Diff’rent Strokes alum Todd Bridges made some shocking sexual revelations about his late costar Dana Plato in a new docuseries.
During a new episode of Hollywood Demons which airs on Investigation Discovery on Monday, April 27, Bridges, 60, recalled having several encounters with Plato on set, saying, “At 12 years old, I was sleeping one time in a room on the set. All of a sudden, someone unzipped my pants down and started giving me a blowjob — and it was Dana.”
Bridges has since questioned Plato’s behavior toward him.
“How would a 12-year-old girl know about that?” he asked. “The only way you would do that to someone else is if you experienced it yourself.”
While reflecting on his relationship with Plato, Bridges claimed she introduced him to his first “threesome, foursome and fivesome.”
“Dana was wild. My first experience with everything was with Dana. It was all Dana,” he said before discussing her issues off screen. “She could never tell her what was going on. We could have really helped her. She never wanted to talk about her feelings.”
Diff’rent Strokes, which aired from 1978 to 1986, starred Gary Coleman and Bridges as two boys from Harlem who were taken in by a wealthy Park Avenue businessman and his daughter.
The sitcom skyrocketed the child stars to fame, but many of them struggled in the spotlight. Bridges dealt with legal problems and drug addiction before getting sober in 1993.
Coleman, for his part, was diagnosed with a kidney disease as a toddler, which affected him the rest of his life. He was admitted to the hospital in 2010 after he fell down the stairs at his home in Utah. Coleman was placed on life support due to an epidural hematoma and subsequently died days later at 42.
Plato, who played their adoptive sister Kimberly, also faced a battle with substance abuse and died from an overdose in 1999 at age 34. In ID’s docuseries, Dr. Drew Pinsky offered his expert opinion on Plato’s public struggles — including her alleged sexual encounters with Bridges.
“That is typically sex addiction,” he said in the upcoming episode. “You have to wonder when young children engage in sexual acts that they maybe shouldn’t have understood, there may have been some sexual abuse prior.”
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Hollywood Demons, now in its second season, is focused on child stars who “struggle with the constant pressure of fame and the dangers it can bring to people exposed at such a young age.”
“From experiencing onset perversion, suicidal thoughts and Hollywood exile, some young actors are led to make a life-altering career change after they step out of the spotlight — adult entertainment,” the official description for the episode reads. “Former child actors from across the industry including Dan Benson (Wizards of Waverly Place), Maitland Ward (Boy Meets World) and Scott Schwartz (The Toy & A Christmas Story) open up as the episode unpacks the career pivot these stars, and others, have pursued.”
Hollywood Demons airs on Investigation Discovery Monday, April 27, at 9 p.m. ET before streaming on HBO Max.
