When the cameras stopped rolling, these sitcom stars got into serious legal trouble. Some of them have managed to clean up their acts, while others remain firmly behind bars.
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00:00When the cameras stopped rolling, these sitcom stars got into serious legal trouble. Some
00:05of them have managed to clean up their acts, while others remain firmly behind bars.
00:09After joining the cast of Full House in 1988 for the show's second season, Lori Loughlin
00:14wound up staying on permanently as Becky Donaldson, the love interest and eventual wife of Uncle
00:18Jesse. She reprised the role a few decades later on the Netflix reboot Fuller House,
00:23but then she was dropped from the sequel series after it emerged that she was involved in
00:26a large criminal enterprise. In 2019, the United States Department of Justice made arrests
00:31in a long-simmering operation called Operation Varsity Blues. Dozens of people allegedly
00:36paid heavy sums to fixers to ensure that their children were admitted to selective universities,
00:41such as Stanford, Yale, and Southern California. One of the most famous names on the arrest
00:45logs was Loughlin.
00:46She and her husband reportedly provided $500,000 to operatives to make sure that their daughters
00:51were admitted to Southern Cal by making it seem that they were crew team recruits, when
00:55in fact, they didn't participate in the sport. In 2020, Loughlin entered a guilty plea for
00:59one count of conspiracy to commit wire and mail fraud, and was convicted and sentenced
01:04to two months in prison. She served her time at the Federal Correctional Institution in
01:07Dublin, California. After her time behind bars, she managed to make comedy out of her
01:12life of crime by guest-starring as herself on an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm.
01:17A handicap sticker?
01:18It's fantastic. I can park anywhere.
01:21How'd you get that?
01:23Oh, you know.
01:25After landing her breakthrough role on the short-lived but acclaimed Sports Night in 1998,
01:30Felicity Huffman became a TV superstar in the 2000s. Beginning in 2004, she played overwhelmed
01:35mother of four Lynette Scavo on ABC's soapy comedy-drama Desperate Housewives, and she
01:40won an Emmy for her performance in 2005. The following year, she was Oscar-nominated for
01:45Transamerica, but then her career was derailed after she was implicated in a federal investigation.
01:50Like Lori Loughlin, Huffman was among the 50 individuals tied to Operation Varsity Blues.
01:55She ultimately confessed to making a payment of $15,000 to a college admissions test administrator
02:00to provide her daughter extra time to finish. She was also reportedly planning on trying to
02:04outright fix another daughter's SAT exam answers. She ended up entering a guilty plea to one count
02:09of conspiracy to commit mail fraud and honest services mail fraud, which resulted in a
02:14conviction. Huffman's sentence included a $30,000 fine, 250 hours of community service,
02:19and a two-week prison stay. She completed her prison term at the Federal Correctional
02:23Institution in Dublin, California in late 2019.
02:27I want to use my experience and what I've gone through and the pain to bring something good.
02:35Tim Allen starred on one of the biggest sitcoms of the 1990s, Home Improvement,
02:39as an incompetent father, husband, and the host of his own DIY TV show.
02:43Before his television career, Allen was a stand-up comedian, and before that,
02:47he made his money by trafficking drugs. In 1978, authorities arrested a 23-year-old
02:52Allen at the Kalamazoo-Battle Creek International Airport in Michigan for
02:56possession of over 650 grams of cocaine. He then faced a lengthy prison sentence of up to life in
03:01prison. However, he instead agreed to cooperate with the prosecution, as he provided the names
03:06of higher-ups in the trafficking organization. He entered a guilty plea and received a reduced
03:10sentence of three to seven years. After spending two years and four months at the Federal
03:14Correctional Institution in Sandstone, Minnesota, Allen was released on parole in the summer of 1981.
03:20Charles S. Dutton was one of the best-known stage actors of the 1980s. And then, in 1991,
03:25he moved to the small screen to headline Rock, a Gritty Fox sitcom about a gruff Baltimore garbage
03:30man feuding with his family. The show embraced its star's background and went fully theatrical
03:35in the middle of its run when it became the first sitcom in decades to be broadcast live.
