Tracey Gold Says the ‘Boys’ Club’ at Growing Pains Fueled Her Anorexia with Fat Jokes

• Tracey Gold was cast as Carol Seaver on Growing Pains as a teenager
• When her character became the butt of fat jokes and producers asked her to lose weight, she went on a highly restrictive diet, she says
• Gold ended up going to inpatient treatment for her eating disorder, though she says she doesn’t blame the Growing Pains producers

Tracey Gold is opening up about a painful time in her life.

On the Jan. 26 episode of Let’s Be Clear with Shannen Doherty, Gold, 55, looked back on her time as a child actor and her role as Carol Seaver on Growing Pains. Gold noted that even though she has the “best memories of Growing Pains,” her time on the series also was marked by her struggle with anorexia, which she says was fueled by some of the experiences she had on set.

In 1985, after working for years as a child actress, Gold had the biggest break of her career when she was cast on Growing Pains as daughter Carol. Kirk Cameron played her brother Mike while Alan Thicke and Joanna Kerns played their parents. Gold said she’d “never done comedy before” and was nervous, but the “first few years” were a “great, fun experience.” The cast, she said, was “lightning in the bottle.”

But over time, the writing became “edgier.” “Unfortunately, I think in that time, it became at my expense,” she said. “They started to have Mike Seaver make fat jokes about Carol Seaver.”

Gold said, “One thing you have to know about being a child actor … you have to be the best person on that set.” Adults might laugh and forget their lines, but “you as a child actor, you need to get there. You need to know your lines. You shut your mouth, and you do your job.”

So when the fat jokes started, Gold said she had “no voice,” but she was able to “brush it off.” But during one summer break from the series, she gained weight. “And then the jokes accelerated when I came back, and became meaner,” she said. 

Gold finally “tried to find [her voice]” and went to speak to the “intimidating writers.” She told them, “Can we negotiate? It hurts my feelings.” But Gold was the oldest of five girls, and the writers 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 each other.” They also said they weren’t really calling her fat because, “If it was true, we couldn’t say it.”

But Gold still felt uncomfortable. “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.

Then, Gold’s dad, who was also her agent, was told that the show wanted her to lose weight. She ended up at a doctor who put her on a dangerous 500-calories-a-day diet.

“And 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,’ ” she remembered. “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?’ ”

“Something hit me and I was like, ‘I will not be the butt of anybody’s joke again,’ ” she said. She stayed on the diet, which had her “basically starving” all the time. Her then-boyfriend, now-husband Roby Marshall, was deeply concerned for her, but, she said, “You’re in Hollywood, and everybody just kept giving me compliments.” Her weight loss was also reflected in the plot of Growing Pains as Carol became homecoming queen, and it put her in a “tailspin.” 

She didn’t ask for help in part, because the set had an “element of misogyny to it,” she said. The producers were always bringing in “the beautiful actress of the week,” who was just a few years older than her, and “sexualizing her.”

“It really was a boys’ club,” she remembered. Still, she said, she doesn’t blame the writers for her eating disorder. “I was the one that was very susceptible to it,” she said. “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.” 

“Being a child actor for so long, it was so ingrained in me that what all these producers say to me has to be true. And you listen to them, and their opinion is what matters,” she said.

Eventually, the producers told her she needed to gain weight, but she couldn’t. Growing Pains was canceled in 1992 while she was in “the depth of my anorexia,” and Gold ended up in inpatient treatment. In 1992, she appeared on the cover of PEOPLE talking about her eating disorder journey. 

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On the podcast, she shared that she was “very proud” of coming out about her anorexia in the magazine. “After that, all of a sudden, my voice with the eating disorder became more powerful,” she said. She also appeared on a 1994 cover. 

“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.” She wanted people to know that it’s not about “vanity,” but is a “real disease.” 

If you or someone you know is struggling with an eating disorder, please go to NationalEatingDisorders.org.