Charlie’s Angels and That ’70s Show are two of Tanya Roberts’s most well-known shows. She was one of the funniest and sexiest actresses of her day.
Unfortunately, there was a lot of confusion about her unexpected death because her partner gave the wrong information, which made the loss of this energetic person even weird.
In the 1980s, Tanya Roberts, Jaclyn Smith, and Cheryl Ladd were the stars of the American TV show “Charlie’s Angels.”
Let’s remember all the great things Tanya Roberts done for the screen before we talk about the weird things that happened after she died.
In a world where her legacy seems to be going away, looking more closely at her tremendous career demonstrates how truly great she was. And I’m sure she made a lot of people who are reading this very happy.
Going away from home
Victoria Leigh Blum was born in 1949 and grew up in the harsh Bronx section of New York City. The child with ice-blue eyes lived with her mother and older sisters in a house that was falling apart. Roberts lived a humble life, but she had grandiose dreams of wearing fancy clothes, riding horses, living in a beautiful mansion, and shopping in limos. She wanted to be a Hollywood celebrity more than anything else.
She was only 15 when she bravely ran away to seek her dreams. This happened when her family moved to Toronto, where a terrible thing happened that kept Roberts away from them. Not long after her father died, Tanya felt like the walls were closing in on her.
She decided to leave home at that point. After a violent dispute with her mom, Roberts packed her things and moved to a flat in the Village, a neighborhood in Toronto. She taught “old guys” how to dance so they could pay her to have sex with them.
Not long after that, she met another boy named Colin who had also quit school. She loved him immediately away.
“It just happened.” It was a pointless, random thing that happened. Colin came from Canada, was two years older than me, had dropped out of school, and wasn’t doing anything. It started out as a love story but turned into hate. We were never friends. We didn’t get along at all. But you know I loved him. I was like a butterfly. I would say, “Oh my God!” as I looked at him. I answered the heart’s racing.
Tied the knot in secrecy
They were dating for seven months and got married without telling anyone. They moved to New York together, but Colin’s mom put an end to the marriage. Roberts and Colin were too young and didn’t ask their parents beforehand.
Roberts didn’t inform her mom about the wedding because she didn’t want to upset her. The relationship with Colin ended soon after, but Roberts met another guy who would change her life forever.
Tanya Roberts was in New York City trying to make it as an actress when she met Barry Roberts while waiting to see a movie. He drove a truck and earned $30 a week. She fell in love with him right away.
Tanya asked Barry to marry her at a subway station, and they did it in 1973. At first, her husband aspired to be a psychologist, but he dropped out of school to come up with concepts for a number of TV networks.
Tanya Roberts and her husband Barry Roberts traveled to the 21st Annual International Broadcasting Awards at the Century Plaza Hotel in Los Angeles, California, on March 3, 1981. Photo by Ron Galella/Ron Galella Collection via Getty Images
The two moved to Hollywood and said they would try to live as normally as possible.
In 1980, Tanya observed, “You know you’ve got the right guy when you can sit at home with him on Saturday night, just you and him and pizza.”
Tanya and Barry were happy and pleased for most of their life in their quiet, secluded residence in the Hollywood Hills.
In 2015, Tanya told Closer Weekly, “Living here is like being in the country, but civilization isn’t far away when I need it.” “I’ve always wanted this house.”
A spell on the show Charlie’s Angels
Tanya Roberts grew raised on the streets of the Bronx, which helped her obtain the character of Julie Roberts, a street-smart woman, in Charlie’s Angels. Before that, she was already a well-known model in TV ads and had important roles in off-Broadway musicals including Picnic and Antigone.
The world didn’t truly notice her until the summer of 1980, though.
Tanya was chosen from almost 2,000 individuals to fill in for Shelley Hack on the popular detective show Charlie’s Angels, which was having difficulties garnering viewers.
The creators felt that the energetic 26-year-old and her co-stars, Jaclyn Smith, the last original “Angel,” and Cheryl Ladd, would give the show a new lease on life. Because she was so charming and skilled, Tanya was motivated to help the show get better.
“I believe everyone is very excited to be on set.” We work together as a group. We need to get along well since it shows in our work. I don’t think it’s easy to put on a classy show every week for five years with three girls. “It’s not Shakespeare,” Roberts told The Daily Herald-Tribune in 1981, “but I think people look forward to seeing something new every week.”
Roberts, who considered herself a “workaholic,” couldn’t bring the show back, and Charlie’s Angels was canceled in 1981.
But her hard work and dedication opened up new doors in her career.
Nominated for the Golden Raspberry Award
Robert went on to star in a number of cult classics after Charlie’s Angels, including The Beastmaster (1982), Sheena: Queen of the Jungle (1984), Body Slam (1987), and Night Eyes (1990).
People mostly know her as Stacey Sutton in the 1985 James Bond movie A View to a Kill and as Midge Pinciotti on That ’70s Show, where she dazzled audiences from 1998 until 2004.
Tanya Roberts and Roger Moore were in the popular movie A View to a Kill. But critics weren’t totally sold. Moore himself admitted he was upset since it was his worst Bond movie because there was so much blood and violence.
People said the 57-year-old Hollywood veteran was too old for the part. He also made fun of the age gap by saying he was embarrassed to find out he was older than Roberts’ mother. In an interview in December 2007, he joked, “I was only about four hundred years too old for the part.”
