Tracey Gold is opening up about the difficult times she had growing up in the spotlight on the family sitcom Growing Pains.
While guest hosting the late Shannen Doherty‘s Let’s Be Clear podcast, Gold explained that she began feeling increasingly powerless on the show as her character, Carol Seavers, was often the subject of several jokes, especially from her on-screen brothers Mike (Kirk Cameron) and Ben (Jeremy Miller).
“At that point, like, I didn’t feel too sensitive about my weight, so I…kinda could brush it off,” Gold said. “But I went away one summer on a hiatus, and I came [back with] the ‘freshman 15,’ basically. And then the jokes accelerated when I came back and became meaner. Instead of one joke, there were two jokes, there were three jokes.”
She said she raised the issue with the writers, who ultimately told her that she was being too sensitive about it.
“I finally tried to find my voice and go to them,” she recalled. “These men who I’ve known a long time, but they’re twice my age and, you know, quite intimidating. It was out of my character to speak up, but it was hurting me, and I was sensitive to it, and I knew I had gained a little bit of weight. I had never had that problem before.”
Gold admitted the jokes were still “hurting my feelings,” so she began to negotiate to have certain jokes removed. “You’re not talking just about Carol anymore. You’re talking about me, Tracey Gold. And now I have to be in front of an audience that’s laughing at me and my body and my weight, and it became tough,” she said.
Her experience on Growing Pains ultimately fueled her battle with anorexia. Gold revealed a doctor later put her on a diet of 500 calories a day when the studio wanted her to lose weight. But the positive attention she received on set after inspired her to keep going.
“Something hit me and I was like, ‘I will not be the butt of anybody’s joke again,’” she said, admitting she was “basically starving” all the time.
The actress later went for inpatient treatment in 1992 after the show was canceled.
“I was told to keep your mouth shut and be a good girl on a set,” Gold said. “But finding my voice with the anorexia was the really big thing.”
