Craig McLachlan shell-shocked by sexual misconduct allegations: ‘The truth will come out’
ACTOR Craig McLachlan says his career — and his life — has been “annihilated” by claims of sexual misconduct against him. In an exclusive interview, with his partner Vanessa Scammell by his side, The Rocky Horror Show star says: “By God I will fight this.”
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ACTOR Craig McLachlan says his career — and his life — has been “annihilated” by claims of sexual misconduct against him.
McLachlan has been accused of inappropriate behaviour towards women during the 2014 hit musical The Rocky Horror Show.
In an exclusive interview, the TV and theatre star admitted the show’s backstage culture could be lewd, but insisted he was innocent of the allegations against him.
With his partner, orchestra conductor Vanessa Scammell, by his side, he conceded he had a “Benny Hill” sense of humour but said he didn’t come close “in the filth department” to other cast and crew.
“Does being cheeky and naughty equate with being a bully? No, it does not,” he said.
He tried to be approachable, inclusive and would have taken any concerns about his behaviour seriously, he said.
He does not understand why the allegations were made.
“By God I will fight this,” he said.
“And the truth, the truth will come out.”
McLachlan and Scammell sat down with The Sunday Telegraph late last week, distress and exhaustion etched on their faces.
There were no restrictions on the interview, but, citing legal advice, the actor would not comment on the specific allegations made against him.
Scammell is devastated for McLachlan. The couple met eight years ago working on the musical Chicago, and, said McLachlan, “fell madly in love, and (I) have been madly in love ever since”.
Scammell struggled to describe how they were feeling.
“The havoc that has been wreaked … has been devastating,” she said.
“I have been shocked, horrified and bewildered at the character assassination.”
She has kept working — she is midway through a season of The Merry Widow at the Opera House — but McLachlan has been keeping a low profile since he withdrew from The Rocky Horror Show. He hasn’t slept much in the past fortnight.
“I find it difficult to adequately articulate the horror,” he said.
“I pride myself on building a wonderful, inclusive, safe work environment, where even the little fellow who has to carry the sandbags for the camera department, I make him feel like it’s his show.
“There are hundreds and hundreds of people who will stand forward and go, ‘what we have read in the media recently, this is not the guy we know’. So (I feel) anger, hurt, bewilderment, but it keeps coming back to shock. How can this be?
“That 30-plus years of a great reputation and history can be not just brought into doubt, but annihilated. It’s extraordinary, and it’s wrong.”
Most of the allegations arise from the 2014 Melbourne season of The Rocky Horror Show, a bizarre musical about the murderous, sexually deviant alien Frank N. Furter (played by McLachlan). “The most outrageous show on the planet,” is the way McLachlan describes it.
When Scammell saw it for the first time on opening night she thought it was “the weirdest and most bizarre thing I had ever seen”.
But it was no weirder behind the scenes, McLachlan said, than any other play. As he describes it, theatre is simply a weird world.
“In any theatre show, whether it’s La Traviata, Mary Poppins or The Rocky Horror Show, it ain’t like working in a bank. That is just a fact.
“There will be people who I am sure will respond to this interview, ‘well there you are, he’s admitting they are all perverts’. I am not. It’s just a different world.
“Backstage with crews and casts, it’s a different, naughty — dare I say it — politically incorrect world.
“People will crack gags and say things and do things that would not be acceptable at the inquiries counter of the Commonwealth Bank.”
Scammell was with McLachlan for most of the Melbourne run. “It was naughty,” she says. “I was laughing.”
McLachlan admitted his own sense of humour could be lewd. “Dave Allen, Benny Hill lewd? Yeah, you bet. In the right company.
“And again, if you say to me, ‘mate, that Benny Hill gag, I don’t like (it)’, I will be the first to apologise.
“If you came up to me, if you were that person who didn’t like what I was saying among a company of people, and said ‘jeez mate, that was a bit off’, I would say, ‘I’m so sorry’, and would be mindful of it.”
Others in the cast and crew shared that sense of humour, he said.
“The lewdness I am surrounded by on a show like Rocky Horror is, as they say on Spinal Tap, 11. I might be operating on 10, but all around me … in the lewd department, I am nothing compared with what’s surrounding me. As the old boy, I don’t come close in the filth department.”
Yet the line between the character Frank N. Furter and the man Craig McLachlan never blurred, he said.
“I am not a leering transvestite alien. (But) the naughtiness of the show, does it extend to some of the gags that the kids might pull backstage? Probably,” he said.
Those gags, he said, would include having his own backside slapped.
