March 13, 2025 • 41 mins
Child stars are some of the most famous people on earth, instantly recognizable anywhere. The typical thoughts on child stars is that they struggle to transition to adulthood, but is that really true? In this episode Eddie and Justin break down some of their favorite child stars from the 90s. They look at scientific data on the subject, and dive into how former child stars actually feel about their childhood careers.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Well, you learned me some today, baym. This is Millennial
Mental Health Channel. I'm doctor Justin Romano, a child adolescent
psychiatry fellow.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
And I'm Adikoreo, a licensed clinical therapist. Our podcast is
here because we wanted to start a much need to
conversation about mental health.
Speaker 1 (00:17):
Our goal is to teach you as much as we
can by sharing our own experiences and interviewing experts in
the mental health field. We will discuss topics like mood disorders,
psychotic disorders, substance use, personality disorders, and many more.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
Millennial Mental Health Channel buy Millennials for everyone. We hope
you enjoyed today's episode.
Speaker 1 (00:36):
MMHC is a production of Speaker from iHeartMedia, I Heart
mir Benvendo. We haven't used much Portuguese on the show,
so I figured let's do it.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
Why not love it? Thank you. I've been wondering when
that was going to happen, and now, okay, I'll thank you.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
It's now. Today is the time. Why not. Welcome to MMAC.
We are glad you are here. We're gonna have another
pop culture episode for you today, which is you know,
we always love talking mental health. We especially love talking
about pop culture stuff and how mental health plays into
a lot of it too.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
So some would say that intersectionality, oh vocab, Yeah, nice
like that. It's like I'm teaching cultural foundations.
Speaker 1 (01:24):
Eddie brought the fire today and I like it. So
if you've been watching the news lately, you know that
Michelle Trachtenberg passed away recently, who was a very popular
child star and star as a young adult. She's an actress.
She was big for millennials. We watched her a lot
growing up, or I mean I guess I did too.
(01:44):
I know Eddie's not the biggest movie guy in the world,
do you change.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
I'm just here to support, so Eddie is.
Speaker 1 (01:51):
Here to party. I got a quick shout out to
Christina at work. She made us some very cool T
shirts that are related to the show. So I just
want to say thank you, thank you, thank you. That
was very cool.
Speaker 2 (02:02):
Thank you Christina.
Speaker 1 (02:04):
You got any shout outs for me?
Speaker 2 (02:06):
Shout out to Christina. We appreciate you.
Speaker 1 (02:10):
Thank you, Christina. So a little bit of info on
Michelle Trachtenberg. She was born in nineteen eighty five, which
puts her right in that millennial time frame.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
She got her start on Pete and Pete on Nickelodeon.
Big note, I'm assuming we were both big Nickelodeon guys
growing up.
Speaker 1 (02:26):
Oh yeah, watched a lot of Pete and Pete, a
lot of Nickelodeon.
Speaker 2 (02:29):
What channel was Nickelodeon for you growing up? Oh?
Speaker 1 (02:32):
Man, I think he was thirty five.
Speaker 2 (02:35):
Yeah, mine was fifty three. Isn't that interesting? Yeah, it's
up on Twitter every so often, like all real ones.
You know, know that Nickelodeon was fifty three. So for
me it was Nickelodeon fifty three, Cartoon Network fifty four,
Disney fifty five, and then ESPN was thirty eight and
(02:56):
thirty nine.
Speaker 1 (02:57):
I can't remember numbers for anything, but I can remember
the Nickelodeon was thirty five in California when I was
eight years old.
Speaker 2 (03:04):
It's one of those things, man, so funny.
Speaker 1 (03:09):
Yeah, And as soon as you said that, I was like, yeah,
Nickelodeon thirty five, Disney thirty six, and Cartoon Network forty two.
Speaker 2 (03:15):
Ay man, I don't make the rules.
Speaker 1 (03:19):
So if you guys can remember your childhood favorite channels,
then you're probably a millennial too. So Michelle Tracktonberg was
also in a lot of other big shows, especially as
she got older and she grew up. She was She
had roles in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. She was in
the amazing comedy euro Trip, which I loved. Miss School
(03:42):
is A. She was in Harriet the Spot, and Gossip Girl.
Speaker 2 (03:46):
Yeah, she was what people would call the quintessential child star.
It started very early in her life, so she was
in commercials at three years old. She ended up doing
something like over one hundred commercials total. And this is
like the the definition right of child's star, like early,
like in just kind of transitioning into the next things.
(04:06):
It feels like we don't have a lot of those nowadays.
But maybe I'm wrong, Maybe I just maybe I just
don't consume that much media.
Speaker 1 (04:11):
Who knows that's true, But yeah, three years old is
super early to start, right was you're just understanding how
the world works, and you're working. She was actually found
deceased in her New York City apartment on February twenty
sixth of this year. The family opted not to do
an autopsy, and the official cause of death has been
(04:34):
undetermined because they don't really know and they didn't do
the autopsy to find out did.
Speaker 2 (04:42):
I don't know if I remember this correctly. But was
it maybe because of religious reasons? Did you hear anything
about that? You know it didn't Yeah, I might be
making that up, but yeah, they ultimately undetermined didn't do
an autopsy. She was only thirty nine years old, that
she had had a liver transplant, But we're really not
(05:03):
able to find information as to why. So a lot
of speculation as to what could have happened, but you know,
we're just never really going to have the answers.
Speaker 1 (05:10):
There's a million things that can lead to needing a
liver transplant, so we don't want to speculate. So that's
just kind of a final word about Michelle. We wanted
to say rest in peace, and we wanted to use
her passing as a springboard to talk about child stardom
because there are a lot of preconceived notions about child stardom.
(05:31):
Because when you think about it, Eddie, what's the first
thing that comes to mind?
Speaker 2 (05:36):
It's bad but like drug addiction, kind of crashing out
of just like and even like crashing and burning. I know,
you know one that gets brought up a lot on
like TikTok and just other social media is Amanda Bynes
and like, what's happened to her. She's kind of come back,
not really into the spotlight, but onto the maybe the
social media spotlight recently. And I think she even she
(05:59):
either has a TikTok or she's posted somewhere where she
started to get like her esthetician license or cosmetology license
or you know, so just like things like that. But
people are like really like, oh, man, like she looks
so different, like but she's been through a lot so
But I think that seems to feel like a pretty
typical or stereotype when it comes to child stars. That's
(06:21):
something they go to this kind of life of like
partying and living the life, and then they experienced it
so young that it has long term impacts, like kind
of for the rest of their life.
Speaker 1 (06:31):
Boy, do we love a good success story. Like I
can't even think of his name, but the guy who
played Goldberg in Mighty Ducks. There was a lot of
going around on the internet about him a couple of
years ago, about how he was struggling with methmphetamine addiction
but was able to get his life together, he was
able to maintain a period of sobriety. Eddie, you got
his name for me? I hear you talking weis Sean Weiss.
Speaker 2 (06:52):
Yeah, yep, yeah, pretty recent right. He in again not
the limelight, but he brought back into like our lives
on social media and what's kind of happened to him.
He's also in the movie Heavyweights. You remember that movie,
Oh I love it was a good movie.
Speaker 1 (07:07):
It was one of my favorite movies. Ben Stiller is
so funny.
Speaker 2 (07:11):
And then that was a good one. They don't make
they don't make they don't make it.
Speaker 1 (07:14):
They don't make us.
Speaker 2 (07:17):
Hey, okay, you'd be proud of me for this. Recently,
it was finals week at work, so like as part
of it, sometimes the counting office will do, like there's
a thing long story short, there's the time where we
can do kind of like enrichment periods, like on the
day of finals, where kids can go study or they
can do something, they take a break, relax whatever. Uh.
And one of the school counselors wanted to do a movie,
(07:39):
so she just posted, Hey, we're gonna host a movie day.
We watched The Sandlot. Never seen it before, so I
watched The Sandlot. Some of those things don't age well
in that movie. I'll just say, really, there was a
couple of times We're like, don't do that, kids, Oh no,
don't do that. What's his name? The kid with the
glasses spins squints when he like forces himself upon the lifeguard. Right,
(08:05):
not great. Later in the movie when the kids do
like the chewing tobacco and then they like throw it right,
like so there's just a couple of things, or like
or when ham is like the worst the worst insult
you can tell someone is you play ball like a
girl on that. It's just some things where like, Okay,
this is like funny when we were younger, but yeah, overall,
(08:26):
good movie. It was. It was fun to watch.
Speaker 1 (08:28):
It's amazing how quickly society has changed. Yeah, Eddie, when
you were a kid, did you want to be a star?
Speaker 2 (08:35):
Hell yeah, I wanted to be on all that. Oh yeah,
like I for sure. Uh now not so much, but yeah,
for sure.
Speaker 1 (08:45):
Back in the day, me too, man, you know, especially
you know watching movies, you know, blank Check and Nickelodeon
was was at its peak when we were kids, and
it was just everything you saw kids having the most fun.
Now that I've grown up, I realized that stardom is
not always what it is made out to be. Did
(09:06):
you see quiet on set.
Speaker 2 (09:08):
No, I haven't watched it. I've seen pieces of it,
and it's hard too because, like I mean, it's kind
of a good example of like what one person may
perceive as traumatic is not the same as everybody else, right,
because like I can't remember who exactly has come out
and been like I think Josh Peck might have been
one that was kind of like, no, he was just
a tough boss, but like other people are like no,
(09:28):
like he was fucking terrible. So it's creepy. I don't know,
you know, it's it's definitely you know, could also just
be an example of not wanting to relive traumatic experiences,
so we'll never fully know the truth and what really
went on. But it's definitely not it doesn't it. It really
helps to unfortunately like solidify some like preconceived notions of
(09:49):
like the dark side of Hollywood and stardom.
