‘Charlie’s Angels’ actress Cheryl Ladd remembers late co-star Tanya Roberts: ‘She was outrageous and lovable’

Cheryl Ladd is still mourning the loss of her “Charlie’s Angels” co-star Tanya Roberts.

Roberts, who starred opposite Roger Moore in the 1985 James Bond film “A View to a Kill” and later appeared in the sitcom “That ‘70s Show,” passed away in 2021 – several hours after she was mistakenly declared dead by her publicist and partner. She was 65. Her cause of death was related to a urinary tract infection.

“It was a real shock,” Ladd recently told Closer Weekly. “Tanya’s hard to describe, but she was a lot of fun.”

In 1980, Roberts replaced Shelley Hack in “Charlie’s Angels,” joining Jaclyn Smith and Ladd as third Angel Julie.

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Cheryl Ladd (left) and Tanya Roberts in ‘Charlie’s Angels’, circa 1981. Photo by ABC Photo Archives/Disney General Entertainment Content via Getty Images

“She spoke like a truck driver,” Ladd, 70, recalled. “She just made Jaclyn and I laugh so hard. She was outrageous and lovable.”

Ladd noted that she has kept a close bond with Smith, 76, over the years.

“Jaclyn Smith and I talk all the time,” Ladd explained. “She’s a doll. Just a great girl and so fun. You know, for as elegant as she is, she’s also kooky and a goofball. We’d love to find the right project to work together on. A movie about two old friends and all the ups and downs of that relationship – how you can help each other out in good times and bad.”

Ladd said that over the years, she has relied on her faith to face the good times and bad.

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Tanya Roberts (left, with Jaclyn Smith, center, and Cheryl Ladd, right) passed away in 2021. Photo by ABC Photo Archives/Disney General Entertainment Content via Getty Images

“I’m a Christian,” she told the outlet. “So, I pray. I really turned a lot of myself and my soul and my pain over to the Lord. I find it so helpful for me that I don’t have to just trust myself. I trust that the Lord has a plan for me. He’s gotten me through all of the bad times, and he is with me joyfully when I’m in the good times. So for me, that has been my rock. I have never really been through it alone.”

In 2020, Ladd recalled to Fox News Digital how nervous she was to replace Farrah Fawcett in “Charlie’s Angeles.”

“Well, that was pretty daunting when Aaron [Spelling] asked me to do it the first time,” Ladd recalled at the time. “I said, ‘No thank you.’ But he wasn’t taking no for an answer. So he called me in and he said, ‘Why don’t you want to do it?… And I said, ‘Well, first of all, what would I play? Because nobody can walk in there and try to be Farrah Fawcett.’ Nobody can do that. That’s not going to work.’”

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“And he said, ‘No, I get that. I get that,’” Ladd continued. “I said, ‘I don’t know if I could be funny.’ And he said, ‘Why, couldn’t you be funny?’ I went, ‘Oh, I could be funny?’ And I said, ‘And if I’m the rookie and I make mistakes sometimes.’ Because Americans really pull for the underdog. They really like to see somebody try hard, and you want them to win. So we had those two elements. And then Aaron’s genius was when he said, ‘Well, why can’t you be Jill’s little sister then you’re part of the family already?’ So with the girls accept you then … So he was right. It worked. Thank heavens.”

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Cheryl Ladd said she has relied on her Christian faith to cope with tough times. Photo by Jamie McCarthy/Getty Images

Ladd also described how she developed a life-long friendship with Smith on set as they both got creative with their roles.

“I loved working with Jaclyn,” said Ladd. “Jaclyn and I are great friends to this day, and we see each other a lot. I think just that it was fun doing all the other characters, not just being one person throughout the series, but I got to be an ice skater. I mean we got to do so many things, hang gliding. We were doing something all the time that was very different, and that made it fun.”