‘Desperate Housewives’ Child Star Madison De La Garza Says “Horrible” Weight-Shaming Comments Caused Her Eating Disorder

Desperate Housewives may have been a hit when it aired on ABC in the early 2000s, but it hasn’t exactly held up well. Actress Madison De La Garza, whose weight as a child star was referenced on the show, says the hate comments she saw online as a child led her to develop an eating disorder at a very young age.

Speaking on the Heart of the Matter podcast, De La Garza — who played Juanita, the daughter of Gabrielle Solis (Eva Longoria) — explained that she would spend “hours and hours” looking at comments left on TMZ and YouTube videos.

“I would just spend a crazy amount of time reading through these comments, and most all of them were just atrocious,” she recalled. “They said things like they wanted me to die because of what I looked like. It was just horrible. And this was when I was seven, eight years old.”

“Reading comments like that definitely affected my mental health and ultimately played into me developing an eating disorder at a very young age,” she added.

De La Garza, who is now two years in recovery from her eating disorder, said she remembered “trying to starve” herself when she was just seven years old.

De La Garza joined the show in 2008 when she was six. She said her weight played a central role to her character on the show, leading to comparisons between the seven-year-old and Longoria’s glamorous character.

The dramedy had multiple instances where Gabrielle, who used to be a model, commented on Juanita’s weight or forced her to exercise. Their characters’ differences were highlighted even more when Gabrielle and husband Carlos (Ricardo Antonio Chavira) later learned Juanita was not their biological daughter.

“The reactions that I got to my character on Desperate Housewives, it was just shocking,” De La Garza said. “A lot of people came at it in a way that they were ‘concerned for my health.’ And I personally believe that that’s just not true, that that was a cover-up so that they could just judge a 6-year-old.”

She continued, “This was talked about literally in the script of the show. The whole joke of my character was that Eva was this thin, beautiful model and her daughter turned out to be quite the opposite. And so, I think she was very aware that this was going to affect me.”

Thankfully, Longoria was supportive throughout the experience, De La Garza recalled.

“We never explicitly talked about it, but [Longoria] definitely went out of her way to make me feel like I was pretty and like I was special, and she made me feel like I was family,” she said. “And if I ever did want to go to her with these things, I absolutely could have.”

De La Garza was a main character on the show by the time it reached its finale in 2012. The series went on to become one of the most-watched series on television and earned six Primetime Emmy Awards throughout its eight-season run.

People who are battling eating disorders can contact the National Eating Disorders Association (NEDA) at 1-800-931-2237.