Speaker 1 (09:54):
Anytime there's a power differential, there's the possibility for abuse,
and kids off some times have to work for very
powerful people in Hollywood and it opens them up to abuse.
So I think hopefully there are more protections in place
for those types of things, because it needs to change.
We need to have protections for kids. Yeah, okay, so
(10:14):
who else for some of your favorite like stars, your
child stars growing up?
Speaker 2 (10:19):
We got a list, I mean I said all that, right, Yeah,
you had the Keenan and Kel Show, you had Amanda Bynes,
I know, we had Lindsay Lohan on here, you got
like The Wizard, the Sprouse Twins, Hannah Montana, Miley Cyrus
was a big deal when we were younger. Like, there's
just a lot of like Drake and Josh, Miranda Crossgrove,
(10:39):
right II Carley, Yeah, there's just a lot like of
these names. Oh fucking that's okay. Anyway, that's a raven that. Like,
there's just a lot and even if you go back
a little, like they weren't necessarily children, but like Will
Smith right freshman, Yeah, did you ever watch Say by
the Bell? That was a little bit before our time,
(11:00):
but like as I got older, I would I watched
it more like those kids and say By the Bell,
Boy meets World.
Speaker 1 (11:07):
Yeah, A crush onto Panga?
Speaker 2 (11:10):
Oh yeah who didn't now not so much. I've heard
some bad things about her, but yeah, well we'll get
into that some point. But yeah, it's there's a lot, right,
There's just like people who seem to be relatively in
our age that like you would just kind of see
and grow up and you see him for over expand
of time, and yeah, childhood child stardom was definitely something
(11:34):
that was seemed to really be intertwined right with our
with our upbringing.
Speaker 1 (11:38):
Totally something that we were almost encouraged to idolize, something
that we're supposed to put on a pedestal.
Speaker 2 (11:45):
What about music wise, we got a couple on here, right.
Speaker 1 (11:48):
Yeah, we got some other music ones. I know we
talked Britney Spears, but Aaron Carter, he was one. Unfortunately
a little bow Wow.
Speaker 3 (11:58):
Oh r and b Man Yeah, little Romeo remember Romeo.
Speaker 2 (12:05):
Shit. Yeah, it's hard to because some people end up
feeling like they get not feeling like they just kind
of get like pigeonholed into like this, Like you were
like a young right, like a young star. I know,
bowow for sure, he's low bow Wow. Then he moved
to bow Wow. And like sometimes they don't have a
great transition. Then if you don't have a great transition
(12:26):
and then you don't have much else after, it can
be a pretty hard thing that kind of come back from.
Speaker 1 (12:31):
And I know we talked a lot about it on
Our Athletes episode. Yeah, but athletes their identity is their
sport for so much of their lives from a young
age that when they start to reach that you know,
thirties forties time frame where they're not playing their sport,
it's a huge identity crisis for them. I'd have to
imagine it's just the same with child actors, especially if
(12:54):
the entire world remembers you for what you did when
you were a kid, that would be really hard to move.
Speaker 3 (13:00):
On from beans from even Stevens, he has a very
like recognizable face and he has been recognized a lot
over the years, kind of.
Speaker 2 (13:12):
Brought back because of things like TikTok. I don't know
if he really did any acting after that, so yeah,
I could.
Speaker 1 (13:19):
Yeah, true. For example, Hailey Joel Osmond from The Sixth Sense,
Jonathan Lopnikki, Jonathan Taylor Thomas, like so many young people
in our lives were a huge part of our lives,
and some of them made it out. And I know
Hailey Joel Osmond's been doing some acting and he's a
pretty good actor. He's been doing a good job and
he's living a good life.
Speaker 2 (13:39):
Hillary Duff, Right, there's man this, they're all kind of
coming back to me. Mm hmm, yeah, or what.
Speaker 1 (13:46):
Were you like and all that? But any other favorite shows?
Speaker 2 (13:50):
Hmmm? Were I I mean definitely would watch like the
Disney shows, Like I feel like there's more like like
I don't know, I think of like SpongeBob, right, but
that's not like with real people. Yeah, watch like our
Harley and stuff whatever, like Lizzie McGuire that came up
a lot. I don't know, They're just like a little
bit of everything. Yeah, yeah, what about.
Speaker 1 (14:10):
You, Good Time to Be a Kid? A lot of cartoons,
Invader Zim I really liked it was a fun cartoon
ed ed Neddie.
Speaker 2 (14:18):
Yeah. The Disney movies too, the Disney original movies like
those are a big deal. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (14:25):
I know, we mentioned even Stevens and Shi La Bay and.
Speaker 2 (14:28):
Even Stevens for sure. Boy Mee, how it's coming bout
Boy Meets World.
Speaker 1 (14:32):
Yeah, well, Clarissa explains it all. I really liked that
one too.
Speaker 2 (14:38):
You know that got you. I support you.
Speaker 1 (14:44):
So it seems like our culture, in our culture, child
stars are at an increased risk for addiction and mental
health problems. But like, is there actually any scientific data
on this? Is anyone actually really looked at this, so
I did a little bit of a dive. Most of
the data we'd like to present on this show I
get from NCBI or the National Center for Biomedical Information.
(15:07):
I try to look for meta analyzes, which is a
study of studies, so we try and present good data
on this show. But it was really hard to find
data on this topic. In terms of NCBI papers. There
was one that I found from nineteen ninety eight to
Report and Malane where they looked at seventy four different
(15:30):
child stars looking at the association between celebrity, parental attachment,
and adult adjustment. So those are the three associations they're
looking for. They found that when parents act as managers,
if they had a secure attachment with their parent, there
was actually no association between celebrity and adult adjustment. So
(15:52):
if you had a good attachment, a healthy relationship with
your parents, you tended to be a healthy adult. But
if you had a really insecure attachment style, there was
a huge association between celebrity and adult adjustment, more than
just the general population. But other than that, there was
one other study that I found, and it was an
article from twenty eleven that was like a pay article,
(16:14):
and you know, I just I didn't know if someone
wants to bend Momi fifty bucks or something. Fifty bucks
papers online to access them are expensive unless you get
them for free.
Speaker 2 (16:25):
So yeah, I.
Speaker 1 (16:26):
Don't even know how much it was. It was probably
around fifty bucks.
Speaker 2 (16:29):
But I mean they deserve to be paid for their work,
but I mean finny bucks.
Speaker 1 (16:32):
Yeah, what do they got? Terrorists on these articles or
so shit? So there's not much going on in terms
of academically rigorous papers on this topic.
Speaker 2 (16:45):
Yeah, my guess is, as you were sharing, like, there's
probably not a whole lot of like funding or grants
that are going towards like, hey, tell us more about
the impact of being a child start, Like that's not
really something people I won't really want to pay money for, right,
Like research wise, I can't imagine that.
Speaker 1 (17:03):
Yeah, it seems like something that the government wouldn't want
to spend money on. Like, yeah, we got to study
these child stars.
Speaker 2 (17:11):
Well, we can give you, guys our guesses on what
it was like for people to be a child star,
but one of the best ways to tell you about
it is to hear from the people who experienced it.
So these quotes. The fallen quotes are going to be
from Elite Daily. The first one is Zendeia. She was
in her early teens when her acting career took off.
Now she's dating Spider Man or Tom Holland, and she
(17:32):
was writing sand Worms. I watched a little bit of
doing I don't understand, you know. I tried to read
the book. I read like three pages, like, I don't
know any of these names. I'm not writing this shit,
and I stopped so anyway, so she's come a long way.
But a quote from Vogue Magaze from a Vogue Magazine
interview that she had about being a child star, she said,
I don't know how much of a choice I had.
(17:54):
I have complicated feelings about kids and fame and being
in the public eye or being a child actor. I
want to say that I felt like I was thrust
into a very adult position. I was becoming the breadwinner
of my family very early, and there's a lot of
role reversal happening and just kind of becoming grown. Really,
the role reversal changes dynamics in the family and can
(18:16):
give children power over the parents, and they can use
their income as leverage. I think this is going to
be a good opportunity for me to talk about this.
I told Justin. Then I had a little bit of
a surprise. I did a little more research on how
because I've heard about this. I've heard about this through
different like child actors on like social media interviews and
things that they've done. If you're not familiar. In California,
(18:37):
they have the Coogan Law or the Cougan Act. It
was basically enacted to prevent parents and guardians from misusing
their child's earnings. Specifically to California, but there's other states
that have something similar, like in New York, Illinois, Louisiana,
and New Mexico. It was named after child actor Jackie Coogan,
who had discovered that as an adult that her parents
(18:58):
that his parents actually had at nearly all of his earnings.
So basically what it is. It requires that money be
put into what it's called a Cougan account. It's a
trust that they can access when they turn eighteen the
child star, but only fifteen percent of the earnings have
to be put in. They can obviously put more, but
the requirement is fifteen right, So that sounds great, but
(19:20):
the hard part is that eighty five percent of the
money is still accessible to parents and guardians, so they
can definitely misuse it. Unfortunately, and it's not an uncommon thing.
We've heard about people becoming eighteen getting ready to get
their money and then there's just not a whole lot
of money left and it really sucks from Unfortunately, there's
not really a federal standard when it comes to the
Cougan law. It only pertains to certain states. Without it,
(19:43):
parents kind of have full access to the child's earnings.
One thing I also learned is that while the money
is meant to be untouchable, parents can find ways to
withdraw the money. They can claim things like financial hardship.
They can say that they have to fund personal expenses
or investments, so that kind of stuff can get taken of.
