Matilda star Mara Wilson recalls Michelle Trachtenberg being brutally bullied as a teen
- Mara, 37, first met Michelle at the 1997 Nickelodeon Kids’ Choice Awards
- The child actors attended the same school in Burbank, California, in 1999
- READ MORE: Distressing new theory on why Michelle Trachtenberg died
Matilda star Mara Wilson has revealed that Michelle Trachtenberg was bullied so badly as a teenager at school in California that it reduced her to tears... as she reflected on the harrowing downsides of child stardom.
Mara, 37, grew close to Michelle when they both attended the same Burbank middle school as kids, and while they drifted apart as adults, she said the Gossip Girl alum's recent shock death at the age of 39 left her physically 'shaking.'
In a heartfelt essay written for Vulture, Mara touched upon her friendship with the Harriet the Spy star and described her as 'nice' as well as 'remarkably intelligent.'
She recalled a time when Michelle, who was launched into the spotlight at age 11 thanks to her role in Harriet the Spy, was brutally picked on by their classmates because of her fame.
Mara remembered hearing fellow students accuse Michelle of being 'mean, full of herself, a total b**ch.'
'I remember wondering if the kids at school were jealous. A lot of students were aspiring actors,' Mara wrote.
Matilda star Mara Wilson has revealed that Michelle Trachtenberg was bullied so badly as a teenager at school in California that it reduced her to tears
Mara recalled a day in 1999 when Michelle started crying and told her the other kids at school were 'mean' to her. Michelle is seen in Buffy the Vampire Slayer as a teen
'One week three people in my class were excused early to audition for the same Nickelodeon TV show. There was always a lot of resentment toward the kids who’d “made it."'
Mara continued: 'Then, right before she graduated in 1999, she pulled me aside, and asked if she could talk to me.
'It was the first time we’d had a one-on-one conversation that wasn’t just a quick “hi” in the hall since I’d started middle school.
'"Are the kids here mean to you?" she asked. "Sometimes," I said. "Because they are to me," she said, tearing up.
'"They call me Harriet the Slut, Harriet the B***h, Harriet the B***hy Spy … and so much worse. They never stop."'
'I had never seen Michelle cry before. I’d never seen her anything other than perfectly composed and confident,' Mara recalled.
'That’s what it was, I realized. That’s why they said she was "mean." Because they were mean to her first, then when she went on the defense, they called her a b***h.'
Mara added: 'It wasn’t just that she was being bullied; it was that there wasn’t any way she could get them not to hate her.
Michelle, seen here in 2017, was found dead in her New York City apartment last month but her family objected to an autopsy being carried out
Mara paid tribute to her 'childhood friend' Michelle on Instagram following her death last month
'So much of being a child actor is about making everyone happy. It felt cruelly ironic to be so hated when our raison d’être was getting people to like us.'
The Mrs. Doubtfire star also experienced her fair share of resentment when she started high school and found herself 'in the same place Michelle had been.'
'I was being bullied at school — both for having been a child actor and just for being an awkward teenager — and I felt completely isolated,' she wrote.
Mara also admitted that she 'always thought' she would get the chance to speak to Michelle again.
Recalling the moment she found out that Michelle had passed, Mara wrote: 'I was packing for a work trip. I looked at my phone and felt my stomach drop.
'My hands were shaking and my knees went weak — I thought I might pass out. I sat in a chair, and started to sob.
'This wasn’t supposed to happen. She was too young. She’d worked too hard. I always thought I would get the chance to see her again, to tell her how much I’d always looked up to her.'
'To tell her the times we spent together as children were some of the best of my life,' Mara added.
Mara, seen here in July 2000, revealed that she was also bullied at high school and it left her feeling 'completely isolated'
Michelle first gained recognition at the age of nine when she starred in the Nickelodeon series The Adventures of Pete & Pete.
She made her film debut in 1996's Harriet the Spy, which is the same year that Mara starred in the much-loved movie adaptation of Roald Dahl's Matilda alongside Danny DeVito.
Since Michelle's tragic death on February 26, it has been claimed that she'd had a liver transplant and was so sick during her final outing that she could barely walk down a flight of restaurant stairs.
'She looked really unwell, just like very sickly,' one onlooker told DailyMail.com last month.
'She was thin, like tiny, she couldn’t walk down the stairs. She was not in a great mood, it wasn’t the best impression.'
The Gossip Girl star's death will remain a mystery after her relatives officially objected to an autopsy. Her family was able to object to the procedure on religious grounds.
