We eventually sorted this out, and it appears as (one direction of) Theorem 3.6.7. in Dualizable Tensor Categories (joint with Christopher Douglas and Chris Schommer-Pries). Note that (for C semisimple) separability is equivalent to semisimplicity of Z(C) (see Corollary 3.5.9.), so Theorem 3.6.7 does address exactly this question.