Andy Dick Once Had an On-Set Handler to Prevent Sexual Harassment: "He Hated Me"
A then-20-year-old woman says she was assigned to "butt in" on any conversations that Dick tried to have with the younger actors, though she was unable to stop an incident where Dick allegedly tried to lock another actor in his dressing room and expose his penis.
Andy Dick’s decades-long history of sexual misconduct and outrageous behavior is back in the news after he was charged July 2 in Los Angeles with one count of sexual battery and one count of simple battery for allegedly grabbing a woman’s butt and making lewd comments.
The charges didn’t come as a surprise to a woman with whom he worked on NBC’s short-lived high school-set sitcom Go Fish in 2001. The series, created by Adam Herz and Pam Brady, centered on Andy “Fish” Troutner (Kieran Culkin) as he started his first year of high school alongside fellow students played by Kyle Sabihy, Taylor Handley, Will Friedle, Adam Brody and JoAnna Garcia Swisher.
While the woman, who wishes to remain anonymous, first started her job on the show as a nonunion extra, she tells THR that she was offered a promotion of sorts. After shooting several episodes, the woman claims she was pulled into a meeting with producers and “higher-ups” who informed her that Dick had been “cornering underage actors and saying nasty sexually explicit things,” she recalls.
Though they didn’t want to make a big deal about it, she recalls, they asked her to act as a harassment cop of sorts by thwarting any conversations Dick attempted to have with any of the younger actors on set. “Any time you see Andy approach one of the actors, just butt into the conversation like, ‘Hey guys, what’s going on.’ In my 20-year-old mind, I knew that it was a shady situation, but I wasn’t worried about Andy Dick and so I said yes.”
In exchange, producers promised her that she would do enough work on the show to obtain her SAG card.
“Needless to say Andy hated me and groaned, rolled his eyes and sighed anytime he saw me come around,” she continues. Despite her efforts, however, she says that one of the teenage actors, who was 19 at the time, escaped Dick’s dressing room after the actor allegedly attempted to lock him in and expose his penis.
The experience was enough to cause her to leave the business and, instead, pursue a career in music by teaching recording and mixing. “I didn’t want to live like that,” she said. The woman now lives and works in Michigan.
THR reached out to reps for Herz, Brady, Culkin, Sabihy, Handley, Friedle and Garcia Swisher for comment on this story. No one responded.
Stories of misconduct, harassment and outlandish behavior have been a through-line of Dick's career. Just last October, the actor admitted to THR that he had been fired from a small role in an independent film for acting inappropriately on the Arizona set. "I didn't grope anybody. I might have kissed somebody on the cheek to say goodbye and then licked them. That's my thing — I licked Carrie Fisher at a roast. It's me being funny. I'm not trying to sexually harass people," he said at the time. "I didn't grab anybody's genitals," he continued, but he did not deny that he propositioned others. "Of course I'm going to proposition people. I'm single, depressed, lonely and trying to get a date. They can just say no, and they probably did and then I was done."
A version of this story first appeared in the July 11 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.
