Alley Mills Says That “The Wonder Years” Was Canceled Because Of Sexual Harassment Allegations Against Fred Savage

For a while it seemed like every day there were new sexual harassment allegations and each one was creepier than the one before. Well, get ready to be creeped out once again because apparently Fred Savage, star of the classic coming-of-age series The Wonder Years, was also slapped across the face with a sexual harassment lawsuit when he was 16.

I know what you’re thinking because I said the same thing to Michael K when he sent me the story; “Get the fuck outta here! Not Kevin Arnold??!” But alas, ‘tis true my loves.  The original article ran in the The Los Angeles Times back in 1993. A former costume designer Monique Long accused Fred and his TV brother Jason Hervey of both daily physical and verbal abuse. Eventually the suit was settled out of court by ABC and the show got the axe shortly thereafter.

Flash forward twenty-five years later (damn y’all are old). Alley Mills, the actress who played Fred’s mom on the series, revealed in an interview with Yahoo! that the lawsuit was the reason for the show’s cancellation and that Fred’s accuser was nothing more than a slick trick try’na make a come-up.

“So I just thought [the lawsuit] was a big joke and it was going to blow over,” Mills recalls. “It’s a little bit like what’s happening now — some innocent people can get caught up in this stuff; it’s very tricky. It was so not true. It was my dresser, and I don’t care if she’s listening — I probably shouldn’t be telling this, but I don’t care because it was so long ago and it’s gotta be over now.”

Mills claims that she “wasn’t allowed to talk” back then about the lawsuit, “which made me so upset. We had a gag order on us, and I wanted to scream on television, ‘This is ridiculous!’”

The lawsuit was dropped after an undisclosed out-of-court settlement was reached, a move that the actress alleges their network, ABC, was behind. “I just thought this was a joke. You know, they bought her off, which really made me mad,” she says. “That was incorrigible that the network did that; they should never have paid her off. They wanted to avoid a scandal or something, but it made them look guilty. You know, you don’t pay someone off when there was no crime, you just fire the girl.”

Even after all this time Alley still rides for her babies, but what about Monique Long? Yahoo caught up with her as well and this is what she had to say.

“What I will say at this time is, that back then, claiming sexual harassment was NOT popular nor acceptable in Hollywood. Now all these years later the truth about the dark side of Hollywood and the rampant prevalence of sexual harassment in the industry is out. It’s an issue of power and control and continues to be! People can say what they want, but the truth has always been public record in the complaint and all the documents and depositions filed with the courts. If anyone wants the truth of what happened they can read it there. To this day I stand by the truth in those documents.” Long adds, “My only response to Ms. Mills’s slander is that it proves exactly why women in the industry are forced to remain silent about sexual harassment.”

Lord, why?? First I find out that Barney is an allegedly shady tantric sex guru and now this?? I better not find out that Oscar the Grouch was holding coke-fueled parties with minors inside of his trash can or else my whole childhood was just one big ole’ lie. And don’t remind me about Elmo…

You can check out the interview below.

Pic:  Joe Scarnici/Getty