TV

Lauren Lane of ‘The Nanny’ claims Wallace Shawn stuck his tongue in her ear

“The Nanny” star Lauren Lane claims Wallace Shawn made an unwanted sexual advance when he appeared as a guest star during the sitcom’s second season in 1994.

Lane, who played theater businesswoman C.C. Babcock in the Fran Drescher-starring CBS show, alleged that Shawn stuck his tongue in her ear as he said goodbye to her after a week of discussing “literature and writing and what it’s like to be a playwright.”

“I’m going to be f–king 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–king tongue in my ear,” she claimed to Vice on Thursday of the gross encounter.

“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.”

Daniel Davis, Fran Drescher, Charles Shaughnessy and Lauren Lane in "The Nanny."
Daniel Davis, Fran Drescher, Charles Shaughnessy and Lauren Lane all starred in “The Nanny.” CBS/Everett Collection

Lane, 60, told the outlet she didn’t think 77-year-old Shawn’s slip of the tongue was an accident but instead an unwanted “sexual advance.”

“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 said it spoke to a friend of Lane’s who confirmed the actress had recalled the incident to him in 2011.

Shawn, for his part, denied any wrongdoing in a statement to the publication.

“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?”