In an excerpt from Chris Kattan’s memoir, released in May, the comedian claimed that director Amy Heckerling had sexually coerced him on multiple occasions during A Night at the Roxbury’s production process. Among other allegations, Kattan said his former SNL boss, Lorne Michaels, directly pressured him to sleep with Heckerling to ensure she would direct the film. (She ultimately didn’t, serving only as a producer.) Now, speaking for the first time about the claims, Heckerling is decisively dismissing them. In a new interview with the Daily Beast, she said she hadn’t even bothered reading Kattan’s excerpt. “He’s a nut. You know, I don’t comment about that, because basically I have no interest in helping his book sales. I don’t even want to know or hear the dumb shit he came up with,” Heckerling said. “No, I have nothing to say about him or his idiot book. I don’t feel like helping him at all.”
Previously, Heckerling’s daughter, Mollie, posted a statement to social media denying Kattan’s coercion claims. “During the actual shoot, she and Chris became close and he would call our house every night to talk to her for hours about how he felt like he wasn’t getting the best sketches on SNL,” she wrote. “She and Chris started having an affair but, as far as I know, it wasn’t until shooting was well under way.” Mollie later gave a clarifying statement to Vulture, saying this whole situation was “kind of a mess”:
“I feel bad for multiple reasons about it — especially since I am a die-hard supporter of MeToo and definitely don’t want to seem insensitive to so many people’s accounts of sexual misconduct.” She added that her mother is an “extraordinarily private person” and that “she didn’t want to comment on this because she felt as though her responding would further fuel the story.” She also hoped that all of the involved parties would speak up: “I really wish Lorne Michaels would step forward.”
SNL also denied Kattan’s allegations about Michaels, saying in a statement, “This did not happen.”
