Photo: EW
American actress and comedian Molly Shannon claims late actor Gary Coleman sexually harassed her at the outset of his career.
On Tuesday, the 57-year-old actress spoke out about the experience, which she also gave an account of in her most recent memoir, Hello, Molly!, on SiriusXM’s The Howard Stern Show.
Shannon recounted that he bumped into the comedian in the late 1980s after she met his agent, who asked if she fancied meeting Coleman at the hotel suite. But once they got into the suit, the agent “disappeared.”
According to Shannon, Coleman then asked her to sit on the bed and began tickling her.
“I was trying to be polite and stuff,” Shannon told Stern. “I’m a polite Catholic girl and a virgin, so I’m not even thinking about—I’m naive about anything about that.”
“Relentless” is how the actress described Coleman. She continued, “He was trying to kiss me and get on top of me, and I was like, ‘Gary, stop.’”
“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, whose death was caused by an accidental fall in 2010 at 42, was 4’8”.
Shannon recounted that Coleman clasped her leg after she walked out of the bathroom. “I had to kick him off,” she recalled. “Then I go lock myself into the bathroom, and then he sticks his hand under the door and said, ‘I can see you!’”
Finally, Shannon managed to scurry out of the suite and told her agent to keep an eye on Coleman.
“I think I was probably very polite,” she stated. “I wish I could’ve stood up for myself more.”