There's really not a whole lot of oversighter enforcement. It's
(20:04):
just not great. So in terms of money, there is
some kind of risk when it comes to what is
a parent going to do with their child's money if
they end up being like the breadwinner and who's going
to take care of all of that?
Speaker 1 (20:18):
Well, you learned me something today, Bam.
Speaker 2 (20:22):
That's all I wanted. That's all I wanted.
Speaker 1 (20:25):
When you were talking about I googled Jackie Coogan. He's
an old time actor born in nineteen fourteen. He was
the kid in Charlie Chaplin's film The Kid, So he
was a big actor back in the day. But I
didn't even really know who he was.
Speaker 2 (20:39):
There you go, he apparently had all his money taken unfortunately.
Speaker 1 (20:44):
Yeah, and that's so sad, right, you know, you think
these kids are going to be set for life, but
unfortunately there's lots of stories about parents mismanaging their children's finances.
Speaker 2 (21:01):
You know. And I think you bring up a great point.
I think there's also the assumption that, like child stars
got paid like a fuck ton of money. I feel like,
and I'll look this up while you share the next part,
but I feel like I had heard from Josh Peck
again from Drake and Josh, that his career earnings was
not a ton. There actually were not as many episodes
as you would think there were. You would think there's
(21:22):
like hundreds and hundreds of episodes, but there really weren't
that many episodes of Drake and Joss Drake and Josh. So,
like the money, while yes, is a huge amount, it's
not It didn't doesn't seem like it was an amount
that was like your life is set for the rest
of your life.
Speaker 1 (21:37):
Yeah, I remember even here in some in sync some
of the like Lance Bass, I think was doing an
interview where he said that he was in the one
of the biggest bands, boy bands in the world. They
were on top of the world. He was working his
butt off, but essentially he was making like minimum wage
that his manager was taking almost all of the cut
(21:57):
from everything that they were making. And so yeah, kids
tend to get abused in his business and will not
make as much as they deserve.
Speaker 2 (22:05):
Yeah, so here I found the numbers. So Josh Peck
he said that he earned about fifteen thousand dollars an episode.
How many episodes do you think there were of Drake
and Josh forty three? There's sixty. I thought I was
probably gonna say something like a hundred some anyway, So
there's only four seasons and sixty episodes. Isn't that wild?
I thought there was a lot more. But yeah, he's
(22:25):
said he only earned about nine hundred thousand dollars in
the show's entirety, and then after taxes and fees, he
was only left with about four hundred and fifty thousand dollars,
which I say only right, Like, that's a life changing
amount of money, But that's not enough to live on
for the rest of your life, even if you like
invested it right correct.
Speaker 1 (22:45):
Not, especially because at the time he was probably supporting
his family too. Yeah, dang, Yeah, that's not nearly as
much as I would have anticipated. Yeah, but someone who
probably earned a lot more money because she was such
a huge movie star was Linda Lohan. She was twelve
years old when The Parent Trap came out and made
her a national icon. I always think it's so funny
(23:08):
that I had like a huge crush on Lindsay Lohan
because of The Parent Trap. Then my dad told me
that he really liked the original Parent Trap from like
the sixties and had a huge crush on the girl
in that one too. It was like father likes and
phone for the Parent Trap girls. So one quote from
her about her life and career, she said, I feel
like some of my work got overshadowed by paparazzi and
(23:32):
all of that kind of stuff when I was younger,
and that's kind of annoying. I wish that part didn't happen.
They teach you to say yes to everything, and that's
not really what life is all about. I was recording
an album in my trailer on the set of the
movie Herbie the love Bug, and I was promoting an
album while shooting. I remember this so specifically. I had
(23:52):
to go to the dentist, and I had no time
to go to the dentist, but something happened with my tooth,
so the dentist had to come see me. It was
just so much all the time.
Speaker 2 (24:02):
Hillary Duff. We mentioned her earlier, probably most famously known
for her role in Lizzie McGuire as Lizzie McGuire on Disney,
She more recently was than How I Met Your Father.
I tried to watch it because I was a big
How I Met Your Mother fan didn't get too far
into it, but that's okay. We're still big. We support
Hillary Duff. From an interview with Cosmopolitan in twenty twenty two,
(24:23):
she said, I wouldn't do it all exactly the same,
but I can't look at my life and be like,
I wish this was different, because I don't know if
it would get me to where I am right now.
She went on to say that I feel smart, but
there are certain things that people talk about where it
literally isn't in my brain because I didn't experience it.
So thinking about probably regular school, college and the interview,
(24:45):
she was specifically talking about things like college, but there's
a lot of things that she didn't get to experience.
Even so it's really making me think maybe the different
version of child stars that we have today is child influencers,
like on social media. I don't know if you've heard
about this. I think in California there's legislation or laws
(25:08):
where you basically like can't profit off of your children
or off of minors from like social media or media
or whatever. So a lot of these families have started
to move to Tennessee, specifically Nashville, Tennessee. I don't exactly
know why Nashville, but it's not it's it seems to
be a pretty common thing. So what that's making me
think about this is gonna sound so stupid if you've
(25:29):
never seen it on TikTok Oh my god, Okay.
Speaker 1 (25:34):
Please don't taye skippity toilet. Please don't say no, no, no
no no.
Speaker 2 (25:37):
This might be better. Did you ever see the video
of like We're costc guys blah blah blah, Like we
we go and of course we get a chicken bake
while we go shopping, and the Dad's like, we're costc guys,
you gotta get a double chocolate chip chunk cookie. Anyway,
this is so stupid. Anyway, that's a J and Big Justice.
It's the father son duo and I saw a TikTok
(26:00):
a little while back. We're Big Justice. The Sun said
that he's not able to go to school anymore because
kids are coming up to him all the time, trying
to like get him in videos, trying to do things
with him that like he was just a distraction at school.
So now he might have to live a life for
at least a certain amount of time where he doesn't
live the same life that his friends are living, and
(26:21):
he has to experience things in different ways. So yeah,
maybe maybe child stars have shifted. It's more of a
social media thing than it is full on acting.
Speaker 1 (26:30):
Oh totally yeah. And I have to admit I don't
know as much about who are the super popular social
media stars right now.
Speaker 2 (26:38):
Aj aj Big.
Speaker 1 (26:40):
I've never heard of the Rizzler.
Speaker 2 (26:42):
He never heard of my boy the Rizzler. I've never
heard of the rizzle damn it.
Speaker 1 (26:46):
Justin, I just I get everything secondhand through all my patients,
and it's.
Speaker 2 (26:51):
All just this chronically online. Okay, I'm gonna see if
I can find that law. I'll share it when I
find it.
Speaker 1 (27:05):
Okay. Up next on the list we have mister Cole Sprouse.
So he got his start as Ben Geller on Friends.
He was Ross's child. He was literally a toddler when
he started acting in TV, and in an interview with
the podcast Call Her Daddy, which my wife is a
big fan of, in March of twenty twenty three, he
(27:28):
said it was in many ways a life saving show.
It provided us with an amount of stability and consistency
and routine that really was needed for my brother and
I at the time. I think there's two types of
kids within the acting child business. There's the thespian child
who actually chooses to do it, and then there's the
(27:49):
working class kids that in their case, in Cole Sprouse's case,
it started as a way to put bread on the table,
and that hit me. But a lot of these kids
they're not really choosing to do it. Their parents are
doing it because they're looking for a stable income. They're
looking for a way to support and feed their family.
(28:10):
Especially if you have a toddler. You know, the toddler's
not like, hey, I want to be a Jack Nicholson
one day.
Speaker 2 (28:17):
Yeah, I mean it is. It's kind of hard to
think of it as like a like survival. We have
all the kids. Yeah, does it means it is?
Speaker 1 (28:29):
Cole later went on to say that, you know, my
parents didn't come from too much, and I have now
been granted a life of primarily financial stability and a
surplus in many cases. And this is the bright product
of working for thirty years and trading in my childhood.
So though he admitted to having some resentment over it
over his childhood as an actor, he said that he
(28:49):
probably wouldn't do anything differently, and he said, I don't
regret it at all. If I were given the same
choices again, I'd probably do it all over again. So
interesting to get his take on it.
Speaker 2 (28:59):
That is interesting. Here's what I found so in here
it is. In September September of twenty twenty four, a
law was passed in California that basically mirrored the Cougan
Act or the Cougan Law, but added like social media influencers.
So basically the tagline is new California law to require
(29:21):
influencer parents to set aside money for their kids, and
right below is influencers in California who include their children
in post will not have to put money away for them.
And then there's a Rolling Stone article about it basically
saying the same thing. And so it's kind of like
this this out loud secret that like Tennessee is a
(29:43):
place where you don't have to follow this. Tennessee also
doesn't have a state income tax, so I think they're
kind of taking advantage of all those things of not
having to set aside I mean pretty much taking advantage
of the kids. But anyway, yeah, it's interesting that it's
shifted a lot, like that's a they kind of have
to change the law with what's going on. So those
were some kind of like some positives some mixed reactions
(30:06):
of being a child star, but there's some negative ones too,
And one that I at least want to talk about
first is Jeanette mccurty. So if you ever watched I Carly,
she was sam on the show from reading her book,
her memoir titled I'm Glad My Mom Died. She was
also actually on another show I think was it with
Ariana Grande like she Sam can't Yes, that's the one. Yes,
(30:28):
so that that also came out. But basically she just
talked about how it was a very difficult and pretty
much abusive time with her mom as she was becoming
a childhood star. So in twenty twenty two, she gave
an interview to Canada's CBC, the Canadian Broadcasting Company, and
if any Canadians are out there listening, please know that
(30:49):
we love Canada. We apologize for the ship that's going
on where Sorry, but yeah. Her quote is that no
child is psychological, emotionally, mentally equipped for the obstacles of
child stardom, even if they have the greatest support system
around them, just not really prepared. She really she feels
very strongly about it. So more specifics from her book
(31:11):
if you've never read it, She basically just details her
life with her mom basically making her child star like
kind of forcing her into it, like always taking her
to auditions, basically forcing her to not gain any extra weight.
