Kirstie Alley told Ryan Thomas to "run" to talk to 'Celebrity Big Brother' producers after Roxanne Pallett accused him of punching her.

Kirstie Alley

Kirstie Alley

The 67-year-old actress has opened up about the incident - which the former 'Emmerdale' star has since apologised for, admitting she "got it wrong" - and revealed she gave him some advice in the aftermath.

Appearing on ITV's 'This Morning', she said: "My only advice to Ryan was, 'Get to the producers,' because at that time I'd heard she'd gone to the producers and gone to her manager. I go, 'You run, run, you gotta go in there and handle this now'.

"And Nick [Leeson] was a big help to Ryan, I think he was really the person who said, 'This is far beyond the scope of just having a chat or something.' "

Kirstie added that she quickly realised the severity of the situation, and that Roxanne's allegations could destroy Ryan's career if he didn't make his side of the story known.

She explained: "When I found out what her actual accusation was, I realised that that was a career-breaker, that was a career-destroyer.

"It became serious business, and I felt like it was out of my realm to handle."

The former 'Cheers' star revealed it was "48 hours" before the other housemates realised what had happened, and Kirstie didn't even know she was in the room at the time of the alleged incident until afterwards.

She said: "What I didn't realise until yesterday was that I was even in the room.

"We were all jacking around like that, and that looks like he didn't even make contact."

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