Jaclyn Smith has revealed that her late “Charlie’s Angels” co-star Tanya Roberts once asked her to join a threesome with Roberts and her husband.
The 80-year-old actress, who played Kelly Garrett for all five seasons of the hit 1970s series, made the disclosure in her newly released memoir “I Once Knew a Guy Named Charlie.” Smith recalled that Roberts, who joined the show in its final season as Julie Rogers, approached her during a flight to Hawaii with the proposition.
Roberts “wasn’t shy about it in the least, or about propositioning people to ‘swing’ with them,” Smith wrote in the book. The offer came as part of Roberts’s open marriage to her husband, Barry Roberts, which Smith described as something her co-star discussed openly.
Smith declined the invitation. Still, she found something admirable in how Roberts handled the moment. Tanya’s “honesty about her sexuality” was “brave and self-aware,” Smith wrote.
The two actresses developed a strong friendship despite the unusual overture, bonding after Roberts came aboard the series in 1980. Their connection endured long after the show ended. When Roberts died in January 2021 at age 65, Smith posted a tribute on social media praising her for the “joy” she brought “to so many people” through her “Charlie’s Angels” role.
Roberts’s partner had told The Post that she died from a blood infection stemming from an initial urinary tract infection and Hepatitis C.
Smith’s memoir also pulls back the curtain on the darker side of the iconic series, which ran from 1976 to 1981 and made overnight household names of its original trio. “The more drug use I saw, the more time I spent in my motor home,” Smith wrote. “I was in there a lot by the end of the series.”
She drew a hard line for herself, however. Smith clarified that she’s “never” used cocaine and “never will,” adding that “I’ve watched that drug, in particular, turn people into the worst version of themselves.”
The show followed three female police academy graduates who abandoned desk jobs to work as private investigators for an unseen millionaire, Charlie Townsend. Smith was the only cast member to appear in all five seasons. She originally starred opposite Farrah Fawcett and Kate Jackson before cast changes reshaped the lineup.
Fawcett, who played Jill Munroe, left after just one season and was replaced by Cheryl Ladd. Jackson departed in 1979 and was replaced by Shelley Hack, who was then replaced by Roberts for the show’s final run.
Despite the behind-the-scenes turbulence and the cast rotations, Smith writes that her bond with her original co-stars remained unshakable. Fawcett died in 2009, but the connection they forged during the show’s peak stayed with Smith.
“After the applause, the friendship is still there,” she writes. “That sisterhood was strong.”
The memoir marks Smith’s most extensive public reflection on the series that defined her career and the complex relationships formed under its spotlight. From Roberts’s unfiltered openness about her open marriage to the drug culture Smith observed from a distance, the book offers a candid portrait of life inside one of television’s most famous sets.
Smith continues to promote “I Once Knew a Guy Named Charlie” with appearances tied to the release.