Posthumous Outing
Yesterday, it was confirmed that Tanya Roberts was bisexual. During the beginning of the fifth and final season of Charlie’s Angels, she wanted a threesome with Jacyln Smith and her husband. In 1980, Jaclyn found Tanya’s honesty to be brave. This was during a time when there were many closeted women or at least from the general public if not the bedrooms of those in the know. This changes how one can perceive Tanya’s lesbian love scene with Delia Sheppard in Sins of Desire (1992), but this also changes how one can perceive her relationship with Michelle Phillips. In 1980, they acted in two episodes of Vega$ which were essentially a movie-length backdoor pilot for a female-driven cop show. Although Ladies in Blue wasn’t picked up, it foreshadowed Cagney & Lacey (1982).
Tanya crossed paths with Michelle quite a few times, such as separately appearing in season 5 episodes of two ABC shows - The Love Boat and Fantasy Island. Both actresses had auditioned for these Aaron Spelling shows in 1981. Their chemistry must have been off the charts, and perhaps Aaron might have regretted not casting Michelle in ABC’s Charlie’s Angels. Such was their rapport that they later acted in a CBS TV movie called Murder Me, Murder You (1983). 1993 was something of a tenth anniversary since they separately acted in season 1 episodes of Burke’s Law. Michelle was born in 1944 whereas Tanya was born in 1949, so it’s not like having the same or similar age bound them together. In 1988, Michelle was even cast to replace Tanya when the Golden Harvest film company attempted to remake Mr. Vampire (1985) as an English language film called Demon Hunters.
Golden Harvest could have easily opted to replace Tanya Roberts with one of the five other actresses who starred in Charlie’s Angels, or they could have got the queen of the B movies: Sybil Danning. As for why Tanya was cast by G.H. in the first place, there is a common denominator between Tanya and themselves - Grace Jones being a fan and friend of Jackie Chan. Like Tanya, Grace was a bisexual nymphomaniac who had a kink for group sex. In a way, they were already established as bedfellows before they appeared in the above James Bond movie. In 1984, audiences could see Tanya going tribal by playing the titular Sheena whereas that year was when audiences saw Grace being equally primitive in Conan the Destroyer. The shagging shenanigans that took place during the making of the 007 movie were such that 1985 marked the release of a sequel to a 1977 rip-off of Charlie’s Angels called A Coming of Angels.
After Roger Moore’s A View to a Kill began filming in August 1984, there was an issue of Us (dated August 27) which stated that Charlie’s Angels was cursed because all of the romantic relationships crumbled except for Tanya Roberts. Notwithstanding whatever proclivities that Jaclyn Smith had towards sexuality, the other angels were fairly suspect. Farrah Fawcett had a lesbian bed scene with Raquel Welch in Myra Breckinridge (1970), but there was no sex or kissing - something that might explain the real reason why Farrah Fawcett couldn’t do more than one season of Charlie’s Angels. Despite being legally obligated to make appearances in season 3 and 4, there is a reason why she didn’t return for season 5. The literal sex appeal of Tanya somehow outweighed the quality of hair in the Goldie Hawn lookalike. The below photo was taken five days before the season 3 finale of That `70s Show. Tanya Roberts left that series to take care of her husband.
Laura Prepon went on to be known for her lesbian storyline in another series: Orange is the New Black. Regardless of how restrained that U.S. television was in the `70s versus the decade’s films, you couldn’t have a lesbian relationship between two of the angels because then the third one would feel left out like what happened in Bananarama. Still, there was lesbian subtext in the characters played by Jaclyn Smith and Kate Jackson. There was potential for real bonding because Jaclyn, from Texas, was born on October 26, 1945 whereas Kate, from Alabama, was born on October 29, 1948. As I wrote in my Substack article about Shelley Hack, it was reported on a lesbian forum that Cheryl Ladd was a bearded lesbian. It made Tanya look bad that Charlie’s Angels was cancelled after season five, but the excuse is that the Aaron Spelling series needed to have 100 episodes in order to quality for syndication. There is even a TV series called The 100, which has a hundred episodes.
Back to that Tapatalk forum known as The L Chat, a woman (who calls herself Research Girl) posted the following on December 24, 2019: “I’ve met Tanya Roberts in person. Pleasant enough, and probably wouldn’t say no if you asked her the right way, but primarily a man-chaser.”
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In the late seventies, rumors started when a twice-divorced Cher and Kate Jackson started going out. Some sources called it “dating” since they would spend long weekends at Jane Fonda’s ranch in California. Kate’s husband was not exactly the image of masculinity, and rumours persisted about him as well - something that was exacerbated when she later starred in a film about a woman who finds out that her husband is gay i.e. Arthur Hiller’s Making Love (1982). On March 25, 2022, “Research Girl” typed: “Since we know about Cher having been exclusively with women either before or after her marriage to Gregg Allman [1975–1979], as Cher discussed in a 1990s interview with her daughter, Chastity [now her ftm son, Chaz], it’s entirely possible that Cher was referring to her post-Allman days, and that she was, indeed, dating Kate then. And of course, much has been said about Jane Fonda.”
Of course, 1979 was also when Kate Jackson left Charlie’s Angels. This was a year after she married an actor named Andrew Stevens, but this was two years before she divorced him. In the mid-nineties, Kate thanked Rosie O’Donnell for helping her adopt a child. With Rosie being a closeted lesbian at the time (whose crush on Tom Cruise made him a merkin), you do have to wonder. By the time that Aaron Spelling launched Charmed in 1998, he may have regretted tempting fate by repeating the trio formula. Sex and the City began airing a few months before, and that helped to solidify the already established formula of having a female quartet star in a TV series. Imagine if Rose McGowan had been playing the half-sister from the very beginning of Charmed. When Shannen Doherty was replaced by her, it made Shannen especially look bad because she was the only star of that series to have not kissed a woman.
Given what I had said before about fifth seasons of TV shows, it’s fitting that it was only in season 5 of The L Word that there was a parody of Charlie’s Angels.
