Being a teen star isn’t as glamorous as Hollywood makes it out to be. There are a fair share of drawbacks, including immense pressure at a young age, money tearing families apart, and more.
As adults now, more and more former teen stars are speaking out about the uncomfortable experiences they went through on set, and with the adults that were supposed to protect them.
In her memoir, aptly titled, I’m Glad My Mom Died, she discussed the physical and emotional abuse she endured from her mother, Debbie, who died of cancer in 2013.
While she was painfully shy at the time, she went to the auditions to “keep the peace" in her dysfunctional family.
Debbie would bleach her daughter's hair and whiten her teeth at 10 years old and even started making her calorie count at the age of 11.
Her time on set wasn’t much better. She recounted troubling experiences with an unnamed person called “The Creator.” This is widely assumed to be Dan Schneider.
She also said that she was offered $300,000 of “hush money” from Nickelodeon to prevent her from speaking out about her experiences on the network. She declined.
Everyone and their cousin have been rewatching The O.C. lately due to the seasons streaming on Amazon Prime. But all people will see is a rich, breezy California lifestyle.
"I've always felt ashamed in a way to really talk about what went on behind the scenes because I've always been a very private person and very aware of people's feelings," Barton said in a 2021 interview with E! News.
But Mischa said that talk of this started very early on, as did the bullying that she faced from some of the men on set that felt "really [expletive]."
In 2020, Trina McGee who played Angela on Boy Meets World shared the nasty comments she received from her cast members.
She later revealed that it was Will Friedle who called her "Aunt Jemima," but that he had apologized in a three-page letter.
In 2017, the cast and crew penned an open letter, alleging that showrunner Mark Schwahn was psychologically, emotionally, and sexually abusive. "More than one of us is still in treatment for post-traumatic stress," they wrote.
"We were in our early 20s playing high school kids, but we didn’t know anything. We were babies," she told Barstool Sports' Chicks in the Office podcast.
"We didn’t get to grow up on a set where people wanted to answer our questions or help us navigate any of the madness of the early aughts. ... We were kind of looked at as pawns. We had grown-ups who we trusted, who now we understand were being really controlling and manipulative."
No one deserves to go through that, that's for sure.