People also said bad things about Tanya after her first Bond movie. It’s fascinating that she wasn’t the first choice for the role. Producers first wanted to hire Priscilla Presley, but she was busy with her Dallas contract. They even considered Barbara Bach, who used to be a Bond girl, but in the end they chose Tanya Roberts. She worked hard, yet she still got a Golden Raspberry Award for Worst Actress. But she lost the award to Linda Blair, who was in the movie Night Patrol.
He died, her spouse.
A lot of younger people know Tanya Roberts from her part as Midge Pinciotti on the hit TV sitcom That ’70s sitcom. She was a fan favorite on the show, but she had to leave after the third season.
Why? She wanted to be there for Barry, her husband, because he was very unwell. Barry died aged 60 after a long fight with encephalitis, which makes the brain tissue swell and can distort a person’s personality, produce seizures, and even cause paralysis.
Tanya and Barry were there for each other from their wedding in 1973 till Barry died in 2006. The couple didn’t have any kids.
A death that isn’t clear
In 2006, Tanya Roberts’s husband Barry died, which was very devastating. After that, she fell in love with Lance O’Brien. They met when Tanya was a spokesmodel for Tahiti Village, a resort in Las Vegas. It looked like they would be together forever, until things went horribly wrong in December 2020.
Tanya was 71 years old, yet she was still full of life. People knew her for trekking up the Hollywood Hills every day. They were “healthy as a horse,” and there were no signs of any serious health problems. But just before Christmas, Tanya’s lower intestines started to hurt and she had problems breathing.
When these symptoms showed up when she was out on a stroll, she thought it might be COVID-19. The next morning, she fell and couldn’t get up. They took her right away to Cedars-Sinai Hospital.
Tanya had a bad urinary tract infection that became worse and evolved into sepsis, the doctors said. The illness slowly spread to her liver, kidneys, and gallbladder, and in the end, her organs stopped working.
Tubes in her nose
“She was talking when I called 911.” O’Brien told the Daily Mail, “The next thing I know, she’s very sick and on oxygen in the ICU.”
When O’Brien eventually saw Tanya, she was barely awake and on a ventilator. The famous actress, who used to look great on screen, could only blink when her partner was there.
He said, “I felt good when she saw me and I was there.” “I saw her eyes open.” I said, “Hey, her eyes are opening.” Her eyes are opening. “They told me that’s just a reflex,” O’Brien said to Inside Edition.
It was sad and hectic for Tanya in her last days, which is too bad.
O’Brien was unhappy with how the hospital was treating Tanya. “That was the name they were calling her, Victoria, which she hasn’t been called since she was a teenager,” he claimed. She had tubes in her throat and nose. It was so busy that I can’t even begin to convey how nasty and awful it was.
“I think COVID had a lot to do with it,” O’Brien stated. “When you called the hospital, it sounded like something from the show M.A.S.H.”
Why did someone die?
Tanya’s condition deteriorated worse, and on January 3, 2021, they took her off life support. The well-known figure died on January 4.
But things became a lot worse when she died. At first, Tanya’s publicist said she had died too soon, which made things quite unclear.
Inside Edition’s live interview with O’Brien was odd because she found out she was still alive.
“Are you really saying she’s alive?” The hospital contacted O’Brien in the middle of the interview and he exclaimed, “Hello?” “The hospital is telling me she’s alive,” he remarked through tears. The ICU team is calling me.
Finally, all the confusion cleared up, and it was clear that Tanya Roberts had died. But it wasn’t the end of the blunders; a lot of sources reported she was 65 when she died, which was false. Even though she is really 71 years old, some news media still haven’t fixed this mistake, even though it has been three years.
Her last will
Tanya Roberts’s handwritten note provides a very personal and sad glimpse at her last thoughts. Fox News adds that Roberts left her whole inheritance, which is worth more than $3 million, to her long-time partner, Lance O’Brien. She signed the note with both her real name, Victoria Blum, and her Hollywood moniker, Tanya Roberts.
Tanya said, “I have no reason to live,” and she also made it clear that her sister Barbara Leary and her nephew Zack Leary would not get any of her money.
Roberts gave O’Brien everything instead, but the letter makes it sound like their relationship wasn’t as romantic as people thought.
“I want my best friend, Lance O’Brien, to have my house and everything in it. “I also want to leave my two dogs and my Pension Plan check to Lance O’Brien,” the actress wrote, as seen in images that Page Six got.
The part of the note that made me the saddest was when she said their relationship wasn’t going well. “I know you don’t love me, but you’ve been a good friend, and I’m [thankful] for that,” she wrote. “Don’t blame yourself for this.” Have a good life. “I was always [too] sensitive to live in this world.”
Even though Tanya Roberts’ last chapter was sad and confused, it’s important to remember how much light she poured into the world.
You can tell from old images of her, whether she’s on set, in her famous roles, or just hanging around behind the scenes, that she was not only stunningly beautiful but also quite independent.
At the age of 15, she knew exactly what she wanted to do with her life. After playing a Charlie’s Angel, Hollywood thought she was eternal, but what really set her apart was how she handled fame. Some people would have anticipated that Tanya would have a lot of bad things happen to her as she became famous, like bad roles or failed marriages. But she chose a different path.
She loved her husband, Barry Roberts, even while he was sick, and she even resigned her job to take care of him. That level of dedication and strength speaks a lot about what kind of woman she was.
We remember how graceful and strong she was and how much she meant to her fans and family as we look back at those early images and times.
