For a show that became synonymous with glamorous women, impossible hairstyles, and crime-fighting in tiny outfits, there was apparently plenty happening behind the scenes of Charlie’s Angels that never made it to television.
© ABC Photo Arch ivesAs the series approaches its 50th anniversary, Jaclyn Smith is pulling back the curtain on some of those stories - including an unexpected proposition from her late co-star Tanya Roberts.
© ABC Photo ArchivesIn her new memoir, I Once Knew a Guy Named Charlie, and in a new interview with PEOPLE, Smith recalls being asked by Roberts to join her and her husband, Barry Roberts, in a threesome while the cast was flying to Hawaii to film Charlie’s Angels.
© Ron GalellaRoberts was married to the writer and actor from the 1970s until he died in 2006. According to Smith's account in her memoir, the couple had an open marriage, and Roberts was comfortable being direct about her relationships and sexuality.
Smith writes that Roberts “wasn’t shy about it in the least” and about propositioning people to “swing” with her and Barry.
© GettySmith declined, but she doesn't write about the encounter with judgment; instead, she found her “honesty about her sexuality to be brave and self-aware.”
Who was Tanya Roberts?
© GettyBorn Victoria Leigh Blum in the Bronx, Roberts began working as a model and studied acting before moving to Los Angeles.
Roberts wasn't one of the original Angels audiences met in 1976. By the time she joined Charlie’s Angels, the cast had already gone through several changes. She came aboard for the fifth and final season in 1980, replacing Shelley Hack as Julie Rogers and joining Smith and Cheryl Ladd.
© ABC Photo ArchivesBefore that, she had already built a career as a model and actress, and she would go on to become a Bond girl, playing Stacey Sutton opposite Roger Moore in 1985's A View to a Kill.
© GettyAfter Charlie's Angels, she starred in the fantasy films The Beastmaster and Sheena: Queen of the Jungle. In 1985, Roberts played geologist Stacey Sutton opposite Roger Moore in A View to a Kill, becoming a Bond girl in one of Moore's final outings as 007.
She became familiar to a completely different generation as Midge Pinciotti, Donna's mother, on That '70s Show.
© MediaPunchHer later years were quieter. Roberts stepped away from acting for a period to care for her husband Barry, who died in 2006. She eventually found love again with Lance O'Brien, her partner of 18 years.
Tanyra died on Jan. 4, 2021, at age 65 after being hospitalized at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. Her death came after she collapsed at home on Christmas Eve. Her publicist said a urinary tract infection had spread to her kidney, gallbladder, liver, and bloodstream, ultimately causing sepsis.
© GettyThere was also heartbreaking confusion surrounding her final days: Roberts' death was prematurely announced before she had actually died, after O'Brien believed she had passed away while visiting her in the hospital. The announcement was later corrected, only for Roberts' death to be confirmed the following evening.