03:39Dutton first became interested in theater in 1972 when a friend sent him a play script to read
03:44while he was in prison. He produced the work with fellow inmates, and after getting out on parole in
03:481976, he studied at the Yale School of Drama. Dutton spent a total of about a decade in some
03:53type of prison, first in a juvenile reform school, and then at the Maryland State Penitentiary.
03:58The main charge on record was for manslaughter, as he'd gotten into a fight with a knife-wielding
04:03man and endured seven stab wounds. That charge brought with it 18 months in prison. But that
04:08wasn't the last of Dutton's convictions, as he landed behind bars again for possession of a
04:12deadly weapon. Kelsey Grammer is virtually synonymous with the character of Dr. Frasier
04:17Crane. He originated the parts of the stuffy psychiatrist on Cheers before being spun off
04:21into his own sitcom in 1993, and then returning to play the role on a Frasier reboot beginning in
04:262023. But despite his legendary TV stardom, Grammer was also experiencing alcohol and
04:32substance abuse issues that led to serious legal difficulties. In 1987, he was arrested for driving
04:37while intoxicated. He entered a no-contest plea and avoided incarceration by agreeing to participate
04:42in a rehab program. He didn't report to it, though, leading a California judge to issue a
04:47new arrest warrant in 1990. This time, Grammer was sentenced to 10 days of community service by
04:52picking up garbage on a highway, as well as 30 days in jail, though he was released after just
04:5614 due to overcrowding. On the same day, he went before another court for a different case.
05:02For failing to complete court-ordered rehab after he was arrested and charged with possession of
05:06cocaine, he received a sentence of 90 days of house arrest.
05:10What about you, Kelsey? Any words?
05:11Forgive yourself.
05:13Running from 1978 to 1986, Different Strokes was a massive hit that made stars out of its
05:18young cast, including Todd Bridges, who played Willis Jackson, a kid from Harlem adjusting to
05:23his new life on Tony Park Avenue. After Different Strokes ended, Bridges struggled to find work and
05:28felt increasingly despondent over personal and professional issues. He'd also begun using drugs
05:32while the show was still on the air. In 1989, following a six-week period of daily heavy
05:37cocaine use, Bridges was arrested and tried for shooting a drug dealer eight times. A jury
05:42ultimately acquitted him of attempted murder, which carried a maximum sentence of seven years
05:46in prison. Instead, he spent a mere nine months incarcerated while awaiting his trial.
05:51And I realized that something had to change.
05:54That 70s show brought a real-life 70s icon on board when Tommy Chong joined the cast in 1999.
06:00He played Leo, a forgetful and spaced-out old hippie. In other words, he was basically
06:04playing himself — or at least, the version of himself that was one half of the comedy
06:08duo Cheech and Chong. In real life, Chong capitalized on his reputation by forming
06:12Nice Dreams Enterprises, which sold glass pipes and other items implicitly designed
06:16for consuming marijuana. That got him in the crosshairs of the Drug Enforcement Administration,
06:21which arrested more than 50 people in a 2003 sting called Operation Pipe Dreams.
06:26Mr. Chong, do you have any marijuana in the house? And I said, yeah.
06:31After a year of investigation, Chong was arrested and entered a guilty plea.
06:35He was then sentenced to nine months in federal prison, which he ultimately found wasn't that
06:39terrible an experience. As he revealed on the It Happened in Hollywood podcast,
06:43You get a computer. You get a nice, comfortable cubicle. You're in there with nice, intelligent
06:47people. Danny Masterson made quite the impression on that 70s show viewers as sarcastic rebel Stephen
06:53Hyde. While some of his co-stars eventually left, he stayed on for the show's entire eight-season
06:58run. He and Ashton Kutcher would later reunite on the Netflix sitcom The Ranch, beginning in 2016.
07:04But Masterson was eventually dropped from the cast of that show following an investigation
07:08into allegations that multiple women brought against him. In 2020, Los Angeles police arrested
07:13Masterson and booked him on three counts of rape. He was released after a $3.3 million bail payment.
