Scarlett Moffatt talks mental health battle following body shaming
With a string of primetime TV appearances behind her and two million followers on Instagram, many would think Scarlett Moffatt has been on cloud nine since she was catapulted into the public eye by Gogglebox.
However, the star, 30, has opened up about her mental health battle after social media trolls began body shaming her ever since she found fame in 2014.
In a new interview with Grazia magazine, she has revealed that within three years she had reached the “darkest place of my life, feeling completely alone and often ringing Samaritans when things got really bad”.
The mean comments about her appearance began on Twitter when people would tell her how “ugly, fat and stupid” she was as each episode of Gogglebox aired.
After considering quitting the show, Scarlett - who had been working at Asda when she auditioned for the series aged 23 - decided to “look for the positives” and make the most of TV opportunities coming her way.
She found herself “put on a pedestal” after winning I’m A Celebrity and being made a co-presenter of Ant And Dec’s Saturday Night Takeaway.
The star noted that as her fame shone she was “getting trolled way more with people attacking the way I look, speak, dress – you name it”.
Making her fitness DVD, in 2016, was her “one biggest regret”, not only because of the “terrible reaction” when it came out in early 2017, but also because she didn’t want other young women to be “obsessively trying to lose weight”.
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Scarlett, who at the time had no representation, was offered a large sum of money - reportedly enough to put a deposit down on a house - to lose four stone, but she claimed she was “never actually paid a penny”.
After it came out, she recalled: “I got trolled really badly for being too thin, people telling me I’d gone too far and was a bad role model.
“I understand now why people wouldn’t want me to promote weight loss, but at the time it just felt like a wave of cruelty from every angle.
“Looking at the before and after pictures, I wasn’t any happier in either and I quickly realised how awful this whole thing had been for me mentally.”
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In the hope the nasty comments would stop, Scarlett regained the weight she’d lost - but the trolling was still “overwhelming” and she felt like a “fat mess”.
She said one of her lowest points was when she appeared on Love Island’s Aftersun and received “over 3,000 messages telling me I was fat and to put my boobs away.
“I remember Iain Stirling ringing me to see if I was OK, telling him I was fine – then going home and crying for a week.”
The star revealed that she stopped leaving her house for days on end, and admitted that she wanted to “disappear”.
Scarlett eventually confided in her mum how she was feeling, and started seeing a therapist for a year.
She said gradually she has started to feel more body confident - recently feeling comfortable enough to post a picture of herself in a swimsuit online - and now wants to show people that “you’re not just the sum of your parts”.
