The ups and downs of Gary Coleman’s life are being examined in the new documentary, GARY.
Diving deeper into the child actor’s success on Diff’rent Strokes and, ultimately, his titular Gary Coleman Show, the Peacock documentary offers a look into each era of his life leading up to his death.
“Even when I was 5, I was the ‘do or die, never say die,’ the tenacious, ‘I’ll be back’ kind of person,” Coleman once described himself. When he was just eight-years-old, Coleman was discovered by the late Norman Lear. His theatrical agent at the time, Victor Perulo, said he had never seen a child actor with such wit.
Lear had sent out casting agents to different cities, and when Coleman went to his audition in his hometown of Zion, Illinois, he ended up staying for three hours “reading with everybody.” The casting director then “insisted that Lear” see Coleman, and the rest is history.
He had a rare condition where he lived without kidneys
Stunting his growth at just 4 feet and 8 inches, Coleman was born with a congenital kidney defect. Although he received a transplant when he was 5-years-old, by the time he reached 17, his body had “absorbed” the only kidney he had.
“From December 31 of 1985 until his death, Gary lived without a single kidney in his body,” his former manager Dion Mial said. “He then started on dialysis.”
“I can recall showing up to set one day and Gary was in the middle of the scene, completed the scene, bent over and threw up,” Dial shared. “He fundamentally never knew what it was to be fully healthy.”
His mother, Edmonia, said despite his health challenges, Coleman always had a “spirit” about him where he had the mindset that “I’m gonna do what I wanna do regardless.”
He struggled with his mental health
In addition to his physical health, Coleman also struggled with his mental health. Mial shared that one night around 10:30 p.m., several years after finding fame as a child actor, he received a concerning call from Coleman after he stopped getting roles due to his age. “He said ‘Well, I just wanted to call you to say goodbye. I cant take this anymore, it’s not worth living, I’m going to kill myself,’” Mial claimed.
When he reached Coleman’s house, Mial recounted seeing him “sitting alone with a keyboard and he was just tapping single notes at a time.”
“If someone had told me that my life would be like this early enough where I could’ve gotten out, I would’ve got out,” Coleman said in a 1993 interview on Lamack & Company Live. “I would’ve had a normal life.”
He had multiple run ins with the law
Having always dreamed of becoming a police officer, Coleman eventually found a job as a security guard. His friend Anna Gray said this made him “ecstatic,” but it quickly went wrong. “She said, ‘Can you put something nice?’” an onlooker said in an interview at the time, adding that the woman wanted a message for her son. “He took it and ripped it up and was like, ‘Well for what? This doesn’t mean anything.’ And she said, ‘I can see how you didn’t make it as an adult actor, just a child actor,’ and he punched her in the eye.”
Coleman was arrested on assault charges, which Mial said led him to become even more depressed, explaining, “He constantly referred to himself as God’s punching bag. He felt like one of life’s jokes.”
Later, Coleman rekindled his relationship with ex-wife Shannon Price, and the two decided to move to Utah after Coleman found it more peaceful to live a normal life there. Those who knew them described their relationship as “toxic,” even resulting in Coleman attempting to take out restraining orders, but never following through.
“I know the police had been there quite a few times to domestic issues,” friend Brandy Buys claimed. “They both laid their hands on each other.”
His team took his money without his knowledge
Coleman was estranged from his parents and business team from his childhood acting days after he allegedly discovered misuse of his bank accounts. “I very clearly expressed to him that I felt that some of the business people in his life were completely insincere, that they were duplicitous with him, because I heard very frequently, ‘Gary’s a little jerk, thank God he pays us a good salary,’” Mial claimed he told his former client.
In a video clip, Coleman can be heard saying he decided to look into his finances, and fired his entire team.
“Enough of all of you people, I’m sick of all of you people, I don’t want to hear from any of you people,” he said about them in an interview at the time. “I want accounting, I want it now.” Coleman’s parents denied doing anything wrong, claiming they were just protecting their son’s money. His father, Willie, even claimed Mial was a “demon.”
After two years of investigations and a failed conservatorship attempt by his parents, Coleman’s finances were put back into his own hands. His attorney, Drew Rice, said the two had been shifting money from blocked safe accounts into investments, all of which failed.
His friends and family believe his ex-wife was involved in his death
On May 28, 2010, Coleman died from bleeding in his brain. Price, who had allegedly been living with him as a “roommate” rather than a spouse at time, claimed she was in bed when she asked him to make her food after he got home from dialysis.
“I was shocked that he was fixing her dinner after dialysis, because I’d seen how ill he was after — he was weak, he was sick and honestly, he just wanted to go take a nap,” Buys said. After hearing a “big loud boom,” Price said she found Coleman in a pool of blood on the kitchen floor. In the 911 call, she can be heard refusing to listen to the operator’s instructions to help him.
“I’m gagging. I got blood on myself, I can’t deal,” she said in one clip. When the operator asked if she could lift his head, Price replied, “No I can’t, it’s all bloody and I’m not trying to. He’s not with it.”
“I just thought he was gonna go to the hospital, get stitched up, come back, all is good,” Price claimed in the documentary. She said she went back to sleep and woke up to a call that “they were taking him to dialysis and he immediately went into cardiac arrest.”
Two days later, Price took Coleman off life support, prompting suspicion among friends and family about what had happened. Mial pointed out that Coleman “didn’t have that far to fall” given he was only 4 feet and 8 inches tall.
“We were absolutely stumped because there were way too many questions,” he said, adding, “With no answers.” Gray, who lived with Coleman before Price, expressed her confusion knowing what his wishes were.
“Gary had an advanced healthcare directive where he stated he wanted at least two weeks of care before any plugs were pulled, so I don’t understand why anyone would pull the plug two days later, not two weeks later,” she said.
“I personally, in my opinion, do not think that he fell,” Buys stated, adding she couldn’t say more. Price insisted she did not do anything to Coleman, maintaining, “I would never hurt my husband, ever.”