Mental health is attracting more and more attention and in recent years it has been given the importance it has individually and also for its impact on society. It is a topic that is no longer taboo and that in the public sphere is addressed naturally by politicians, athletes and artists. However, there is still a lot to do, judging by the statements made by actress Ruby Baker on ‘The LOAF Podcast’ at the University of Oxford.
Baker participated in the first season of ‘The Bridgertons’, the Netflix series that became a success and adapts the fictional stories of Julia Quinn’s novels about several aristocratic families in Regency London. Her role was Marina Thompson, a young woman who is sent from the countryside to the city to live with her relatives, the Featherington family. After discovering that she is pregnant without being married, they quickly try to match her up to hide her status. To do this, they tried to deceive one of the members of the protagonist family, Colin Bridgerton. He finally discovers it and the plan is frustrated, but just when she tries to induce an abortion by taking herbs, the brother of the baby’s father informs her that the young man has died in the war and offers to marry her.
The actress has explained that playing that character “was deteriorating her.” “It was a really tormenting place for me because my character was very alienated, ostracized,” she has said. And she has explained that her first mental crisis occurred at the end of filming the first season. She was admitted to the hospital, where she remained for about a year, so when she left, the series was about to premiere. “Not a single person from Netflix, not a single person from Shondaland, since I had two psychotic breaks from that show, has contacted me or emailed me to ask if I’m okay or if I would benefit from any kind of aftercare or support,” he said. She insists: “No one.” There has been no response to these statements from Netflix or Shondaland, despite requests from media outlets such as ‘The Hollywood Reporter’ which has echoed the actress’s statements.
Upon returning to his life after hospitalization, Barker found that his number of followers on Instagram did not stop growing and with a large number of professional commitments related to the premiere of ‘The Bridgertons’. “My life was changing drastically overnight and yet there was still no support, and there still hasn’t been any support during that time,” she said. And she added that she tried very hard “to act like everything was fine.” “It’s okay. I’m fine. I can work. It’s not a problem,” she told herself.
Without a doubt, her participation in the current series was an opportunity for the young actress and, finding herself in full promotion for the premiere, she felt the pressure to pretend that everything was going well. “It’s almost like I have some kind of metaphorical invisible gun in my head to sell this series, because it’s bubbly and fun and all that stuff,” she has claimed, when she really didn’t feel that way. And she has explained what she thought at that moment: “I don’t want to go out and shit on it because then I may never work again.”
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2023-10-31 09:54:34
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