This post contains discussion of body image issues and eating disorders.
During a recent interview on the Heart of the Matter podcast, Madison revealed that the media attention she received from the role had a serious effect on her mental and physical health at a very young age.
Madison says that the “whole joke” of Juanita as a character was “that Eva was this thin, beautiful model and her daughter turned out to be quite the opposite,” and she called the public’s “reactions” to her character “shocking.”
“A lot of people came at it in a way that they were ‘concerned for my health,’” she explained. “And I personally believe that that’s just not true, that that was a cover-up so that they could just judge a 6-year-old.”
Madison says she circumvented computer time rules in her family’s household to spend “hours and hours” reading hurtful comments about herself. “Most all of them were just atrocious,” she said. “They said things like they wanted me to die because of what I looked like. It was just horrible. And this was when I was 7, 8 years old.”
As a result, Madison said that she “[tried] to starve myself” when she was seven years old. “Reading comments like that definitely affected my mental health and ultimately played into me developing an eating disorder at a very young age,” she recalled.
Madison also said that she found solace in the support from her costar Eva. “We never explicitly talked about it, but she definitely went out of her way to make me feel like I was pretty and like I was special,” she recalled, “and she made me feel like I was family.”
“And if I ever did want to go to her with these things, I absolutely could have.”
Listen to the entire interview here.
The National Alliance on Mental Illness helpline is 1-888-950-6264 (NAMI) and provides information and referral services; GoodTherapy.org is an association of mental health professionals from more than 25 countries who support efforts to reduce harm in therapy.
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