HOLLYWOOD, Calif. — Michelle Phillips is continuing to lash out at her stepdaughter Mackenzie Phillips, who claimes she had a decade-long sexual relationship with her father, rock legend John Phillips of the Mamas and the Papas.
"I'm so embarrassed—and mad," the 65-year-old Michelle Phillips tells Vanity Fair. "At Oprah, at the publisher, and at Mackenzie, who should be on a psychiatrist's couch, not on TV."
Michelle Phillips, an original Mamas and the Papas bandmate, divorced John Phillips in 1970 and said she isn't ready to believe the accusations against her ex.
"Is this all true? We'll never know, because she waited until John was dead," she said.
The former "Knots Landing" star also said she was upset by the number of people hurt by the accusations in her family.
"If you're going to make these accusations and they don't hurt anyone living, that's one thing. But Mackenzie has affected the lives of all her nieces and nephews, who are not going to school today and are staying home sobbing instead," she said. "And the book has come out just at the time that Chynna [a onetime member of the group Wilson Phillips] has to go out on the road with her new album [of Christian music], Chynna and Vaughan. She said, 'Mom, what am I gonna do—not promote my album?' So she's going out today, head held high."
Michelle Phillips has lashed out on several occasions since Mackenzie Phillips first went public with the sex claims while promoting her new book "High on Arrival" on Wednesday's "Oprah Winfrey Show."
"Mackenzie has a lot of mental illness," she told Roger Friedman of The Hollywood Reporter earlier this week. "She's had a needle stuck up her arm for 35 years. ... She did 'Celebrity Rehab,' and now she writes a book. The whole thing is timed."
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