Her mom knew that if you kept a childlike body
(31:33):
and figure that there was more kind of opportunities to
break in that way, So her mom would would pretty
much not let her eat that kind of spos her
into an eating disorder, a lot of manipulation, just a
lot of stuff. And it was to the point when
even when her mom was diagnosed with cancer and her
mom died, like she didn't really have a whole lot
of like I don't know if she really hurt over it,
(31:56):
you know what I mean, Like she was so abused
that it just wasn't it wasn't what. She didn't have
a lot of feelings with it. So I read that
book a year or two ago. Really sad, really interesting.
She talks about treatment and trying to get her life back,
but you can definitely tell in some interviews that she's
been pretty messed up because of it.
Speaker 1 (32:15):
To add on that point, I remember watching All Quiet
on the set, and a lot of those Nickelodeon stars,
as soon as they hit puberty and they started to
grow up and their body started to change, they were
essentially pushed out or forced out of their positions and shows.
Contracts were not renewed. And it's just it's sad, you know,
because they think that they're on the show. They think
(32:36):
you've got this family in this show, and then as
soon as they don't fit the mold that they're supposed
to they're out of there.
Speaker 2 (32:44):
Yeah, yeah, it's tough. Oh another show, full House, in
a full house. Oh yeah, may Kin Nashley Olsen. Yeah,
other pretty early on child stars.
Speaker 1 (32:54):
Yeah, very much so. Another real young one, Raven Simone,
started acting at three years old on The Cosby Show.
Trust us. We're not going to make any Bill Cosby
jokes right now. From a Vanity Fair interview in twenty
twenty three, she said, I was taught to always be
on time early, know my lines, smile when someone wants
(33:15):
to take a picture with you, always say yes, and
know that every part of my life will be scrutinized
for the rest of my life. Yeah, that one hit me.
Speaker 2 (33:25):
Too hard man. Yeah. Yeah, she's on one of those
daily talk shows now too, right, isn't the viewerm I'm
making that up? Or she was at some point.
Speaker 1 (33:35):
Yeah, she's had a pretty good career.
Speaker 2 (33:38):
Yeah, but yeah, that's I mean, to have to deal
with that at a young age is awful.
Speaker 1 (33:42):
And that's exactly what Lindsay Lohan had said, right that
they're taught to always say yes, which is not healthy.
It doesn't teach you boundaries, it doesn't teach you how
to protect yourself. It just teaches you how to say
yes to everything, which can get you in some pretty
rough situations.
Speaker 2 (34:01):
I'll let you wrap us up on the last one
because I know you're interested in sharing.
Speaker 1 (34:05):
Mccullay Culkin. I loved mccullay culkin growing up, so he
started acting at age four, got famous in the movie
Uncle Buck with John Candy. Loved that movie. He was
the first child star to earn a million dollars for
a single movie, so it was big money for a
child star. And I know we've talked a lot about
kids and parents mismanaging their money. Actually emancipated himself at
(34:30):
the age of fourteen, citing that his father had mismanaged
his money and abused him. I tried to dive a
little bit and see if he made any other claims
about the specific abuse, but didn't find anything. He also
struggled with some opioids in his life. He was arrested
at one point and had oxy cotone on him. But
he has a good career. He's beloved in our community.
(34:54):
He's married to Brenda Song, who was also a child
star Disney star growing up. I think she was also
on Sweet life of acting Cody and they have a
son together. So I just really wanted to talk about
Macaulay Culkin because I love that.
Speaker 2 (35:07):
He's definitely had a bounce buck. It's definitely been able
to redeem himself, which is which is great, especially after
living a life like that. But given everything we've talked about,
are we are we letting young Liam be a childhood actor?
What's the what's the plan?
Speaker 1 (35:25):
Probably not my son Liam. If if he was like
super into acting and really wanted to do it, I
would say, Okay, let's do it. But we got to
make sure you stay safe in all of this and
make sure he's supervised, has the right support, has the
right supervision, all that stuff. But what about little Leddy
Junior when he's you.
Speaker 2 (35:46):
Know, eventually imaginary unless you're going to bring in the
big books, which.
Speaker 1 (35:57):
You can't even benefit from if if you're in California. Oh,
that's true, that's true. Another thing I want to ask too,
is like, it seems like there's a big difference in
male versus female child stars, and so I wanted to
just discuss a little bit. It seems like there's always
somewhat of a sexual element with the females in particular,
(36:21):
and that kind of pressure and sexuality sexualization from older
men at such a young age is not a healthy thing.
It's not a good thing. And I think it really
puts a lot of young women in a position where
a they're told to say yes all the time, and
then they're in a position where they have a lot
(36:42):
of older, creepy men fawning over them, and it's it's
a system set up for abuse.
Speaker 2 (36:49):
Yeah, And I think to not only that, but just
like the constant like you have to look a certain way,
the probably pressures you're getting for maybe if you're a
child star working with older adults, I feel like unfortunately,
like female actresses probably get a lot more of the
difficult things that they have to deal with in terms
(37:10):
of pressure and body image issues and deal with all
of that. Like I think we see a lot of
our team girls are already struggling with that in our regular
life in Hollywood, and through acting it's probably exponentially worse.
Speaker 1 (37:23):
Yeah, seems like it. So one of the other points
I wanted to make too, was it seems like a
two factor thing where yes, it seems like child stars
are slightly more likely to struggle with drugs and alcohol. Yeah,
they got all the money, all the fame young, they
(37:43):
have power, they have money to buy drugs and alcohol,
but they're also under a microscope constantly. So if things
go south, you better bet your bottom dollar TMZ is
going to be outside of their door with a camera
and an asshole Oh yeah, asking questions, trying to get
a rise out of them. So we get that bias.
(38:04):
We only see the ones that go downhill. We don't
get as many of the success stories. I think it's important,
and we wanted to throw in a lot of quotes
from people who have had successful careers, who have had
relatively healthy adult lives that it's not all bad, but
it can be bad.
Speaker 2 (38:24):
Yeah, and I think too, like for sure, like these people,
people love to see people not doing well unfortunately right
news wise, TMZ. I mean when Kobe died, like TMZ
was all over it, right, they weren't even confirming shit,
and apparently someone from ten Z like got a picture
of them. You know, there's just so much like people
love to see people not doing well social media news.
(38:47):
Why so imagine that kind of pressure on an adult, Yeah,
it really sucks, but on a child fucking terrible.
Speaker 1 (38:55):
Yeah, And in America, it's very simple. It's just whatever
makes you money is going to be what do Yeah,
and there's gonna be someone trying to exploit someone else
for money.
Speaker 2 (39:04):
Oh yeah.
Speaker 1 (39:05):
Always take home point for the day, my friend.
Speaker 2 (39:08):
Take home point. Real ones know that Nickelodeon was fifty three,
Cartoon Network fifty four, Disney fifty five. No, I think
something like this, like you, like we talked about we
like to have the intersection of pop culture and mental
health and our work. I feel like I learned a
decent amount just hearing from the child actors themselves through interviews.
(39:32):
Young Eddie probably would be surprised at how much it's
not all glamour as I probably assumed it was. That's
probably my take home point. It's not as it's not
as glamorous a life as we think it is.
Speaker 1 (39:43):
You know, we never got slimmed, And.
Speaker 2 (39:47):
You're right, and that heart there was that show? What
was that one? It was like it was like a
game show for kids, and there was like the Temple
of what ever.
Speaker 1 (40:00):
The Legends of the Hidden Temple legs.
Speaker 2 (40:03):
I wanted to be on that show. I also wanted
to be on Supermarket sweep, So I don't.
Speaker 1 (40:06):
Know if oh, yeah, it's just game shows I wanted. Yeah,
Doubledare that was super fun.
Speaker 2 (40:15):
Yeah yeah, it was just an.
Speaker 1 (40:16):
Awesome era for TV and for kids. My take home
point for the day is that I learned that not
all child stars had a bad experience, and some people
would actually do the same thing. Many of them were
just trying to support their families. I think that's probably
like my biggest take home point is that a lot
of child stars are putting bread on the table. They're
(40:38):
looking out for their people. But Hollywood has the types
of people that if you promise them a drop of blood,
they will bleed every ounce of you just to make
a dollar. So you got to be really careful if
your kid is a rising star.
Speaker 2 (40:52):
Yeah, and then they just on the street.
Speaker 1 (40:55):
Yeah, as soon as they're done with you.
Speaker 2 (40:57):
Yeah. Well, thank you all for for listening to our
rants and rambles about the intersection of child stars and
mental health. As always Instagram, We'll start with social media Instagram, Twitter, TikTok,
YouTube at Millennial MHC at our website millenniummac dot com.
You can also find us Apple podcasts. Google podcast isn't
(41:18):
really a thing anymore. Spotify all the places to get
your podcasts. You can find us on there. Leave us
a five star review if you'd like, you can also
leave us a comment. We also were recently from feedspot
dot com. We made the list of top one hundred
mental health podcasts. Will also be in one of the
top sixty millennial podcasts, so we are out there. Shout
(41:39):
out to feetspot dot com. Thank you all for listening.
We'll see you at our next episode, and remember take
care of all mentals.
