WALLACE LANGHAM CHARGED IN HATE CRIME

V ERONICA’S Closet” star Wallace Langham – who plays a character thought to be gay – was charged this week with a hate crime for allegedly assaulting a tabloid reporter who is gay.

Langham, 34, was charged Monday with misdemeanour battery and committing a hate crime stemming from the Sept. 7 incident inside a Hollywood supermarket.

The reporter – a 35-year-old freelance writer for the celebrity-driven tabloid, Star – was not identified. Under rules of the Los Angeles Police Department, the identities of hate-crime victims arenot released.

A spokesman for the actor however, claims the fight and the charges were trumped up by the reporter, who has since asked for money in exchange for dropping the charges.

He received hospital treatment for bruises and an injured jaw after the scuffle.

A high-level Star official said the writer was not working for the tabloid at the time of the fight. The paper also refused to identify the freelancer and declined to comment.

The fight occurred when Langham’s girlfriend – who was standing in a supermarket aisle – was approached by the reporter, according to Langham’s spokeswoman, Haley Sumner.

The writer allegedly started making offensive remarks about the tattoos on the girl’s body, Sumner claims. Langham came to her defense and asked that the alleged victim stop making comments. The writer then identified himself as a tabloid reporter and made more derogatory comments in an effort to provoke Langham into a fight, Sumner says.

A fist-fight broke out between the two and the writer accused Langham of using homosexual slurs while attacking him.

The actor – who has appeared in the films “Soul Man” and “Michael” and was a regular on the HBO series “The Larry Sanders Show” – declined requests for an interview yesterday.

“This incident was the furthest thing from a hate crime,” Sumner said in a prepared statment.

“He also believes that it is despicable for an individual to provoke a fight and then characterize it as a hate crime in order to leverage the incident for his personal financial gain.”

She said that Langham supports gay rights and plans to file extortion charges against the writer.

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