Two of 7th Heaven actor Stephen Collins’ co-stars hear him confess to the sexual assaults of multiple children for the first time in a new Investigation Discovery docuseries Hollywood Demons.
The first episode of the weekly series, which airs on ID Mar. 24 at 9 p.m. ET and will be available to stream on Max, focuses on Collins and the fallout from the revelations, featuring interviews with one of Collins’ victims, April Price (who was 13 when she says he sexually abused her), along with actors Jeremy London and Kyle Searles, who each appeared alongside Collins in the long-running family drama.
Both London and Searles say they had heard of the accusations against Collins, who plays a reverend and the Camden family patriarch Eric Camden, but neither had heard his confessions to the crimes in his own words.
The first confession to the sexual assaults of three girls comes in the form of a secretly recorded tape from a therapy session with Collins’ and his then-wife Faye Grant that was released to the press in 2014. Later, Collins would also admit the assaults publicly, most notably in an interview with ABC News. He was never charged for the abuse, however, because the cases were beyond the statute of limitations.
“Stephen Collins was most certainly America’s dad,” London, also known for his lead role in the 1995 comedy Mallrats, says in the docuseries, before hearing the tapes. “I mean, I wanted him to be my dad. I still want him to be my dad,” he continued, not quite ready to condemn the former colleague he’d looked up to.
London’s time on the show ended when he was “fired,” he says, following a DUI arrest in 2010. The now 52-year-old was ostracized for allegedly battering his ex-wife, he adds, weeping as he recalls the fallout around his new identity as “a bad person.” He then tells Demons producers he’s hesitated to believe what’s been said about Collins because, “I was put in the same position and I didn’t do anything.”
London characterizes the accusations against his former co-star as “messing with somebody that I love and care about.” To “see anybody messing with him, it still makes my blood boil,” he continues.
His tone changes drastically in the doc, however, when producers play him a recording of Collins confessing to the assaults of several young victims, with one as young as 10 years old. “Its tough. It’s hard,” London says later, reacting to the tape. “I’m a dad, first and foremost, above everything else. And so my first thoughts always go to the children. Stephen Collins would be a dead man if that was my child.”
London wasn’t the only 7th Heaven actor to have his mind changed from hearing the recording for the first time in the series. Though Collins’ confessions had been widely circulated for years, the doc reveals that some of Collins’ co-stars had put their “head in the sand,” as London describes it.
Kyle Searles, who played Mac on the show for its last four seasons, has a similar experience in the episode. He first speaks of admiring Collins just as London did.
“He would drive to work in a beautiful Toyota Prius every single morning,” Searles recalls, “when the man was making enough money that he could have been driving up in a Bentley. He could have been decked out dressed in the nines, but he was wearing what Jay Leno typically wears, with the blue jeans shirt and jeans,” he continues. “I always felt like I want to be like that. I need to model myself after him more.” The next viewers see of Searles, he’s standing tearfully in front of a laptop, from which he’s just listened to Collins' confess to the assaults.
“This is the first time that I’ve ever thought that he’s full of s--t,” Searles says. “I have like, a knot in my stomach. My whole world changed when I had kids, my whole world view. And certainly my tolerance for this. I think that goes without being said.” He adds, “I just think that maybe I put him up on a professional pedestal a bit too much.”
Collins' other co-stars, Beverley Mitchell, David Gallagher and Mackenzie Rosman, addressed the accusations against him during their 7th Heaven rewatch podcast in September. “We do think it’s important that we say something about Stephen Collins,” Mitchell said at the time, adding, “We do not excuse or condone his behavior” and clarifying that none of the three actors “any inappropriate experiences with Stephen.”