Well, you learned me some today, baym. This is Millennial
Mental Health Channel. I'm doctor Justin Romano, a child adolescent
psychiatry fellow.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
And I'm Adikoreo, a licensed clinical therapist. Our podcast is
here because we wanted to start a much need to
conversation about mental health.
Speaker 1 (00:17):
Our goal is to teach you as much as we
can by sharing our own experiences and interviewing experts in
the mental health field. We will discuss topics like mood disorders,
psychotic disorders, substance use, personality disorders, and many more.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
Millennial Mental Health Channel buy Millennials for everyone. We hope
you enjoyed today's episode.
Speaker 1 (00:36):
MMHC is a production of Speaker from iHeartMedia, I Heart
mir Benvendo. We haven't used much Portuguese on the show,
so I figured let's do it.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
Why not love it? Thank you. I've been wondering when
that was going to happen, and now, okay, I'll thank you.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
It's now. Today is the time. Why not. Welcome to MMAC.
We are glad you are here. We're gonna have another
pop culture episode for you today, which is you know,
we always love talking mental health. We especially love talking
about pop culture stuff and how mental health plays into
a lot of it too.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
So some would say that intersectionality, oh vocab, Yeah, nice
like that. It's like I'm teaching cultural foundations.
Speaker 1 (01:24):
Eddie brought the fire today and I like it. So
if you've been watching the news lately, you know that
Michelle Trachtenberg passed away recently, who was a very popular
child star and star as a young adult. She's an actress.
She was big for millennials. We watched her a lot
growing up, or I mean I guess I did too.
(01:44):
I know Eddie's not the biggest movie guy in the world,
do you change.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
I'm just here to support, so Eddie is.
Speaker 1 (01:51):
Here to party. I got a quick shout out to
Christina at work. She made us some very cool T
shirts that are related to the show. So I just
want to say thank you, thank you, thank you. That
was very cool.
Speaker 2 (02:02):
Thank you Christina.
Speaker 1 (02:04):
You got any shout outs for me?
Speaker 2 (02:06):
Shout out to Christina. We appreciate you.
Speaker 1 (02:10):
Thank you, Christina. So a little bit of info on
Michelle Trachtenberg. She was born in nineteen eighty five, which
puts her right in that millennial time frame.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
She got her start on Pete and Pete on Nickelodeon.
Big note, I'm assuming we were both big Nickelodeon guys
growing up.
Speaker 1 (02:26):
Oh yeah, watched a lot of Pete and Pete, a
lot of Nickelodeon.
Speaker 2 (02:29):
What channel was Nickelodeon for you growing up? Oh?
Speaker 1 (02:32):
Man, I think he was thirty five.
Speaker 2 (02:35):
Yeah, mine was fifty three. Isn't that interesting? Yeah, it's
up on Twitter every so often, like all real ones.
You know, know that Nickelodeon was fifty three. So for
me it was Nickelodeon fifty three, Cartoon Network fifty four,
Disney fifty five, and then ESPN was thirty eight and
(02:56):
thirty nine.
Speaker 1 (02:57):
I can't remember numbers for anything, but I can remember
the Nickelodeon was thirty five in California when I was
eight years old.
Speaker 2 (03:04):
It's one of those things, man, so funny.
Speaker 1 (03:09):
Yeah, And as soon as you said that, I was like, yeah,
Nickelodeon thirty five, Disney thirty six, and Cartoon Network forty two.
Speaker 2 (03:15):
Ay man, I don't make the rules.
Speaker 1 (03:19):
So if you guys can remember your childhood favorite channels,
then you're probably a millennial too. So Michelle Tracktonberg was
also in a lot of other big shows, especially as
she got older and she grew up. She was She
had roles in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. She was in
the amazing comedy euro Trip, which I loved. Miss School
(03:42):
is A. She was in Harriet the Spot, and Gossip Girl.
Speaker 2 (03:46):
Yeah, she was what people would call the quintessential child star.
It started very early in her life, so she was
in commercials at three years old. She ended up doing
something like over one hundred commercials total. And this is
like the the definition right of child's star, like early,
like in just kind of transitioning into the next things.
(04:06):
It feels like we don't have a lot of those nowadays.
But maybe I'm wrong, Maybe I just maybe I just
don't consume that much media.
Speaker 1 (04:11):
Who knows that's true, But yeah, three years old is
super early to start, right was you're just understanding how
the world works, and you're working. She was actually found
deceased in her New York City apartment on February twenty
sixth of this year. The family opted not to do
an autopsy, and the official cause of death has been
(04:34):
undetermined because they don't really know and they didn't do
the autopsy to find out did.
Speaker 2 (04:42):
I don't know if I remember this correctly. But was
it maybe because of religious reasons? Did you hear anything
about that? You know it didn't Yeah, I might be
making that up, but yeah, they ultimately undetermined didn't do
an autopsy. She was only thirty nine years old, that
she had had a liver transplant, But we're really not
(05:03):
able to find information as to why. So a lot
of speculation as to what could have happened, but you know,
we're just never really going to have the answers.
Speaker 1 (05:10):
There's a million things that can lead to needing a
liver transplant, so we don't want to speculate. So that's
just kind of a final word about Michelle. We wanted
to say rest in peace, and we wanted to use
her passing as a springboard to talk about child stardom
because there are a lot of preconceived notions about child stardom.
(05:31):
Because when you think about it, Eddie, what's the first
thing that comes to mind?
Speaker 2 (05:36):
It's bad but like drug addiction, kind of crashing out
of just like and even like crashing and burning. I know,
you know one that gets brought up a lot on
like TikTok and just other social media is Amanda Bynes
and like, what's happened to her. She's kind of come back,
not really into the spotlight, but onto the maybe the
social media spotlight recently. And I think she even she
(05:59):
either has a TikTok or she's posted somewhere where she
started to get like her esthetician license or cosmetology license
or you know, so just like things like that. But
people are like really like, oh, man, like she looks
so different, like but she's been through a lot so
But I think that seems to feel like a pretty
typical or stereotype when it comes to child stars. That's
(06:21):
something they go to this kind of life of like
partying and living the life, and then they experienced it
so young that it has long term impacts, like kind
of for the rest of their life.
Speaker 1 (06:31):
Boy, do we love a good success story. Like I
can't even think of his name, but the guy who
played Goldberg in Mighty Ducks. There was a lot of
going around on the internet about him a couple of
years ago, about how he was struggling with methmphetamine addiction
but was able to get his life together, he was
able to maintain a period of sobriety. Eddie, you got
his name for me? I hear you talking weis Sean Weiss.
Speaker 2 (06:52):
Yeah, yep, yeah, pretty recent right. He in again not
the limelight, but he brought back into like our lives
on social media and what's kind of happened to him.
He's also in the movie Heavyweights. You remember that movie,
Oh I love it was a good movie.
Speaker 1 (07:07):
It was one of my favorite movies. Ben Stiller is
so funny.
Speaker 2 (07:11):
And then that was a good one. They don't make
they don't make they don't make it.
Speaker 1 (07:14):
They don't make us.
Speaker 2 (07:17):
Hey, okay, you'd be proud of me for this. Recently,
it was finals week at work, so like as part
of it, sometimes the counting office will do, like there's
a thing long story short, there's the time where we
can do kind of like enrichment periods, like on the
day of finals, where kids can go study or they
can do something, they take a break, relax whatever. Uh.
And one of the school counselors wanted to do a movie,
(07:39):
so she just posted, Hey, we're gonna host a movie day.
We watched The Sandlot. Never seen it before, so I
watched The Sandlot. Some of those things don't age well
in that movie. I'll just say, really, there was a
couple of times We're like, don't do that, kids, Oh no,
don't do that. What's his name? The kid with the
glasses spins squints when he like forces himself upon the lifeguard. Right,
(08:05):
not great. Later in the movie when the kids do
like the chewing tobacco and then they like throw it right,
like so there's just a couple of things, or like
or when ham is like the worst the worst insult
you can tell someone is you play ball like a
girl on that. It's just some things where like, Okay,
this is like funny when we were younger, but yeah, overall,
(08:26):
good movie. It was. It was fun to watch.
Speaker 1 (08:28):
It's amazing how quickly society has changed. Yeah, Eddie, when
you were a kid, did you want to be a star?
Speaker 2 (08:35):
Hell yeah, I wanted to be on all that. Oh yeah,
like I for sure. Uh now not so much, but yeah,
for sure.
Speaker 1 (08:45):
Back in the day, me too, man, you know, especially
you know watching movies, you know, blank Check and Nickelodeon
was was at its peak when we were kids, and
it was just everything you saw kids having the most fun.
Now that I've grown up, I realized that stardom is
not always what it is made out to be. Did
(09:06):
you see quiet on set.
Speaker 2 (09:08):
No, I haven't watched it. I've seen pieces of it,
and it's hard too because, like I mean, it's kind
of a good example of like what one person may
perceive as traumatic is not the same as everybody else, right,
because like I can't remember who exactly has come out
and been like I think Josh Peck might have been
one that was kind of like, no, he was just
a tough boss, but like other people are like no,
(09:28):
like he was fucking terrible. So it's creepy. I don't know,
you know, it's it's definitely you know, could also just
be an example of not wanting to relive traumatic experiences,
so we'll never fully know the truth and what really
went on. But it's definitely not it doesn't it. It really
helps to unfortunately like solidify some like preconceived notions of
(09:49):
like the dark side of Hollywood and stardom.
Speaker 1 (09:54):
Anytime there's a power differential, there's the possibility for abuse,
and kids off some times have to work for very
powerful people in Hollywood and it opens them up to abuse.
