Archival footage of Gary Coleman revealed in Peacock's documentary 'Gary' shows that the 'Diff'rent Strokes' star would have opted to have 'a normal life' if he'd known how tough show business is on child stars.
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Gary Coleman 'would have gotten out' of Hollywood if he knew his 'life would be like this'
Peacock's documentary "Gary" reveals the "Diff'rent Strokes" star desired later in his career to have "a normal life, and have friends."
By
Ryan Coleman
Published on September 1, 2024 09:00AM EDT
Gary,
Peacock's new documentary about
Diff'rent Strokes actor
Gary Coleman, chronicles the former child star's meteoric rise to fame, and delves deeply into the various, often insurmountable obstacles he faced in maintaining a career into adulthood.
In a revealing segment from an interview with Brad Lemack in 1993, seven years after the cancellation of
Diff'rent Strokes, Coleman admitted, "If someone had told me my life would be like this, early enough where I could have gotten out, I would have gotten out. I would have had a normal life, and have friends."
Though the groundbreaking
NBC sitcom — one of the first on television to feature a racially blended family — won Coleman international acclaim and netted him $100,000 per episode at its peak, Coleman wound up resenting his association with the character of Arnold Jackson, and his catchphrase, "Whatchu talkin' about, Willis?"
It was an association Coleman would grow to resent so strongly he'd later declare: "
Diff'rent Strokes must die."
Gary Coleman.
Herb Ball/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank/Getty
"People didn't want Gary, they wanted Arnold Jackson. That was common," says Anna Gray, Coleman's former girlfriend. "Gary absolutely despised that catchphrase. He called it 'that line - I'm not saying that line!'" Yet
Gary shows clip after clip of Coleman having to take parts on sitcoms like
The Fresh Prince of Bel Air and
Married... With Children, long after the cancellation of
Diff'rent Strokes, reprising the Arnold character and saying that line.
Compounding the problem of child stars already being overly associated with their famous roles as they age, the producers behind
Strokes refused to age Coleman's character up in later seasons, even though the actor had gone from a 10-year-old at its start to 18 by its end.
Diff'rent Strokes hair stylist Joann Stafford-Chaney felt that Coleman was "just a meal ticket," to the series' producers. "That's how he felt, " she notes. "'I'm just making money, but I'm not happy.' He wasn't happy."
Gary Coleman lived without any kidneys for nearly 25 years
In the
full 1993 interview with Lemack, Coleman described the prospect of never having become an actor as "something that I fantasize about. Because now here we are in 1993, I'm 25 years old, I'm a world-renowned celebrity. There's no place I can go where someone doesn't know me. I handle it because I'm a public figure, I'm supposed to be gracious, and have fun doing what I do. I love the work. I truly love making people laugh. But of course," Coleman concedes, "there are aspects of the business that I don't really care for."
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Facing a dearth of acting opportunities and chasing an elusive dream of action movie stardom, Coleman became a security guard in 1997. The following year, Coleman
assaulted a fan after she persisted in asking him for an autograph. Coleman walked away with a 90-day suspended sentence, a $400 fine, and a court order for anger management classes, but lifelong friend Dion Mial called the experience Coleman's "rock bottom" in terms of his distorted relationship with his own career and the public.
"He constantly referred to himself as God's punching bag," Mial recalls. "He felt like one of life's jokes. And he was never meant to be a person of good fortune."
Gary Coleman.
WireImage
Diff'rent Strokes star Gary Coleman threatened to slap show's hair stylist
Gary also covers the extent to which Coleman was extorted of his considerable fortune ($18 million total in earnings from
Diff'rent Strokes alone, estimates Coleman's lawyer Drew Ryce) by a cohort of family members and business managers.
Coleman
filed for bankruptcy in 1999 and eventually
took his mother to court over claims that his estate was being mismanaged. He rebounded with roles in projects like
Church Ball and
Robot Chicken in the mid-to-late 2000s, but
died in 2010 after a fall in his Provo, Utah, home left him with an intracranial hemorrhage. He was 42.
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