Tracey Gold. Frederick M. Brown/Getty Images
Tracey Gold’s experience filming Growing Pains wasn’t always filled with laughs.
While playing Carol Seaver on the Emmy-winning comedy series, Gold, 55, said “fat jokes” made about her character ultimately had a lasting impact on her real-life physical and mental health.
“In the beginning, the Carol Seaver and Mike Seaver [played by Kirk Cameron] relationship was we were always putting each other down. I was calling him stupid. He was calling me brainiac,” Gold said on the Sunday, January 26, episode of iHeartRadio’s “Let’s Be Clear With Shannen Doherty” podcast. “It was very lighthearted and it really had to do with our characters. But then there became a shift where I think the writing became a little edgier.”
Nearly three seasons into the show, Gold claimed that there were more and more jokes on “my behalf.”
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“They started to have Mike Seaver make fat jokes about Carol Seaver,” she said. “I didn’t feel too sensitive about my weight, so I could brush it off. But I went away one summer on a hiatus and I gained the freshman 15 basically, and then the jokes accelerated when I came back and became meaner.”
At the time, Gold was a child actor who believed you had to “shut your mouth and you do your job,” even if part of the job was harmful.
But over time, the actress tried to find her voice and speak to those in power about how the jokes were “hurting me and I was sensitive to it.”
Joanna Kerns, Alan Thicke, Kirk Cameron, Tracey Gold and Jeremy Miller on ‘Growing Pains.’ ABC
“I knew I had gained a little bit of weight, and I had never had that problem before,” she shared on the podcast. “My anorexia before was not about weight. It was about staying childlike; [of being] scared of hitting puberty. What does that mean? Change, all of those things, but not my weight.”
The actress ended up at a doctor who put her on a dangerous 500-calories-a-day diet. She quickly began to see results, but at the expense of her overall physical and mental health.
“All of a sudden, everybody’s coming up to me on the set going, ‘Oh my God, you look so good. You look so beautiful. You look so amazing,’” Gold recalled. “I think everyone meant well, but in my view of it, I was like, ‘Was I that embarrassing before? Was I absolutely kidding myself that I could go on national TV, be Carol Seaver, and I really was that person they were saying those jokes about?’”
To this day, Gold doesn’t blame the writers for her eating disorder.
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“I was the one that was very susceptible to it,” she explained. “I think if I had been on the cheerleading team and a cheerleading coach had said the same thing to me, I think that would have happened to me. I would’ve gone down a road of restriction. Was it magnified because I was on TV? Possibly. I’ll never know.”
When Growing Pains was canceled in 1992, Gold said she was in “the depth of my anorexia.” She ended up in inpatient treatment before appearing on two covers of People magazine to share her journey.
“I was told to keep your mouth shut and be a good girl on a set,” she said. “But finding my voice with the anorexia was the really big thing.”
If you or someone you know struggles with an eating disorder, visit the National Alliance for Eating Disorders website or call their hotline at +1 (866) 662-1235. Text “ALLIANCE” to 741741 for free, 24/7 support.
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