Camila Mendes on her eating disorder: I was really afraid of eating carbs
Riverdale is finally nearing its end with the final, seventh season airing in late March. I stopped watching after the third season when it became less teen drama and more supernatural. Camila Mendes, who plays Veronica Lodge, went on a podcast called “Going Mental With Eileen Kelly” and opened up about her eating disorder, including that she struggled with it during the first season of the show. She said seeing herself on screen exacerbated problems she’d had before and she was really afraid of eating carbs, which caused her to restrict, then binge and purge.
Real talk. Riverdale’s Camila Mendes opened up about recovering from her eating disorder — and how her body image issues were exacerbated when she landed a lead role on the hit CW series.
“I would watch every episode and be like, ‘Oh my God, my stomach there.’ I was like, so insecure, and it really fueled my eating disorder,’ Mendes, 28, said during the Thursday, January 26, episode of the “Going Mental With Eileen Kelly” podcast. “I had one at various points in my life. A little bit in high school toward the end of senior year and then it came back in college. And then it came back season 1 of Riverdale. And it was because, like, when you’re in your early 20’s your body is fluctuating. My body hadn’t settled Ito itself yet. And I was like, looking at myself, picking myself apart. My stomach, my arms, my chin — anything — I would obsess over.”
The Do Revenge star, who has portrayed Veronica Lodge on the teen drama since the show premiered in 2017, explained that her off-camera struggles often got in the way of her job during the filming of season 1, saying, “It really f—ks with your process and your ability to emote and be authentic.”
Mendes admitted she was “really afraid of eating carbs” at the time, and “would avoid [them] for a long period of time. Then I would binge and eat a bunch and then purge.”
She explained that it was a “terrible cycle,” adding that she began seeing a nutritionist to overcome her fear of certain foods. “She [the nutritionist] helped me overcome that by reintroducing bread into my life to be, like, ‘See, it’s not going to kill you.’”
When Riverdale first started, I remember being pleasantly surprised that the pretty young women on the show weren’t extremely thin like the CW actresses on shows when I was in high school and college. I thought that sent a nice message to young women watching the show. I recall Camila discussing her eating disorder history before, but I didn’t realize it was happening while she was on Riverdale too. But it makes sense that she was hyper-critical of herself and looking for control at that moment in time — she got hired shortly after graduating from NYU and that show was (is?) a big deal. It makes sense those old feelings would resurface when she was under a lot of scrutiny and pressure, both externally and internally. And it also makes sense that her image and eating issues affected her job. It’s hard to focus on work, especially work on your feet and moving around, when you’re distracted and hungry. It’s good that Camila saw a nutritionist and she’s doing better now. Her costar, Lili Reinhart, has also talked a lot about body image and spoken out against the unrealistic expectations for women’s bodies. So hopefully the two of them found solidarity among one another on the Riverdale set.
Photos credit: Phillip Faraone for Netflix, Xavier Collin/Image Press Agency/Avalon and Getty
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