth writes that she felt compelled to stay quiet about the incident for years out of fear of being viewed “as weak and broken,” a label that could hurt a woman’s career in Hollywood. “In the entertainment industry, as is the case with so many other lines of work, when someone considers hiring you for a part, they want to know that you’re ready to run,” Chenoweth writes.
Another factor that kept her silent, Chenoweth writes, was a desire to not “be ‘a problem’ for CBS.” She explains: “I was advised by a couple of folks on my team and outside of my team too that it would be unwise to attempt to hold CBS accountable for what was clearly their responsibility.… I was told that I’d never work again if I sued a major network. And that scared me. I let fear take over and did what so many people do—especially women—in the face of going up against someone or something more powerful than they are. I shrunk.” (Vanity Fair has reached out to CBS for comment.)
Chenoweth recalls paparazzi photos of herself being published in the months following her injuries. “I was told by my attorneys that CBS called them right up and said, ‘Judging from the pictures out there, Kristin appears to be doing GREAT!’ I wasn’t doing great, but my sucking-it-up smile for a paparazzi photo was weaponized against me, and again, I felt intimidated.”
Since then, Chenoweth says that she’s endured “hundreds of doctor appointments” and “head-to-toe pain on a daily basis,” but that her fear “has been eclipsed by a lot of other feelings.” The Emmy winner writes that she is no longer tiptoeing around her experience.
“I’m telling my story about what happened, and I really don’t care if CBS never hires me again,” Chenoweth writes. “They knew I was hurt really badly, but they exploited the power they held over a person like me. I’m a working actor—keyword working. Unfortunately, the powers that be at CBS at the time”—then led by Les Moonves, since ousted from the company following a bombshell #MeToo investigation (Moonves denied the allegations)—“did not take responsibility for what happened to me.” The “new regime at the network,” she adds, doesn’t reflect her past experience. “Leadership matters. Full stop.”
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