So I think hopefully there are more protections in place
for those types of things, because it needs to change.
We need to have protections for kids. Yeah, okay, so
(10:14):
who else for some of your favorite like stars, your
child stars growing up?
Speaker 2 (10:19):
We got a list, I mean I said all that, right, Yeah,
you had the Keenan and Kel Show, you had Amanda Bynes,
I know, we had Lindsay Lohan on here, you got
like The Wizard, the Sprouse Twins, Hannah Montana, Miley Cyrus
was a big deal when we were younger. Like, there's
just a lot of like Drake and Josh, Miranda Crossgrove,
(10:39):
right II Carley, Yeah, there's just a lot like of
these names. Oh fucking that's okay. Anyway, that's a raven that. Like,
there's just a lot and even if you go back
a little, like they weren't necessarily children, but like Will
Smith right freshman, Yeah, did you ever watch Say by
the Bell? That was a little bit before our time,
(11:00):
but like as I got older, I would I watched
it more like those kids and say By the Bell,
Boy meets World.
Speaker 1 (11:07):
Yeah, A crush onto Panga?
Speaker 2 (11:10):
Oh yeah who didn't now not so much. I've heard
some bad things about her, but yeah, well we'll get
into that some point. But yeah, it's there's a lot, right,
There's just like people who seem to be relatively in
our age that like you would just kind of see
and grow up and you see him for over expand
of time, and yeah, childhood child stardom was definitely something
(11:34):
that was seemed to really be intertwined right with our
with our upbringing.
Speaker 1 (11:38):
Totally something that we were almost encouraged to idolize, something
that we're supposed to put on a pedestal.
Speaker 2 (11:45):
What about music wise, we got a couple on here, right.
Speaker 1 (11:48):
Yeah, we got some other music ones. I know we
talked Britney Spears, but Aaron Carter, he was one. Unfortunately
a little bow Wow.
Speaker 3 (11:58):
Oh r and b Man Yeah, little Romeo remember Romeo.
Speaker 2 (12:05):
Shit. Yeah, it's hard to because some people end up
feeling like they get not feeling like they just kind
of get like pigeonholed into like this, Like you were
like a young right, like a young star. I know,
bowow for sure, he's low bow Wow. Then he moved
to bow Wow. And like sometimes they don't have a
great transition. Then if you don't have a great transition
(12:26):
and then you don't have much else after, it can
be a pretty hard thing that kind of come back from.
Speaker 1 (12:31):
And I know we talked a lot about it on
Our Athletes episode. Yeah, but athletes their identity is their
sport for so much of their lives from a young
age that when they start to reach that you know,
thirties forties time frame where they're not playing their sport,
it's a huge identity crisis for them. I'd have to
imagine it's just the same with child actors, especially if
(12:54):
the entire world remembers you for what you did when
you were a kid, that would be really hard to move.
Speaker 3 (13:00):
On from beans from even Stevens, he has a very
like recognizable face and he has been recognized a lot
over the years, kind of.
Speaker 2 (13:12):
Brought back because of things like TikTok. I don't know
if he really did any acting after that, so yeah,
I could.
Speaker 1 (13:19):
Yeah, true. For example, Hailey Joel Osmond from The Sixth Sense,
Jonathan Lopnikki, Jonathan Taylor Thomas, like so many young people
in our lives were a huge part of our lives,
and some of them made it out. And I know
Hailey Joel Osmond's been doing some acting and he's a
pretty good actor. He's been doing a good job and
he's living a good life.
Speaker 2 (13:39):
Hillary Duff, Right, there's man this, they're all kind of
coming back to me. Mm hmm, yeah, or what.
Speaker 1 (13:46):
Were you like and all that? But any other favorite shows?
Speaker 2 (13:50):
Hmmm? Were I I mean definitely would watch like the
Disney shows, Like I feel like there's more like like
I don't know, I think of like SpongeBob, right, but
that's not like with real people. Yeah, watch like our
Harley and stuff whatever, like Lizzie McGuire that came up
a lot. I don't know, They're just like a little
bit of everything. Yeah, yeah, what about.
Speaker 1 (14:10):
You, Good Time to Be a Kid? A lot of cartoons,
Invader Zim I really liked it was a fun cartoon
ed ed Neddie.
Speaker 2 (14:18):
Yeah. The Disney movies too, the Disney original movies like
those are a big deal. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (14:25):
I know, we mentioned even Stevens and Shi La Bay and.
Speaker 2 (14:28):
Even Stevens for sure. Boy Mee, how it's coming bout
Boy Meets World.
Speaker 1 (14:32):
Yeah, well, Clarissa explains it all. I really liked that
one too.
Speaker 2 (14:38):
You know that got you. I support you.
Speaker 1 (14:44):
So it seems like our culture, in our culture, child
stars are at an increased risk for addiction and mental
health problems. But like, is there actually any scientific data
on this? Is anyone actually really looked at this, so
I did a little bit of a dive. Most of
the data we'd like to present on this show I
get from NCBI or the National Center for Biomedical Information.
(15:07):
I try to look for meta analyzes, which is a
study of studies, so we try and present good data
on this show. But it was really hard to find
data on this topic. In terms of NCBI papers. There
was one that I found from nineteen ninety eight to
Report and Malane where they looked at seventy four different
(15:30):
child stars looking at the association between celebrity, parental attachment,
and adult adjustment. So those are the three associations they're
looking for. They found that when parents act as managers,
if they had a secure attachment with their parent, there
was actually no association between celebrity and adult adjustment. So
(15:52):
if you had a good attachment, a healthy relationship with
your parents, you tended to be a healthy adult. But
if you had a really insecure attachment style, there was
a huge association between celebrity and adult adjustment, more than
just the general population. But other than that, there was
one other study that I found, and it was an
article from twenty eleven that was like a pay article,
(16:14):
and you know, I just I didn't know if someone
wants to bend Momi fifty bucks or something. Fifty bucks
papers online to access them are expensive unless you get
them for free.
Speaker 2 (16:25):
So yeah, I.
Speaker 1 (16:26):
Don't even know how much it was. It was probably
around fifty bucks.
Speaker 2 (16:29):
But I mean they deserve to be paid for their work,
but I mean finny bucks.
Speaker 1 (16:32):
Yeah, what do they got? Terrorists on these articles or
so shit? So there's not much going on in terms
of academically rigorous papers on this topic.
Speaker 2 (16:45):
Yeah, my guess is, as you were sharing, like, there's
probably not a whole lot of like funding or grants
that are going towards like, hey, tell us more about
the impact of being a child start, Like that's not
really something people I won't really want to pay money for, right,
Like research wise, I can't imagine that.
Speaker 1 (17:03):
Yeah, it seems like something that the government wouldn't want
to spend money on. Like, yeah, we got to study
these child stars.
Speaker 2 (17:11):
Well, we can give you, guys our guesses on what
it was like for people to be a child star,
but one of the best ways to tell you about
it is to hear from the people who experienced it.
So these quotes. The fallen quotes are going to be
from Elite Daily. The first one is Zendeia. She was
in her early teens when her acting career took off.
Now she's dating Spider Man or Tom Holland, and she
(17:32):
was writing sand Worms. I watched a little bit of
doing I don't understand, you know. I tried to read
the book. I read like three pages, like, I don't
know any of these names. I'm not writing this shit,
and I stopped so anyway, so she's come a long way.
But a quote from Vogue Magaze from a Vogue Magazine
interview that she had about being a child star, she said,
I don't know how much of a choice I had.
(17:54):
I have complicated feelings about kids and fame and being
in the public eye or being a child actor. I
want to say that I felt like I was thrust
into a very adult position. I was becoming the breadwinner
of my family very early, and there's a lot of
role reversal happening and just kind of becoming grown. Really,
the role reversal changes dynamics in the family and can
(18:16):
give children power over the parents, and they can use
their income as leverage. I think this is going to
be a good opportunity for me to talk about this.
I told Justin. Then I had a little bit of
a surprise. I did a little more research on how
because I've heard about this. I've heard about this through
different like child actors on like social media interviews and
things that they've done. If you're not familiar. In California,
(18:37):
they have the Coogan Law or the Cougan Act. It
was basically enacted to prevent parents and guardians from misusing
their child's earnings. Specifically to California, but there's other states
that have something similar, like in New York, Illinois, Louisiana,
and New Mexico. It was named after child actor Jackie Coogan,
who had discovered that as an adult that her parents
(18:58):
that his parents actually had at nearly all of his earnings.
So basically what it is. It requires that money be
put into what it's called a Cougan account. It's a
trust that they can access when they turn eighteen the
child star, but only fifteen percent of the earnings have
to be put in. They can obviously put more, but
the requirement is fifteen right, So that sounds great, but
(19:20):
the hard part is that eighty five percent of the
money is still accessible to parents and guardians, so they
can definitely misuse it. Unfortunately, and it's not an uncommon thing.
We've heard about people becoming eighteen getting ready to get
their money and then there's just not a whole lot
of money left and it really sucks from Unfortunately, there's
not really a federal standard when it comes to the
Cougan law. It only pertains to certain states. Without it,
(19:43):
parents kind of have full access to the child's earnings.
One thing I also learned is that while the money
is meant to be untouchable, parents can find ways to
withdraw the money. They can claim things like financial hardship.
They can say that they have to fund personal expenses
or investments, so that kind of stuff can get taken of.
There's really not a whole lot of oversighter enforcement. It's
(20:04):
just not great. So in terms of money, there is
some kind of risk when it comes to what is
a parent going to do with their child's money if
they end up being like the breadwinner and who's going
to take care of all of that?
Speaker 1 (20:18):
Well, you learned me something today, Bam.