“If I had a dollar for every time I have been whacked on the bum by a kid on that show ...” he said. If people were unhappy with the behaviour or the environment, McLachlan said, he was unaware of it (some of his accusers said they did speak up). He was always, he said, approachable.
“Let’s think of a (hypothetical) film crew,” says McLachlan.
“If the general vibe of that crew is on the Benny Hill side of humour — and trust us, there are plenty of people of a certain age who still find Benny Hill funny — I am sorry, if there is one person who finds that stuff offensive in the extreme, if you don’t speak up then and there, we don’t know. Until 10 years down the track they come out and say ‘that crew was an offensive, filthy rabble and destroyed me’.”
When asked if young women might have been afraid to raise the issue with him because he was a powerful celebrity in a lead role, McLachlan said he didn’t conduct himself as a star on set.
“It’s just not who I am. That’s obvious from the moment I walk into a rehearsal room,” he said.
He also gave his interpretation of an anecdote in Molly Meldrum’s biography, in which McLachlan ran his stiletto up Meldrum’s leg while the rock guru was on stage during a 1992 Rocky Horror performance.
“Backstage with crews and casts, it’s a different, naughty — dare I say it — politically incorrect world. People will crack gags and say things and do things that would not be acceptable at the inquiries counter of the Commonwealth Bank.”
According to the biography, McLachlan eventually stuck his heel up Meldrum’s bottom and exposed himself (a common practical joke on stage productions is trying to distract an actor while they are performing).
However, McLachlan said the story had become embellished since the incident.
“Did the stiletto go up his leg in the hope that he might lose his place in the book? Yes, but that’s it,” he said.
The allegations against McLachlan are not just sexual; there are also suggestions that he regularly had nasty fits of temper, sometimes directed at the entire company.
“That’s a great untruth,” he said.
He might have had a bad day, but “does that make (me) an ogre with a history of just being a good guy? That’s ridiculous.”
McLachlan said that, contrary to reports, he was the one who volunteered to leave The Rocky Horror Show in order to protect it once the allegations surfaced.
“I love the show. I love my history with the show. I love the creator of the show,” he said.
McLachlan insists he understands, and is sympathetic to, the poor treatment of women within his industry.
Back at the beginning of his career, he, too, felt uncomfortable.
“I find it difficult to say this, (but) as a pretty young boy starting in TV, I was subjected to bullying and intimidation,” he said.
“I stood up at the time, and said ‘I’m sorry I am not going to wear it’, which is why I have always been mindful of making an inclusive, joyous working environment.
“The women I have worked with, supported — the wonderful, talented, intelligent women, who might have a crisis of confidence as a performer, all those things that creep into a performer’s life particularly — (there has been) no one more encouraging.
“So yes, it makes the horror of this even greater for me.”
McLachlan said he had no idea why the allegations were made.
But he feels like a victim of trial by media.
“Cobbling together distorted truths and half-truths does not a truth make,” he said. “It doesn’t matter how many you stick together.”
Throughout the interview, McLachlan was sombre.
He looked ragged and sleepless, and still seemed shell-shocked.
But there was only one point at which emotion threatened to overcome him.
“You could probably tell that jokey Craig is not too jokey today,” he said, as tears sprang to his eyes.
“Through this fight, if I can stop this happening to one other decent person, then it’s worth it.”
The claims against McLachlan
A FAIRFAX/ABC investigation revealed on January 8 the claims of several women, which they said had been ignored by managers of the 2014 Rocky Horror Show Melbourne production.
CHRISTIE WHELAN BROWNE
Claims McLachlan kissed her body, including her buttock, while under a sheet on stage. She said he once traced the outline of her vagina and made inappropriate comments about it. She also said he grabbed her jaw aggressively one night.
ANGELA SCUNDI
Claims he pressed his crotch against her. On another occasion, she said, he forced his tongue into her mouth during a stage kiss, and he became enraged when she told him not to do that again.
ERIKA HEYNATZ
Claims he kissed her twice, once while straddling her on a couch. “He’s really calculated and very manipulative,” she said.
OTHERS
Two anonymous cast members have made complaints to police.
■ Since news of the first allegations broke, anonymous crew members from the The Dr Blake Mysteries — a popular series on the ABC — have also made allegations about McLachlan’s conduct on the set.
■ They claimed he held a banana on his crotch and thrust it at an actress, dry-humped a female camera assistant, pressed his crotch against a wardrobe assistant, and often spoke of sex and made sexual innuendos.
Originally published as Craig McLachlan shell-shocked by sexual misconduct allegations: ‘The truth will come out’
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