From drug battles to incestuous affair: Inside the life of Bijou Philips’ sisters
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA: American actress Bijou Phillips was joined by her half-sister Chynna and the latter’s husband Billy Baldwin, as she broke down in tears inside a Los Angeles courtroom after her husband, Danny Masterson, was found guilty on two out of three counts of rape, on Wednesday, May 31. Phillips has been married to Masterson since 2011 and shares daughter Fianna Francis with him.
Following the verdict, the ‘That '70s Show’ star was denied bail and immediately led away in handcuffs. As he is set to face nearly 30 years of jail, Phillips is set to face the challenge of raising her child as a single mother. Prior to the latest tragedy in her married life, Phillips, who is an actress, singer, model, and socialite, has faced several such traumas alongside her sisters Mackenzie and Chynna.
Who is Mackenzie Phillips?
Mackenzie is an American actress and singer and the daughter of The Mamas & the Papas frontman John Phillips and his wife, Susan Stuart Adams. She is the sister of Jeffrey Phillips and a half-sister of Tamerlane Phillips, Bijou, and Chynna. She was born on November 10, 1959, in Alexandria, Virginia. The singer-actress reportedly Phillips performed as a singer and toured with a re-formed version of The Mamas & the Papas, known as The New Mamas and The Papas from the mid-1980s to the early 1990s.
She earned her breakthrough playing Carol Morrison in the 1973 film ‘American Graffiti’ and rose to further fame after bagging the role of Julie Mora Cooper Horvath on the sitcom ‘One Day at a Time'. Mackenzie also starred as Molly Phillips on the Disney Channel supernatural series ‘So Weird’ and and appeared in the 2002 Disney original film ‘Double Teamed.’ She also guest-starred on episodes of ‘ER', ‘Without a Trace', ‘7th Heaven', ‘Cold Case', and ‘Beverly Hills', '90210'.
Mackenzie has been married three times, to rock group manager Jeffrey Sessler, rock guitarist Shane Fontayne (from 1986 to 2000), and to Keith Levenson, respectively. She shares her son Shane Barakan with Fontayne. In 2022, the 63-year-old came out as bisexual and revealed she has dated both men and women.
Who is Chynna Phillips?
Chynna is an American singer and actress, the daughter of The Mamas & the Papas frontman and his second wife Michelle Phillips. She was born on February 12, 1968, and is half-sister to Mackenzie and Bijou. Chynna appeared in films such as ‘Say Anything', 'Some Kind of Wonderful'. and 'Caddyshack II'. She also starred as the title character Roxanne Pulitzer in the 1989 television biographical film, ‘Roxanne: The Prize Pulitzer'.
She also appeared as Kim MacAfee in the television movie ‘Bye Bye Birdie’ and voiced the character of Kitty along with her husband William Baldwin as Johnny 13 in several episodes of ‘Danny Phantom.’ Chynna competed on the thirteenth season of ‘Dancing with the Stars’ with two-time finalist Tony Dovolani. She formed the trio with her childhood friends Carnie and Wendy Wilson in the late 1980s and the group released their self-titled debut album in 1990. Chynna released her debut solo album, ‘Naked and Sacred,’ in 1995. The 55-year-old has been married to Baldwin since 1995. The couple shares three children together, daughters Jameson and Brooke and son Vance.
A look into the tragic lives of the Philipps sisters
While all three of the Philipps sisters, Mackenzie, Chynna, and Bijou, have experienced a fair share of fame, their lives have also been shrouded by tragedies, controversies, and traumatic experiences. In her 2009 memoir ‘High on Arrival,’ Mackenzie made a bombshell revelation, claiming that she had a 10-year incestuous relationship with her father.
The actress alleged that her father first raped her when she was 19 years old, the night before the wedding. She said she even fell pregnant but had an abortion as she was unsure if the child belonged to her father or her then-husband, Jeff Sessler, who was unaware of the situation. Mackenzie opened up about her struggle with addiction and said that her physical relationship with her father became consensual for nearly a decade.
The singer also accused her father of introducing her to heroin during her teens and claimed that he made her arm numb by missing the vein while trying to inject the drug into her. “I had tons of pills, and dad had tons of everything, too. Eventually I passed out on dad's bed. My father was not a man with boundaries. He was full of love, and he was sick with drugs,” she wrote in her memoir.
“I woke up that night from a blackout to find myself having sex with my own father. Had this happened before? I didn't know. All I can say is it was the first time I was aware of it,” Mackenzie added. “For a moment I was in my body, in that horrible truth, and then I slid back into a blackout,” she mentioned. The actress told Oprah that her father taught her to roll joints when she was 10 and she tried cocaine for the first time at 11.
Speaking of the incestuous affair, she said, “We're touring, and I begin waking up after drug-fueled events with my pants around my ankles and my father sleeping beside me. Again, [I thought]: ‘Don't think. Don't look. Just keep going.’ And this happened over time. It didn't happen every day. It didn't happen every week, but it certainly happened,” she explained. The relationship finally came to an end when she became pregnant. However, Mackenzie continued to struggle with drug usage.
Her addiction even led to the actress being fired from ‘One Day At A Time’ in the early 1980s. She even pleaded guilty to possessing cocaine after she was arrested at Los Angeles International Airport in 2008. As part of her plea deal, Mackenzie agreed to complete an 18-month drug treatment program. She eventually became a substance use counselor at the LA treatment facility Breathe Life Healing Centers in 2016.
Similar to Mackenzie, Chynna also struggled with addiction as a teenager. During her appearance on ‘Dancing With The Stars’ in 2017, she revealed that she became an addict to “put a bandage on my emotions.” “My relationship - or lack thereof - with my dad, really impacted me as a child. I had a lot of abandonment issues, and I just didn't understand why I couldn't have a father around like some of my other friends did,” Chynna once told TV Guide.
“At the time, everyone was keeping me from the big secret: that my dad had this drug addiction. I felt so hurt and scarred on the inside, that I ended up turning to drugs and alcohol as a teenager, to put a bandage on my emotions. I didn't know how to deal and that was just me trying to cope,” she added. While Chynna eventually got her life together and focused on raising her children with her husband, she had to check into rehab to treat her anxiety in 2010.
Bijou’s own struggles were not any different from her sisters. She was legally emancipated from her drug-addicted parents when she was just 14 years old. The move came after she spent years in foster care from the age of three “because her parents were unfit” to look after her. “They spent years and years fighting for custody, so I bounced around a lot,” the actress wrote in an Instagram post in 2018. After her emancipation, Bijou left school and got her own apartment right near Fifth Avenue which was looked after by a housekeeper. She eventually turned to a party lifestyle and consumed drugs like coke, ecstasy, and heroin.
“I was 14 years old. What was I supposed to do?” Bijou The Guardian in 2002. “If you were 14 years old and able to live on your own in an apartment in New York City, and you got invited to all these clubs, and you got a bank account and you had a car service you could call so that you could go wherever you wanted... what would happen?” she added. Eventually, her father encouraged her to get sober and sent her to rehab at 17 after her friend, 20-year-old socialite Davide Sorrenti died from a heroin overdose.