Tracey Gold is speaking up about a difficult period in her life.
On the January 26 edition of Let’s Be Clear with Shannen Doherty, Gold, 55, reflected on her days as a child performer and her role as Carol Seaver on Growing Pains. Gold stated that, while she had the “best memories of Growing Pains,” her time on the show was also defined by her fight with anorexia, which she attributes to some of the events she experienced on set.
After years of working as a child actor, Gold received the greatest break of her career in 1985 when she was hired as daughter Carol in Growing Pains. Kirk Cameron played her brother Mike, with Alan Thicke and Joanna Kerns as their parents. Gold admitted that she had “never done comedy before” and was anxious, but the “first few years” were a “great, fun experience.” She asserted that the cast was truly exceptional.
However, with time, the prose got “edgier.” “Unfortunately, I think in that time, it became at my expense,” she told me. “They started to have Mike Seaver make fat jokes about Carol Seaver.”
Gold clarified, “One thing you have to know about being a child actor… you have to be the best person on that set.” Adults may laugh and forget their lines, but as a kid actor, you must get there. You should know your lines. “You shut your mouth and do your job.”
When the fat jokes began, Gold claimed she had “no voice,” but was able to “brush it off.” However, during a summer vacation from the series, she gained weight. “And then the jokes accelerated when I came back and became meaner,” she informed me.
Gold eventually “tried to find [her voice]” and proceeded to meet with the “intimidating writers.” She said, “Can we negotiate? It damages my sentiments. However, Gold was the oldest of five girls, and the authors would “tell her” that, “You don’t have any brothers, so you don’t know what this is like.” This is what brothers and sisters do to one another. They also stated that they weren’t actually calling her obese since, “If it was true, we couldn’t say it.”
However, Gold continued to feel uneasy. “You aren’t simply talking about Carol anymore. You’re talking about me, Tracey Gold. And now I have to stand in front of an audience that is mocking me, my body, and my weight, and it is difficult,” she remarked.
The program then informed Gold’s father, who was also her agent, that she needed to lose weight. She ended up seeing a doctor, who prescribed a risky 500-calorie diet.
“Suddenly, everyone on the set was rushing up to me, exclaiming, ‘Oh my God, you look so terrific, you look so lovely, you look so amazing,'” she said.” “I believe everyone had good intentions, but in my opinion, I was thinking, ‘Was I that embarrassing before? Was I deceiving myself that I could go on national TV, play Carol Seaver, and be the person they were making jokes about?
She reported, “Something struck me, and I was determined not to be the target of anyone’s joke again.” She stuck to the diet, which left her “basically starving” all the time. Her then-boyfriend, now-husband Roby Marshall, was worried about her, but she told him, “You’re in Hollywood, and everybody just kept giving me compliments.” The story of Growing Pains also depicted her weight reduction, as Carol’s elevation to homecoming queen sent her into a state of turmoil.
She did not seek assistance in part because the set had an “element of misogyny to it,” she stated. The producers were always bringing in “the beautiful actress of the week,” who was only a few years her senior, and “sexualizing her.”
“It was really a boys’ club,” she recalls. Still, she stated that she did not blame the writers for her eating condition. “I was the one that was very susceptible to it,” she told me. “I believe that if I had been on the cheering team and a cheerleading coach had said the same thing to me, something similar would have occurred. I would have gone down a path of constraint. Did my exaggeration stem from being on television? Possibly. “I will never know.”
“Being a kid actor for so long has instilled in me the belief that whatever these producers tell me must be genuine. And you listen to them, because their viewpoint is important,” she continued.
The producers eventually advised her that she needed to gain weight, something she couldn’t do. In 1992, when Gold was in the depths of her anorexia, the producers discontinued Growing Pains and sent her to an inpatient treatment facility. She discussed her eating problem experience on the cover of PEOPLE in 1992.
On the podcast, she stated that she was “very proud” of speaking up about her anorexia in the magazine. “After that, all of a sudden, my voice with the eating disorder became more powerful,” she remembered. A 1994 cover also featured her.
“They advised me to remain silent and behave well on set,” Gold disclosed. “But finding my voice with the anorexia was the really big thing.” She wanted people to understand that it is not about “vanity,” but rather a “real disease.”