Key Points
Todd Bridges said that he and costar Dana Plato had an unexpected sexual encounter of the Diff’rent Strokes set as children.
Bridges revealed that his “first experience with everything” was with Plato.
The actress died of a drug overdose in 1999.
Diff’rent Strokes star Dana Plato was overly sexualized on television starting at a young age, and that couldn’t help but affect her own behavior and relationship to sexual activity, according to costar Todd Bridges.
Speaking about the late, troubled actress in the new episode of Hollywood Demons, “Child Stars Gone Wild,” Bridges recalls a shocking encounter he had with his onscreen sister when they were both child actors.
“At 12 years old, I was sleeping one time in the room on the set, and all of a sudden somebody zipped my pants down and started giving me a b—job, and it was Dana,” Bridges says. “How would a 12-year-old girl know about that? The only way that you’re going to do that to someone else is if you have experienced that yourself.”
The iconic sitcom Diff’rent Strokes ran from 1978 to 1986 and followed wealthy New York City businessman and widower Phillip Drummond (Conrad Bain), who, along with his daughter Kimberly (Plato), takes in two recently orphaned brothers, Arnold (Gary Coleman) and Willis (Bridges), whose mother previously worked for Mr. Drummond.
Dana Plato in July 1994
Credit: ZUMA Press/ZUMA Archive/Shutterstock
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“Child Stars Gone Wild” chronicles how Plato was constantly put in sexualized contexts on television, including at 12 years old when she wore a two-piece bathing suit in an 1976 episode of Family. She often wore similarly revealing outfits on Diff’rent Strokes: In one scene excerpted by Hollywood Demons, Mr. Drummond demands his daughter cover up, before remarking “You really do something for that bathing suit” with a wink.
Plato became pregnant in 1984 and was written off of the show, before returning later in a diminished capacity. Throughout her life, Plato struggled with drug and alcohol abuse. (Her costars Bridges and Coleman both had their own struggles as well.)
“Dana was wild,” Bridges says in “Child Stars Gone Wild.” “My first experience with everything was with Dana. My first threesome was with Dana. My first foursome was with Dana. Our first fivesome was Dana. It was all Dana.”
Drew Pinsky, a.k.a. Dr. Drew, appears in “Child Stars Gone Wild” and theorizes that the described type of behavior is “typically sex addiction” and such acts from someone at a young age makes him “wonder if there’d been some sexual abuse prior.”
Plato died of a drug overdose on May 8, 1999, with the death later officially being ruled a suicide.
“It was just sad that she could never just tell us what was really going on in her head,” Bridges says, “and I really wish she could have because we could have really helped her.”
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