Beloved TV show "The Wonder Years" was taken off the air after allegations of sexual misconduct were made against actor Fred Savage, according to Alley Mills, the actress who played his on-screen mom.
Last week, Mills told Yahoo that the ABC show's six-season run was cut short due to what she called a "completely ridiculous" sexual harassment lawsuit.
“When we shot the series finale … nobody knew whether or not ‘The Wonder Years’ was going to be renewed. And that’s because of a completely ridiculous sexual harassment suit that was going on against Fred Savage – who is, like, the least offensive, most wonderful, sweet human being that ever walked the face of the Earth,” she said.
In 1993, a costume designer who worked on the show filed a sexual harassment lawsuit against Savage, who played Kevin Arnold, and Jason Hervey, who played older brother Wayne Arnold. At the time, Savage was 16 and Hervey was 20.
The accuser claimed that the actors verbally and physically harassed her, and she filed a lawsuit after she was fired from the set after complaining about Savage's hand-holding, requests for an affair and sexual remarks.
"So I just thought [the lawsuit] was a big joke and it was going to blow over," Mills said. “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."
The allegations were eventually dropped, and the matter was settled outside of court.
"I just thought this was a joke. You know, they bought her off, which really made me mad," Mills recalled. "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."
In 2016, Rolling Stone ranked "The Wonder Years" No. 63 on its list of 100 greatest TV shows of all time.
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