Wallace Shawn Allegedly Made Unwanted ‘Sexual Advance’ on ‘The Nanny’ Star

The Nanny alum Lauren Lane, who portrayed C.C. Babcock in the comedy series, recently recalled a disturbing incident in which she says actor Wallace Shawn made an unwanted sexual advance toward her during his guest appearance in the show’s second season in 1994. Lane tells Vice The Princess Bride star came onto her by sticking his tongue in her ear while saying goodbye after spending the week together discussing “literature and writing and what it’s like to be a playwright.””I’m going to be f––ing honest. I’m walking up to my dressing room and he’s going back to New York, so we hug goodbye, and he put his f––ing tongue in my ear,” she said.

The moment was depressing for Lane, who tells the outlet that she was originally excited to meet Shawn since she was a fan of his theatre work in real life. “I remember pulling away and inside it was like a little death because it felt like, is this all it was all week? Like, you didn’t really enjoy talking to me? It was horrible,” she added. Lane claims the advance was completely unwarranted, assuring the outlet that the move was no slip of the tongue. “I did not expect it either because nothing we had done or spoken about had any feeling of like — I mean, why would someone put their tongue in your ear?” she said. “That was really heartbreaking to me,” Vice confirmed the story with one of Lane’s close friends, who remembered Lane’s telling of the incident in 2011.

Shawn denied the allegations in a statement to the outlet. “In all my 77 years I’ve never put my tongue in anyone’s ear,” he said in an email. “Not that I condemn those who do, if there are any. If we were hugging goodbye, I might have kissed her on the cheek?”

Beginning April 1, The Nanny began streaming on HBO Max after years of fans begging streamers to pick up the popular sitcom. Created by Fran Drescher and her then-husband, Peter Marc Jacobson, the series followed prominent playwright Maxwell Sheffield (Charles Shaughnessy) who hires a Jewish-American girl from Flushing, Queens, as a nanny to take care of his three children. The show ran for six seasons on CBS.