‘90s child star Ashley Johnson has revealed that she was almost kidnapped from the set of Growing Pains.
Johnson, now 42, played Chrissie Seaver on the ABC sitcom, starting when she was 6 years old back in 1990. On the Weird Kids podcast, the actress explained that a man from the live studio audience grabbed her. The audience, she said, was “within five feet” of the sitcom’s stars.
“I’m walking with my mom, and then I just remember some guy hops out of the line and he grabs me and grabs me up and starts booking it,” she said to host Taliesin Jaffe.
The ordeal took place after “somebody had written in and said that ‘I am coming to set and I am going to bring a gun and I am going to murder some of the cast,’” Johnson said.
“So, security comes out, they wrestle ‘em down. I remember just flying around in the air,” she said.
“I was clueless as to what was happening, but I was very upset, and they were talking to me about it after,” she continued. “They got him, and they saved me.”
Johnson said, “But yeah, it was a crazy... I mean, he ended up clearly going to jail.”
The actress alleged that the man “had a gun.”
“He was packing,” she recalled. “They got him. This was the thing. He was high on something. It wasn’t meth, but it was some, like, he was so strong. And I remember the guys trying to take him down, and he was just like, he was huge at least in my childhood.”
“Because I think I was such a polite kid at the time, I think he was running with me and running away. I was like, ‘Who are you, sir?’” she joked. “‘What is your name? I was very pleased to meet you.’”
Voice actor Jaffe, 49, said he was “amazed by the low level of security.” He also began his career as a child actor and said that the sets of ABC’s Hail to the Chief also didn’t have “a ton” of security.
Johnson was on Growing Pains from 1990 to 1992, playing the daughter of Alan Thicke and Joanna Kerns’ daughter. The family-friendly show also starred Kirk Cameron, Tracey Gold, and Jeremy Miller.