07:18The first time he was prosecuted, the proceedings ended in a mistrial. But then,
07:22in a new hearing in May 2023, a jury found him guilty of two rape charges.
07:27Later that year, he was sentenced to a term of 30 years to life. As of 2024,
07:31he's incarcerated at the California Men's Colony Prison in San Luis Obispo, California.
07:37In the 2010s, Chris Tavares had recurring parts on two popular cable sitcoms,
07:41Tyler Perry's TBS show Meet the Browns and the Disney Channel series Casey Undercover.
07:46On the latter, he played Darian, the love interest of a teenage spy played by Zendaya.
07:50Offscreen, though, his life was a little rockier. In 2019, he was arrested in the Los Angeles area
07:56following a heated argument with his domestic partner that escalated into physical violence.
08:00Tavares allegedly aggressively pushed his girlfriend with such force that she struck
08:04her head and was diagnosed with a concussion. Booked on a felony charge of domestic violence
08:08in November 2019, he was later convicted and sentenced to alcohol rehab, a year of domestic
08:13violence awareness courses, and five years of probation to be served following a 300-day jail
08:18sentence. Dustin Diamond passed away in February 2021 at age 44 from an aggressive form of cancer,
08:25tragically bringing to end a life that began with child stardom and then was filled with
08:28turmoil and legal problems. Diamond's acting career consisted almost entirely of playing
08:33goofy nerd Samuel Screech Powers on Saved by the Bell and its various spinoffs.
08:37His personal life, meanwhile, was filled with struggle.
08:41I felt lost.
08:42On Christmas night 2014, Diamond got into a violent altercation at a bar in Port
08:47Washington, Wisconsin, stabbing a man with a folding knife blade and then fleeing the scene
08:51of the crime with his fiancée. The victim recovered from a wound to his right underarm.
08:55In June of the following year, Diamond was found guilty of misdemeanor counts of disorderly conduct
08:59and carrying a concealed weapon. His sentence included 15 months' probation and four months
09:04in jail. He was granted parole after three months served, though he returned to jail
09:08briefly in May 2016 for violating the terms of his probation.
09:12He was pretty much the biggest TV star in America in the 1980s thanks to The Cosby Show,
09:17which aired on NBC from 1984 to 1992. But offscreen, the man known as America's Dad
09:22was allegedly engaging in some abominable behavior for decades. A total of 60 women
09:27have accused Cosby of various acts of sexual assault from the 1960s until the mid-2000s,
09:32although he has generally claimed that these encounters were consensual.
09:36Statute of limitations laws have precluded Cosby being tried for most of these cases,
09:40but not all of them. Andrea Constand, who was working for the Temple University women's
09:44basketball team at the time of her encounter with Cosby, alleged that he invited her to his home
09:48in 2004, where he drugged and then sexually assaulted her. The trial ended in a conviction
09:53in 2018, with the actor found guilty on three charges of aggravated indecent assault.
09:58Set to serve as many as 10 years, Cosby ultimately spent only three years at a prison in Pennsylvania
10:03before he was released in 2021. The state's Supreme Court vacated the conviction because
10:08it believed that he hadn't received a fair trial.
10:11Stoney Westmoreland had a variety of TV guest parts to his name in the 90s and early 2000s,
10:15before eventually landing his best-known and longest-lasting role in 2017 as Ham,
10:20grandfather to the title character on Disney Channel's coming-of-age series Andy Mack.
10:24But then his involvement in that show ended in 2018, following an arrest in Salt Lake City.
10:29Police successfully captured Westmoreland via a sting operation. He believed that he
10:33was meeting up with a 13-year-old, but it turned out that it was actually an
10:36undercover law enforcement official. Released from jail in 2019,
10:39Westmoreland headed back behind bars for a few days in January 2020 after violating his parole,
10:45as he ignored a deadline to turn over his digital devices for inspection of criminal activity,
10:49and authorities weren't able to access a room in his house. By 2022,
10:53he was sentenced to two years in federal prison.
10:55If you or anyone you know has been a victim of sexual assault, help is available. Visit the
11:00Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network website or contact RAINN's National Helpline at 1-800-656-HOPE,
11:074673.