Molly Shannon is opening up about her unpleasant experience with Gary Coleman.
Appearing this week on SiriusXM’s “The Howard Stern Show”, the former “Saturday Night Live” star recalled being invited up to the late “Diff’rent Strokes” star’s hotel room in the late-’80s.
As she explained, she was early in her career and looking for her big break at the time, and she bumped into Coleman while taking a meeting with his agent Mark Randall.
“I was a virgin, so I wasn’t even thinking about that,” she said. “He held my hand, and I was like, ‘He’s so cute!’ He had a suit on.”
READ MORE: Molly Shannon’s Beloved ‘SNL’ Character Was Inspired From The Tragic Loss Of Her Mom And Sister
Once up in his hotel room, though, she recalled Randall disappearing, leaving her alone with Coleman, who led her to his bed.
Calling the actor “relentless,” Shannon said, “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.”
She managed to get out of the bedroom, recalling “I go to the bathroom, and then he grabs onto my leg … I had to kick him off. Then I go lock myself into the bathroom and then he sticks his hand under the door and said, ‘I can see you!’”
“How did you get out of the room?” Stern asked.
“I just sprinted out. I think I was probably very polite,” she said, adding that she told the agent to keep an eye on his client’s behaviour. “I wish I could’ve stood up for myself more.”
Also on the show, Stern asked Shannon about her favourite celebrity guests from her time on “SNL”
Citing Jim Carrey, the comedian said, “When he comes to ‘SNL,’ what a force. He just elevates everything. He’s like a powerhouse … he’s incredible.”
Shannon also mentioned Whitney Houston as another favourite.
“Whitney was so nice,” she said, and then recalled how she convinced the late singer to do her Mary Katherine Gallagher sketch others at the show predicting she wouldn’t. “I just told Whitney, ‘Look, I’m going to play the Catholic schoolgirl, you’re going to be like a snotty girl … do whatever you want. You just have to kind of be, you know, snotty, push in front of me, out-sing me. You can say whatever you want.”
She added, “She had so much fun and … she had such a good sense of humour.”
READ MORE: Molly Shannon Meets The NYC Couple Who Returned Her Lost Phone
In another moment from the interview, Shannon discussed her iconic “Superstar” character from “SNL” and a later feature film, and how the character almost didn’t make it onto the show at all.
Remembering a story from her childhood, Shannon shared how she once snuck onto a plane and took a flight all the way to New York as a kid.
