Mackenzie Phillips is defending her father John Phillips as "a good man", "the best dad ever" and "he had a whopper" despite her claims that they had an incestuous affair. But her stepmother Michelle Phillips says Phillips is lying about the affair and is just trying to cash in on her book, "High On Arrival".
The 49-year-old former child actress writes in her new book that she had a decade-long sexual relationship with her father, and alleges they had sex on the night before she was to get married at age 19.
She writes in her book: "I woke up that night from a blackout to find myself having sex with my own father." John Phillips, was the leader of the 1960s group the Mamas and the Papas.
Mackenzie, who starred on TV's "One Day at a Time," said the sexual relationship with her father lasted a decade.
"So you just told us that."
"It was ten years alright."
Interviewed on NBC's "Today" show Thursday, Phillips said it was "a very permissive time and a very rock 'n' roll world and pretty much anything went." Her father "did the best he could," she said. "after all, he was getting old."
But her stepmother (and former Mamas and the Papas member) Michelle Phillips sharply differs with the sexual allegations.
"I have every reason to believe none of this is true," she told the Hollywood Reporter. "Mackenzie has a lot of mental illness. She's had a needle stuck up her arm for 35 years. She was arrested for heroin and coke just recently. She did 'Celebrity Rehab' and now she writes a book. The whole thing is timed."
Also, Genevieve Waite, John Phillips' wife at the time of the alleged abuse and Mackenzie's stepmother, said in a statement released later today, "John was a good man who had the disease of alcoholism and drug addiction. He was incapable, no matter how drunk or drugged he was, of having such a relationship with his own child."
"The last time?", Mackenzie replied to another question after the show. "I think it was on my birthday in 2002."
"But he died in March, 2001."
"Yeah? No wonder he had to take a pill."
