Prison Break Sarah Wayne Callies Talks Co-Star Spit Incident

Sarah Wayne Callies candidly opened up about the “rampant misogyny” she faced while being “the only woman around” during her time on the TV show Prison Break.

“I could not have done this [podcast] until this year because the show…I couldn’t get beyond the parts that were toxic and painful,” she explained.

“I mean, like, I’ve had an actor on that show spit in my face. And I was like, ‘Holy shit,’” she said.

“We will talk about it someday,” she continued, saying that eventually, she’ll share more about the incident and others on the podcast. “But there were… There were things. Like, I would go home some nights and have to spend an hour talking my husband out of going to hospitalize somebody.”

The series, which ran from 2005 to 2009 and had a revival season in 2017, also starred actors like Wentworth Miller, Dominic Purcell, Paul Adelstein, Rockmond Dunbar, Robert Knepper, and Amaury Nolasco.

“Some of the guys were great, and some of them were totally gentlemen,” she added. But she’s been very hesitant to rewatch the series, and her podcast, which she cohosts with Paul Adelstein, is “sort of medicine to go back.”

“I didn’t want it to send me into a spiral of, like, ‘What did I let them do to me? What did I let them say to me? What did I put up with? What did I not report?'” she finished.

Listen to Sarah’s full Broad Ideas episode here.