EXCLUSIVE: From Actor To Fashionista -- Gary Coleman Planned A Kids Clothing Line
June 23 2010, Published 8:46 a.m. ET
Gary Coleman might not have been the most fashion forward star, but according to his ex-wife the pint-size actor had dreams to be the next fashion icon, RadarOnline.com has learned exclusively.
The day before he fell, Coleman told his ex-wife Shannon Price and his manager that he wanted to start a kids clothing line and write a tell-all book.
Coleman, who was 4-feet-8 inches high, had to wear kids clothes himself.
“I would buy him a size 10-12 shirt -- and I would buy my son the same thing. I thought it was so cute,” said Shielia Erickson, who was Gary’s agent and now represents his ex-wife Shannon.
He wanted it to design clothes that he could wear as well.
“He had his own fashion and his own style. He always wore winter boots, jeans, plain t-shirts and his cowboy hat.”
“The book and the clothing line were Gary’s ideas to help them get back on their feet,” said Shielia Erickson, who was Gary’s agent and now represents his ex-wife Shannon Price.
Erickson said she got a phone call from Coleman two days before his accident, asking her to help him write a book.
“I took notes on my laptop all day for five hours. And the next day he fell,” she said.
“Shannon sat on one side of the bed and Gary sat on the other—because he wasn’t feeling very well that day,” she said.
He dictated notes to Erickson “about his life, the people in this life, his parents, Dion (Mial), who he hadn’t talked to for months.”
Dion Mial was Gary’s former manager and was named executor in a will dated 1999.
Erickson said Coleman recounted his “bitter relationship” with his parents and planned to dish on it in the book.
“He really felt that the financial situation he was in --at the end of his life-- was due to them spending all of his money,” she said.
The 42-year-old star also talked to Erickson about his hit 80s show Diff’rent Strokes, the cast and being forced as a child to work with double pneumonia.
“He liked the first three years on the show, and after that he wanted to quit,” she said.
Even though Coleman is not alive to tell his story, Erickson said the book will be finished and 50 percent of the proceeds will be donated to a kidney foundation.
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Coleman was born with a congenital kidney ailment.
Now the book will be co-written by both Erickson and Price.
“It’ll be a my-life with Gary type of book from Shannon’s viewpoint,” revealed Erickson.
