Celebrity
Todd Bridges Warned ‘Diff’rent Strokes’ Costar Dana Plato Not to Do ‘Howard Stern Show’ Before She Died
Todd Bridges recalled the painful memory of warning his former Diff’rent Strokes costar Dana Plato not to do her infamous interview on Howard Stern’s show the day before she died.
Speaking on the “Child Stars Gone Wild” episode of the documentary series Hollywood Demons, Bridges discussed his former costar’s public struggles, which culminated in an interview on The Howard Stern Show on May 7, 1999.
Callers into the show weren’t kind to Plato, who claimed at the time that she’d been sober for 10 years. The very next day, Plato died at 34 of a drug overdose that was later ruled to be a suicide, according to a Friday, April 24 report by People.
Bridges, 60, said he knew at the time that the interview on Stern would not work in Plato’s favor.
“I called her and I said, ‘Don’t do Stern. Don’t do it,'” he shared, per People. “And she insisted that she was okay. That was the last time I heard from her.”
Plato left Diff’rent Strokes in 1984 before the series concluded after she became pregnant. In 1989, she returned to the public eye by posing in Playboy, which didn’t give her the positive attention she was hoping for, according to Bridges.
At the time, People reports that rumors were swirling about her struggles with drugs and addiction. In 1991, she was arrested for robbing a Las Vegas video store. She ran afoul of the law again the following year when she was given probation for forging prescriptions for Valium.
“Child Stars Gone Wild” premieres on Monday, April 27.
