A 89-year-old woman — who was officially crowned the world’s oldest working female comedian — was left “in shock” when a crazed woman randomly sucker-punched her in the West Village, she told the Post Thursday.
D’yan Forest was walking to a local Equinox gym where she planned to go swimming around 8:50 a.m. July 10 when she suddenly felt a painful blow that took her down to the ground.
“I’m just standing at the corner waiting to cross with the light,” Forest said. “I’m smiling and I’m happy, I had my coffee. And all of a sudden, a huge wallop hit my eye. I didn’t know what it was. It could’ve been a lamppost, it hit me that hard. So I fell down.”
The unhinged attacker had just stomped on a homeless man when she set sights on the senior at the corner of Seventh Avenue South and West 11th Street, according to Forest, whose legal name is Diana Shulman.
The sick attacker then stood over Forest, maniacally looking down at her elderly victim who struggled to see out of her left eye.
“I looked at a woman in front of me and I thought she was going to come help me up because I’m lying on the ground in shock,” Forest said. “She gave a scowling look at me and then ran right ahead. So I guess she was the perpetrator.”
Then the woman took off, fleeing west on Bank Street, according to the NYPD. She still hadn’t been arrested more than a week later.
Above all else, Forest – who has performed alongside the likes of Jerry Seinfeld, Jim Gaffigan, and Joan Rivers – was most terrified that the injury would impact her 90th birthday show, scheduled for July 29 at Joe’s Pub in NoHo.
“The first thing that came [over me was], Oh my God, my show, my show!” she said. “I don’t want to have a missing eye!”
“Afterwards, people came over to help me up,” Forest added. “I couldn’t see out of my left eye, and I was petrified in shock. And I kept saying to them, ‘Is my eye still there?’”
To Forest’s relief, it was – but her left eye was left a bloody mess, she said.
Forest spent a few hours at the hospital before making a beeline to a rehearsal for her upcoming gig, she said.
“I walked out, I did my rehearsal,” Forest said. “Of course, my director said, ‘You look horrible.’ Just what I need. Because I hadn’t really seen myself.”
The bruise on Forest’s eye was barely noticeable Thursday, but she said her blood vessels still need some time to heal.
The random slugging also dealt a mental blow for Forest, she said.
“I [was] sort of shook and I didn’t want to talk about it for a couple of days,” the elderly performer recounted. “[At first I felt] whatever it is, it’s my fault.”
She’s also become extra cautious when people walk past her on the streets she calls home.
“It’s a little crazy, Like, ‘Is that person going to reach up and hit me?’” she said.
If the seasoned New Yorker could speak to Mayor Eric Adams, she said she’d plead with him to address the epidemic of homeless, mentally ill people in her own backyard.
“I would say this is what is happening now,” Forest said. “There are more homeless, mentally ill homeless on the street, and even in my precious Village. And this is what I’ve noticed this summer. Just get these people off the streets. Get them help… so 90-year-old old ladies won’t be socked!”
Born in the suburbs of Boston, Forest spent some time in Paris before moving to the Big Apple, where she’s lived in the same West 10th Street building since 1966.
She said she’s always felt safe in the Big Apple – until this summer rolled around.
“There’s been a lot of homeless sitting around in my area,” Forest said. “This never happened.”
Forest — also a cabaret performer who sings and plays the trumpet, drums and glockenspiel – is now taking her assault in stride and may even bring it up at the start of her upcoming gig, entitled “90 Years of Songs and Scandal,” she said.
“I’m getting better. I can joke about it,” Forest said. “I couldn’t joke about it a couple days ago.”
“Who knows, I could make a song about it. You never know.”
Forest, who is bi-sexual and has dated Paris’s second-ever female bus driver, a transsexual rock guitarist and a “defrocked nun,” according to her bio, spoke to The Post earlier this year about her foray into the world of Tinder.
The attack on Forest came about two months after unhinged homeless man Clifton Williams, 50, allegedly slugged beloved “Fargo” and “Boardwalk Empire” actor Steve Buscemi, 66, in Kips Bay, authorities said.
— Additional reporting by Gabriella Bass
