Molly Shannon says fellow actor Gary Coleman sexually harassed her.
This week, “Saturday Night Live” star and comedic actress Molly Shannon sat down on “The Howard Stern Show,” where she discussed an incident she had with Coleman in which she claims the actor sexually harassed her.
The encounter happened in 1987 at the Plaza Hotel when she, Coleman and an agent the two shared at the time met for tea. Coleman allegedly asked Shannon to come up to his hotel suite; the actress said she didn’t think much of Coleman’s invitation.
“And I was a virgin so I wasn’t even thinking about that,” Shannon explained. “He held my hand I was like, ‘He’s so cute!’ He had his suit on. He told me I reminded him of Kimberly from ‘Diff’rent Strokes.’ And Mark came up with us too, and they had the presidential suite, and we went into the room and Mark disappeared.”
Shannon goes on to say that Coleman eventually asked her to sit on his hotel bed. She added that her naivety allegedly made her unaware of his alleged advances.
Shannon says things turned down a dark path when Coleman started trying to “kiss” her and “get on top” of her.
“And I was like, no, Gary, stop. So I pushed him off. Then I would get off the bed, then he would bounce on the bed, jump, jump, jump, and wrap himself around me and then I would like, fling him off. Then he got on top of me. I was like, ‘Gary, stop!’ I guess because of his size I didn’t feel physically threatened,” she said. That’s when she ran to the bathroom after the actor continued to allegedly jump back on the bed with her on it.
“I finally get him off, and I go to the bathroom, and he grabs onto the leg. I kick him off, and then I go lock myself in the bathroom, and then he sticks his hands under the door, and he’s like, ‘I can see you,'” Shannon continued. The entire ordeal ended after Shannon “sprinted out” the room. Shannon says she told the two’s agent Mark Randall that the should “watch” Coleman more.
These experiences and more the actress plans to share in her new book “Hello, Molly!”
