Madison De La Garza says Desperate Housewives cyberbullying contributed to her eating disorder

Madison De La Garza got her acting break at the age of 6, playing Juanita Solis, daughter of Eva Longoria's Gabrielle Solis, on Desperate Housewives. But, for as big a break as it was, the role had a complicated impact on her life.

As De La Garza told Elizabeth Vargas on the latest episode of the Heart of the Matter podcast, the cyberbullying she suffered at a young age — with people writing cruel things about her weight and appearance on the show — contributed to her developing an eating disorder.

ABC Eva Longoria and Madison De La Garza on 'Desperate Housewives'

Although De La Garza says she wasn't allowed to go on the computer by herself at that young age, she still snuck onto sites like TMZ and YouTube to spend "hours" reading "atrocious" comments about her appearance.

"They said things like they wanted me to die because of what I looked like," De La Garza said. "It was just horrible, like, 'ugly fat cow,' and 'I hope you get cancer and die because you're so fat.' Just horrible, horrible, horrible, horrible things and this was when I was 6, 7, 8 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 continued.

John Sciulli/Getty Images Madison De La Garza

Complicating things further was the fact that her character's appearance factored into her dynamic on the series. "This was talked about literally in the script of the show," De La Garza said. "The whole joke of my character was that Eva was this thin beautiful model and her daughter turned out to be quite the opposite."

As a result, De La Garza said Longoria "went out of her way to make me feel special" and offer compliments. For her part, Longoria said in 2019 that she also dealt with on-set bullying during production.

De La Garza, who recalled first trying to starve herself when she was just 7 years old, said she is now two years in recovery from her eating disorder. She's also eight months sober from drug use after asking her older half-sister Demi Lovato for advice about sobriety and recovery.

Listen to her full Heart of the Matter interview.

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