Speaker 2 (20:22):
That's all I wanted. That's all I wanted.
Speaker 1 (20:25):
When you were talking about I googled Jackie Coogan. He's
an old time actor born in nineteen fourteen. He was
the kid in Charlie Chaplin's film The Kid, So he
was a big actor back in the day. But I
didn't even really know who he was.
Speaker 2 (20:39):
There you go, he apparently had all his money taken unfortunately.
Speaker 1 (20:44):
Yeah, and that's so sad, right, you know, you think
these kids are going to be set for life, but
unfortunately there's lots of stories about parents mismanaging their children's finances.
Speaker 2 (21:01):
You know. And I think you bring up a great point.
I think there's also the assumption that, like child stars
got paid like a fuck ton of money. I feel like,
and I'll look this up while you share the next part,
but I feel like I had heard from Josh Peck
again from Drake and Josh, that his career earnings was
not a ton. There actually were not as many episodes
as you would think there were. You would think there's
(21:22):
like hundreds and hundreds of episodes, but there really weren't
that many episodes of Drake and Joss Drake and Josh. So,
like the money, while yes, is a huge amount, it's
not It didn't doesn't seem like it was an amount
that was like your life is set for the rest
of your life.
Speaker 1 (21:37):
Yeah, I remember even here in some in sync some
of the like Lance Bass, I think was doing an
interview where he said that he was in the one
of the biggest bands, boy bands in the world. They
were on top of the world. He was working his
butt off, but essentially he was making like minimum wage
that his manager was taking almost all of the cut
(21:57):
from everything that they were making. And so yeah, kids
tend to get abused in his business and will not
make as much as they deserve.
Speaker 2 (22:05):
Yeah, so here I found the numbers. So Josh Peck
he said that he earned about fifteen thousand dollars an episode.
How many episodes do you think there were of Drake
and Josh forty three? There's sixty. I thought I was
probably gonna say something like a hundred some anyway, So
there's only four seasons and sixty episodes. Isn't that wild?
I thought there was a lot more. But yeah, he's
(22:25):
said he only earned about nine hundred thousand dollars in
the show's entirety, and then after taxes and fees, he
was only left with about four hundred and fifty thousand dollars,
which I say only right, Like, that's a life changing
amount of money, But that's not enough to live on
for the rest of your life, even if you like
invested it right correct.
Speaker 1 (22:45):
Not, especially because at the time he was probably supporting
his family too. Yeah, dang, Yeah, that's not nearly as
much as I would have anticipated. Yeah, but someone who
probably earned a lot more money because she was such
a huge movie star was Linda Lohan. She was twelve
years old when The Parent Trap came out and made
her a national icon. I always think it's so funny
(23:08):
that I had like a huge crush on Lindsay Lohan
because of The Parent Trap. Then my dad told me
that he really liked the original Parent Trap from like
the sixties and had a huge crush on the girl
in that one too. It was like father likes and
phone for the Parent Trap girls. So one quote from
her about her life and career, she said, I feel
like some of my work got overshadowed by paparazzi and
(23:32):
all of that kind of stuff when I was younger,
and that's kind of annoying. I wish that part didn't happen.
They teach you to say yes to everything, and that's
not really what life is all about. I was recording
an album in my trailer on the set of the
movie Herbie the love Bug, and I was promoting an
album while shooting. I remember this so specifically. I had
(23:52):
to go to the dentist, and I had no time
to go to the dentist, but something happened with my tooth,
so the dentist had to come see me. It was
just so much all the time.
Speaker 2 (24:02):
Hillary Duff. We mentioned her earlier, probably most famously known
for her role in Lizzie McGuire as Lizzie McGuire on Disney,
She more recently was than How I Met Your Father.
I tried to watch it because I was a big
How I Met Your Mother fan didn't get too far
into it, but that's okay. We're still big. We support
Hillary Duff. From an interview with Cosmopolitan in twenty twenty two,
(24:23):
she said, I wouldn't do it all exactly the same,
but I can't look at my life and be like,
I wish this was different, because I don't know if
it would get me to where I am right now.
She went on to say that I feel smart, but
there are certain things that people talk about where it
literally isn't in my brain because I didn't experience it.
So thinking about probably regular school, college and the interview,
(24:45):
she was specifically talking about things like college, but there's
a lot of things that she didn't get to experience.
Even so it's really making me think maybe the different
version of child stars that we have today is child influencers,
like on social media. I don't know if you've heard
about this. I think in California there's legislation or laws
(25:08):
where you basically like can't profit off of your children
or off of minors from like social media or media
or whatever. So a lot of these families have started
to move to Tennessee, specifically Nashville, Tennessee. I don't exactly
know why Nashville, but it's not it's it seems to
be a pretty common thing. So what that's making me
think about this is gonna sound so stupid if you've
(25:29):
never seen it on TikTok Oh my god, Okay.
Speaker 1 (25:34):
Please don't taye skippity toilet. Please don't say no, no, no
no no.
Speaker 2 (25:37):
This might be better. Did you ever see the video
of like We're costc guys blah blah blah, Like we
we go and of course we get a chicken bake
while we go shopping, and the Dad's like, we're costc guys,
you gotta get a double chocolate chip chunk cookie. Anyway,
this is so stupid. Anyway, that's a J and Big Justice.
It's the father son duo and I saw a TikTok
(26:00):
a little while back. We're Big Justice. The Sun said
that he's not able to go to school anymore because
kids are coming up to him all the time, trying
to like get him in videos, trying to do things
with him that like he was just a distraction at school.
So now he might have to live a life for
at least a certain amount of time where he doesn't
live the same life that his friends are living, and
(26:21):
he has to experience things in different ways. So yeah,
maybe maybe child stars have shifted. It's more of a
social media thing than it is full on acting.
Speaker 1 (26:30):
Oh totally yeah. And I have to admit I don't
know as much about who are the super popular social
media stars right now.
Speaker 2 (26:38):
Aj aj Big.
Speaker 1 (26:40):
I've never heard of the Rizzler.
Speaker 2 (26:42):
He never heard of my boy the Rizzler. I've never
heard of the rizzle damn it.
Speaker 1 (26:46):
Justin, I just I get everything secondhand through all my patients,
and it's.
Speaker 2 (26:51):
All just this chronically online. Okay, I'm gonna see if
I can find that law. I'll share it when I
find it.
Speaker 1 (27:05):
Okay. Up next on the list we have mister Cole Sprouse.
So he got his start as Ben Geller on Friends.
He was Ross's child. He was literally a toddler when
he started acting in TV, and in an interview with
the podcast Call Her Daddy, which my wife is a
big fan of, in March of twenty twenty three, he
(27:28):
said it was in many ways a life saving show.
It provided us with an amount of stability and consistency
and routine that really was needed for my brother and
I at the time. I think there's two types of
kids within the acting child business. There's the thespian child
who actually chooses to do it, and then there's the
(27:49):
working class kids that in their case, in Cole Sprouse's case,
it started as a way to put bread on the table,
and that hit me. But a lot of these kids
they're not really choosing to do it. Their parents are
doing it because they're looking for a stable income. They're
looking for a way to support and feed their family.
(28:10):
Especially if you have a toddler. You know, the toddler's
not like, hey, I want to be a Jack Nicholson
one day.
Speaker 2 (28:17):
Yeah, I mean it is. It's kind of hard to
think of it as like a like survival. We have
all the kids. Yeah, does it means it is?
Speaker 1 (28:29):
Cole later went on to say that, you know, my
parents didn't come from too much, and I have now
been granted a life of primarily financial stability and a
surplus in many cases. And this is the bright product
of working for thirty years and trading in my childhood.
So though he admitted to having some resentment over it
over his childhood as an actor, he said that he
(28:49):
probably wouldn't do anything differently, and he said, I don't
regret it at all. If I were given the same
choices again, I'd probably do it all over again. So
interesting to get his take on it.
Speaker 2 (28:59):
That is interesting. Here's what I found so in here
it is. In September September of twenty twenty four, a
law was passed in California that basically mirrored the Cougan
Act or the Cougan Law, but added like social media influencers.
So basically the tagline is new California law to require
(29:21):
influencer parents to set aside money for their kids, and
right below is influencers in California who include their children
in post will not have to put money away for them.
And then there's a Rolling Stone article about it basically
saying the same thing. And so it's kind of like
this this out loud secret that like Tennessee is a
(29:43):
place where you don't have to follow this. Tennessee also
doesn't have a state income tax, so I think they're
kind of taking advantage of all those things of not
having to set aside I mean pretty much taking advantage
of the kids. But anyway, yeah, it's interesting that it's
shifted a lot, like that's a they kind of have
to change the law with what's going on. So those
were some kind of like some positives some mixed reactions
(30:06):
of being a child star, but there's some negative ones too,
And one that I at least want to talk about
first is Jeanette mccurty. So if you ever watched I Carly,
she was sam on the show from reading her book,
her memoir titled I'm Glad My Mom Died. She was
also actually on another show I think was it with
Ariana Grande like she Sam can't Yes, that's the one. Yes,
(30:28):
so that that also came out. But basically she just
talked about how it was a very difficult and pretty
much abusive time with her mom as she was becoming
a childhood star. So in twenty twenty two, she gave
an interview to Canada's CBC, the Canadian Broadcasting Company, and
if any Canadians are out there listening, please know that
(30:49):
we love Canada. We apologize for the ship that's going
on where Sorry, but yeah. Her quote is that no
child is psychological, emotionally, mentally equipped for the obstacles of
child stardom, even if they have the greatest support system
around them, just not really prepared. She really she feels
very strongly about it. So more specifics from her book
(31:11):
if you've never read it, She basically just details her
life with her mom basically making her child star like
kind of forcing her into it, like always taking her
to auditions, basically forcing her to not gain any extra weight.
