The self-promoting best friend of terminally ill Farrah Fawcett threatened to torpedo the Charlie’s Angel’s cancer documentary if the pal didn’t get more cash, according to court papers.
Alana Stewart, ex-wife of George Hamilton and Rod Stewart, made the talk-show rounds yesterday to hype the made-for-TV documentary “Farrah’s Story” as Fawcett’s longtime companion, Ryan O’Neal, discussed the possibility of a sequel.
“I wanted it to be a success, and I wanted it to be everything she wanted it to be,” Stewart, 64, told NBC’s “Today” show.
But the former model and bit actress didn’t discuss the hefty payday she allegedly demanded as a “producer” of the two-hour NBC special, which drew in 8.9 million viewers last Friday.
A source close to the production said Stewart, who appears on camera throughout “Farrah’s Story,” got $200,000 after she threatened to cancel the project.
Stewart had traveled with Fawcett to Germany for treatment for her advanced anal cancer.
“Basically, Alana Stewart filmed everything. She always had that camera running,” said Brett Hudson, a producer and singer with the 1970s group the Hudson Brothers who was being treated at the same Frankfurt clinic as Fawcett in late 2007.
Upon her return to the United States, Stewart threatened to withhold the footage unless her “co-producer” credit was upped to “producer” and her compensation doubled to $200,000, the source said.
Those allegations are also made in a lawsuit filed by Craig Nevius, a producer on the film who claims he was forced out by Stewart and O’Neal.
“Stewart demanded that her pay be doubled and she be given a ‘producer’ credit or she would not deliver video footage of Ms. Fawcett that she had shot for the program,” the suit filed in Los Angeles Superior Court says.
Nevius declined to elaborate.
Arnold Robinson, a spokesman for Stewart, called the allegations “absolutely untrue.”
O’Neal, who was not paid for “Farrah’s Story,” told The Post that he ordered Stewart to stop cooperating with Nevius.
“Almost a year ago, we started to lose faith in this guy. He never took any trips to Germany,” he said. “He doesn’t know one trip from the next, and at some point, [Stewart] stopped turning over things to him on my instruction.”
Nevius alleges that O’Neal and Stewart ignored Fawcett’s desire to focus on the difficulty of finding treatment for rare cancers.
Instead, they produced a tabloid-TV-style newsmagazine that featured other “Charlie’s Angels” actresses whom Fawcett was never close to and a scene of her drug-addicted son on leave from jail, visiting in shackles.
“The bottom line is it wasn’t presented as she intended,” Nevius said.
Meanwhile, O’Neal also said yesterday that he wants to produce another documentary on Fawcett’s cancer fight.
“It could get put together very quickly. We don’t have a contract yet, but we have all the footage. It’d be up to [NBC officials] to say when they’d want to do it,” he said.
He added that Fawcett’s pain medication was “dialed down” Friday so she could watch the documentary.
“She wept, and I blotted her tears. At the end, she said it was ‘very, very, very, very good,’ ” he said. “We were worried because she didn’t have much of a pulse, but by the end, she was cooking.”