LaVona Fay Golden, the mother of disgraced figure skater Tonya Harding, denied consistently abusing Harding, while saying that drinking scenes in the new biopic film “I, Tonya” are not accurate.
During the 1994 U.S. Figure Skating Championships in Detroit, Harding hired a man to injure skating competitor Nancy Kerrigan’s right leg so she would be unable to compete in the 1994 Winter Olympics.
Golden said that she did, however, spank “her once with a hairbrush” during a skating competition.
In the movie, it shows Golden throwing a steak knife that lodged in her arm.
“I was about 10 feet from her,” Harding later told ABC News. “It was a steak knife.”
But Golden said that the incident never took place.
“Why would I throw a steak knife at anybody?” Golden said. “She’s lied so much she doesn’t know what isn’t a lie anymore.”
In another instance, Golden denied drinking alcohol with her coffee, as is portrayed in the film.
“I would have coffee and sometimes I would put brandy flavoring in it,” Golden said, adding that it wasn’t really alcohol.
Allison Janney recently won a Golden Globe for her portrayal of Golden.
In the ABC News interview, Golden also recalls when Harding stepped out on the ice for the first time.
“Whatever the other people were doing, she turned around right behind them and did the same thing,” Golden said. “She wasn’t supposed to be able to do any of it, but she just went and did it.”
“Tonya was my little dynamo,” she added. “I called her my little twinkle, my little star.”
She also said they had a modest family life.
“Tonya herself called us trailer trash. We were never trailer trash. We had a beautiful new trailer,” Golden added. “We didn’t live in filth or dirt or anything that I would call unusual.”
Golden also said that she worked as a waitress, cook, and bartender.
