“Alice” star Linda Lavin is sharing her #MeToo story.Cliff Lipson; Getty Images
Linda Lavin is ready to share her #MeToo story.
The star of the 1970s and ’80s sitcom “Alice” revealed in a new interview with Page Six that she was sexually harassed on the set of the 1987 TV movie “Lena: My 100 Children.”
“There was sexual harassment by a very powerful man on the production team, and I was a victim of it, and it was physical and it was disgusting,” she said. “I went to the women on the crew and said, ‘Will you go to the union with me?’ And they said, ‘We’ll lose our jobs [if we do], and so I was alone with it and I was scared.”
Lavin, 84, said there were other instances that “happened in more subtle ways,” but she did not feel she could do anything about it at the time.
“The difference is now I do [speak up] because of those women who came forward in the last few years and because I got my self-esteem back,” she added before noting that the “rules are firm” and “clarified” nowadays.
“We have support and regulations,” she explained. “I come from a generation of women who brushed it off and swept it under the rug.”
Page Six has reached out to NBC, which aired “Lena: My 100 Children,” for comment.
“We have support and regulations,” she explained. “I come from a generation of women who brushed it off and swept it under the rug.”
Page Six has reached out to NBC, which aired “Lena: My 100 Children,” for comment.
Lavin, who started acting as a child, shot to fame with her groundbreaking role in CBS’ “Alice” as a single mother who worked as a waitress at a diner. The sitcom, which ran for nine seasons, was eye-opening for the actress.
“‘Alice’ opened up the world of social and political realities to me, and ‘Alice’ spoke to those realities. Single mothers, working women in the blue- and pink-collar jobs — which, by the way, are 80 percent of all the women who work in this country — and raising a child, working all day long and working for a man who was paying a man more money than her,” she explained.
The Tony winner is still busier than ever these days and shows no signs of slowing down.
She can currently be seen in “B Positive” as nursing home resident Norma and in “Being the Ricardos” as “I Love Lucy” writer Madelyn Pugh. In a happy coincidence, Pugh was the head writer on “Alice” for many years, something the film’s writer-director, Aaron Sorkin, didn’t know when he cast Lavin in the role.
The “Barney Miller” alum said she only met Lucille Ball once at the 50th anniversary of CBS and is glad the beloved star was no pushover.
“If she weren’t a tough cookie then we wouldn’t be doing the kind of television that we’re doing now,” Lavin said. “We all owe Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz. They developed the four-camera process with an audience.
“She stuck to her principles, and she’s inspiring. … She stuck to what mattered, and in that partnership with Desi, he was the bulldog for her. She was the official talent that gave her the courage and self-worth to say, ‘Not that way, this way.’”
Lavin, who has been performing on Broadway since the ’60s, also has a new album out called “Love Notes” that is available through Club44 Records.
“It’s a repertoire of the American songbook, favorites of mine,” she explained. “It’s an album of romantic ballads and upbeat songs made famous by all my favorite singers in the world with a band that just doesn’t stop.
“People always say, ‘You should write a book,’ and I say, ‘Why would I want to go into a f–king room by myself and do something that every writer in the world says is agony? Why would I want to join that group?’
“My memoir is the songs I sing. These are my stories,” she added. “I ain’t gonna write it.”
There is one thing still on Lavin’s bucket list, though: appearing on “Finding Your Roots,” the PBS show that researches celebrities’ ancestries.
“I’m desperate to get on that show,” the Maine-born star exclaimed. “I can’t track my people. They came into Boston from Vilnius, Latvia and Prussia. I know they were all dairy farmers.”