Her mom knew that if you kept a childlike body
(31:33):
and figure that there was more kind of opportunities to
break in that way, So her mom would would pretty
much not let her eat that kind of spos her
into an eating disorder, a lot of manipulation, just a
lot of stuff. And it was to the point when
even when her mom was diagnosed with cancer and her
mom died, like she didn't really have a whole lot
of like I don't know if she really hurt over it,
(31:56):
you know what I mean, Like she was so abused
that it just wasn't it wasn't what. She didn't have
a lot of feelings with it. So I read that
book a year or two ago. Really sad, really interesting.
She talks about treatment and trying to get her life back,
but you can definitely tell in some interviews that she's
been pretty messed up because of it.
Speaker 1 (32:15):
To add on that point, I remember watching All Quiet
on the set, and a lot of those Nickelodeon stars,
as soon as they hit puberty and they started to
grow up and their body started to change, they were
essentially pushed out or forced out of their positions and shows.
Contracts were not renewed. And it's just it's sad, you know,
because they think that they're on the show. They think
(32:36):
you've got this family in this show, and then as
soon as they don't fit the mold that they're supposed
to they're out of there.
Speaker 2 (32:44):
Yeah, yeah, it's tough. Oh another show, full House, in
a full house. Oh yeah, may Kin Nashley Olsen. Yeah,
other pretty early on child stars.
Speaker 1 (32:54):
Yeah, very much so. Another real young one, Raven Simone,
started acting at three years old on The Cosby Show.
Trust us. We're not going to make any Bill Cosby
jokes right now. From a Vanity Fair interview in twenty
twenty three, she said, I was taught to always be
on time early, know my lines, smile when someone wants
(33:15):
to take a picture with you, always say yes, and
know that every part of my life will be scrutinized
for the rest of my life. Yeah, that one hit me.
Speaker 2 (33:25):
Too hard man. Yeah. Yeah, she's on one of those
daily talk shows now too, right, isn't the viewerm I'm
making that up? Or she was at some point.
Speaker 1 (33:35):
Yeah, she's had a pretty good career.
Speaker 2 (33:38):
Yeah, but yeah, that's I mean, to have to deal
with that at a young age is awful.
Speaker 1 (33:42):
And that's exactly what Lindsay Lohan had said, right that
they're taught to always say yes, which is not healthy.
It doesn't teach you boundaries, it doesn't teach you how
to protect yourself. It just teaches you how to say
yes to everything, which can get you in some pretty
rough situations.
Speaker 2 (34:01):
I'll let you wrap us up on the last one
because I know you're interested in sharing.
Speaker 1 (34:05):
Mccullay Culkin. I loved mccullay culkin growing up, so he
started acting at age four, got famous in the movie
Uncle Buck with John Candy. Loved that movie. He was
the first child star to earn a million dollars for
a single movie, so it was big money for a
child star. And I know we've talked a lot about
kids and parents mismanaging their money. Actually emancipated himself at
(34:30):
the age of fourteen, citing that his father had mismanaged
his money and abused him. I tried to dive a
little bit and see if he made any other claims
about the specific abuse, but didn't find anything. He also
struggled with some opioids in his life. He was arrested
at one point and had oxy cotone on him. But
he has a good career. He's beloved in our community.
(34:54):
He's married to Brenda Song, who was also a child
star Disney star growing up. I think she was also
on Sweet life of acting Cody and they have a
son together. So I just really wanted to talk about
Macaulay Culkin because I love that.
Speaker 2 (35:07):
He's definitely had a bounce buck. It's definitely been able
to redeem himself, which is which is great, especially after
living a life like that. But given everything we've talked about,
are we are we letting young Liam be a childhood actor?
What's the what's the plan?
Speaker 1 (35:25):
Probably not my son Liam. If if he was like
super into acting and really wanted to do it, I
would say, Okay, let's do it. But we got to
make sure you stay safe in all of this and
make sure he's supervised, has the right support, has the
right supervision, all that stuff. But what about little Leddy
Junior when he's you.
Speaker 2 (35:46):
Know, eventually imaginary unless you're going to bring in the
big books, which.
Speaker 1 (35:57):
You can't even benefit from if if you're in California. Oh,
that's true, that's true. Another thing I want to ask too,
is like, it seems like there's a big difference in
male versus female child stars, and so I wanted to
just discuss a little bit. It seems like there's always
somewhat of a sexual element with the females in particular,
(36:21):
and that kind of pressure and sexuality sexualization from older
men at such a young age is not a healthy thing.
It's not a good thing. And I think it really
puts a lot of young women in a position where
a they're told to say yes all the time, and
then they're in a position where they have a lot
(36:42):
of older, creepy men fawning over them, and it's it's
a system set up for abuse.
Speaker 2 (36:49):
Yeah, And I think to not only that, but just
like the constant like you have to look a certain way,
the probably pressures you're getting for maybe if you're a
child star working with older adults, I feel like unfortunately,
like female actresses probably get a lot more of the
difficult things that they have to deal with in terms
(37:10):
of pressure and body image issues and deal with all
of that. Like I think we see a lot of
our team girls are already struggling with that in our regular
life in Hollywood, and through acting it's probably exponentially worse.
Speaker 1 (37:23):
Yeah, seems like it. So one of the other points
I wanted to make too, was it seems like a
two factor thing where yes, it seems like child stars
are slightly more likely to struggle with drugs and alcohol. Yeah,
they got all the money, all the fame young, they
(37:43):
have power, they have money to buy drugs and alcohol,
but they're also under a microscope constantly. So if things
go south, you better bet your bottom dollar TMZ is
going to be outside of their door with a camera
and an asshole Oh yeah, asking questions, trying to get
a rise out of them. So we get that bias.
(38:04):
We only see the ones that go downhill. We don't
get as many of the success stories. I think it's important,
and we wanted to throw in a lot of quotes
from people who have had successful careers, who have had
relatively healthy adult lives that it's not all bad, but
it can be bad.
Speaker 2 (38:24):
Yeah, and I think too, like for sure, like these people,
people love to see people not doing well unfortunately right
news wise, TMZ. I mean when Kobe died, like TMZ
was all over it, right, they weren't even confirming shit,
and apparently someone from ten Z like got a picture
of them. You know, there's just so much like people
love to see people not doing well social media news.
(38:47):
Why so imagine that kind of pressure on an adult, Yeah,
it really sucks, but on a child fucking terrible.
Speaker 1 (38:55):
Yeah, And in America, it's very simple. It's just whatever
makes you money is going to be what do Yeah,
and there's gonna be someone trying to exploit someone else
for money.
Speaker 2 (39:04):
Oh yeah.
Speaker 1 (39:05):
Always take home point for the day, my friend.
Speaker 2 (39:08):
Take home point. Real ones know that Nickelodeon was fifty three,
Cartoon Network fifty four, Disney fifty five. No, I think
something like this, like you, like we talked about we
like to have the intersection of pop culture and mental
health and our work. I feel like I learned a
decent amount just hearing from the child actors themselves through interviews.
(39:32):
Young Eddie probably would be surprised at how much it's
not all glamour as I probably assumed it was. That's
probably my take home point. It's not as it's not
as glamorous a life as we think it is.
Speaker 1 (39:43):
You know, we never got slimmed, And.
Speaker 2 (39:47):
You're right, and that heart there was that show? What
was that one? It was like it was like a
game show for kids, and there was like the Temple
of what ever.
Speaker 1 (40:00):
The Legends of the Hidden Temple legs.
Speaker 2 (40:03):
I wanted to be on that show. I also wanted
to be on Supermarket sweep, So I don't.
Speaker 1 (40:06):
Know if oh, yeah, it's just game shows I wanted. Yeah,
Doubledare that was super fun.
Speaker 2 (40:15):
Yeah yeah, it was just an.
Speaker 1 (40:16):
Awesome era for TV and for kids. My take home
point for the day is that I learned that not
all child stars had a bad experience, and some people
would actually do the same thing. Many of them were
just trying to support their families. I think that's probably
like my biggest take home point is that a lot
of child stars are putting bread on the table. They're
(40:38):
looking out for their people. But Hollywood has the types
of people that if you promise them a drop of blood,
they will bleed every ounce of you just to make
a dollar. So you got to be really careful if
your kid is a rising star.
Speaker 2 (40:52):
Yeah, and then they just on the street.
Speaker 1 (40:55):
Yeah, as soon as they're done with you.
Speaker 2 (40:57):
Yeah. Well, thank you all for for listening to our
rants and rambles about the intersection of child stars and
mental health. As always Instagram, We'll start with social media Instagram, Twitter, TikTok,
YouTube at Millennial MHC at our website millenniummac dot com.
You can also find us Apple podcasts. Google podcast isn't
(41:18):
really a thing anymore. Spotify all the places to get
your podcasts. You can find us on there. Leave us
a five star review if you'd like, you can also
leave us a comment. We also were recently from feedspot
dot com. We made the list of top one hundred
mental health podcasts. Will also be in one of the
top sixty millennial podcasts, so we are out there. Shout
(41:39):
out to feetspot dot com. Thank you all for listening.
We'll see you at our next episode, and remember take
care of all mentals.
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.
NFL Daily with Gregg Rosenthal
Gregg Rosenthal and a rotating crew of elite NFL Media co-hosts, including Patrick Claybon, Colleen Wolfe, Steve Wyche, Nick Shook and Jourdan Rodrigue of The Athletic get you caught up daily on all the NFL news and analysis you need to be smarter and funnier than your friends.