Ariel Winter Opens Up About Mother Relationship

Photo credit: Jason LaVeris / FilmMagic / Getty
Photo credit: Jason LaVeris / FilmMagic / Getty

From Cosmopolitan

Modern Family was nominated yet again for the Emmy for Outstanding Comedy Series on Sunday night, and one of the show's breakout stars gave an illuminating and heartfelt interview ahead of the evening's awards.

Ariel Winter, who's played Alex Dunphy for seven seasons on the family sitcom, spoke candidly about her relationship with her now estranged mother Crystal Workman to the Hollywood Reporter. Winter, who worked to emancipate herself from Workman through 2014 and 2015 and was later placed under the guardianship of sister Shanelle Workman, shared of her time with her stage mother, "You don't get to mess up when you have somebody around you who is constantly watching."

According to court documents, Workman did more than just constantly watch her daughter; she engaged in "slapping, hitting, pushing" and, according to Winter, often restricted food to the point where her on-set teacher Sharon Sacks would "order a couple lunches in my name so Ariel could eat one of them. I could tell she was hungry. Boiled chicken and cucumbers isn't going to do it for a growing kid."

In 2012, Winter told Sacks she was ready to begin the emancipation process. Now, she's about to enter the freshman class at the University of California, Los Angeles. And she's doing it all while bearing the banner of body positivity across social media: "I do wish we could get out of the stigma that girls who are smart have to dress down and not care about appearance."

Read the whole interview here.

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