Molly Shannon said she was sexually harassed by late actor Gary Coleman at the start of her career.
The comedian opened up about the encounter, which she also recounts in her new memoir Hello, Molly!, on SiriusXM’s The Howard Stern Show on Tuesday. Shannon told Stern she met the Diff’rent Strokes star in the late 1980s after she landed his agent, who asked if she wanted to meet Coleman at the suite of a hotel. Once they arrived, the agent “disappeared.”
Coleman invited her to sit on the bed, Shannon said, and began tickling her. “I was trying to be polite and stuff,” Shannon recounted. “I’m a polite Catholic girl and a virgin, so I’m not even thinking about — I’m naive about anything about that.” Describing Coleman as “relentless,” Shannon said, “He was trying to kiss me and get on top of me, and I was like, ‘Gary, stop.'”
Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP/Shutterstock; Mike Coppola/FilmMagic Molly Shannon says Gary Coleman sexually harassed her at the start of her career.
She continued, “So I’d push him off. Then I would get off the bed, then he’d bounce on the bed —jump, jump, jump — and wrap himself around me, then I would fling him off, then he got on top of me. I was like, ‘Gary, stop!’ but I guess because of his size I didn’t feel physically threatened.”
Coleman, who died in 2010 at the age of 42 from an accidental fall, was 4’8″.
[embedded content]
Shannon said Coleman grabbed her leg after she got up for the bathroom. “I had to kick him off,” she said. “Then I go lock myself into the bathroom and then he sticks his hand under the door and said, ‘I can see you!'” Shannon eventually “sprinted out” of the suite, noting that she warned her agent to keep an eye on Coleman. “I think I was probably very polite,” she said. “I wish I could’ve stood up for myself more.”
Watch Shannon’s interview with Stern above.
Related content:
