Scarlett Moffatt has said that online trolling took her to “the darkest place” and left her needing to talk to the Samaritans.
The TV personality, who rose to fame after appearing on Gogglebox and won the 16th series of I’m A Celebrity … Get Me Out Of Here! in 2016, told Grazia that she was left feeling “completely alone” because of the abuse.
Moffatt said that she was told she is “ugly, fat and stupid” on social media after appearing on television.
She told the magazine: “Before I went on Gogglebox, I could never have imagined how hard it is for women in the public eye.
“I thought celebrities lived in a different world, I took everything the tabloids printed as gospel, and I barely even used social media.
“But, in 2017, three years after I’d been catapulted into the public eye, I was in the darkest place of my life, feeling completely alone and often ringing Samaritans when things got really bad.”
Moffatt said that she got Twitter in 2014 in order to talk to fans about her TV appearances.
She added: “Immediately, I started getting really horrible messages about how ugly, fat and stupid I was.”
She added that she noticed that “the more popular I was getting on TV and in the press, the more unpopular I was getting on social media”.
She said: “I was being trolled way more, with people attacking the way I look, speak, dress – you name it.
“I remember after the second episode of Saturday Night Takeaway aired, there were thousands of comments about how bad my teeth were.
“That got to me most, because I was so insecure about my teeth as I child.”
Moffatt added that after she appeared in a fitness DVD she was “trolled really badly for being too thin, people telling me I’d gone too far and was a bad role model”.
“I understand now why people wouldn’t want me to promote weight loss, but at the time it just felt like a wave of cruelty from every angle.”
She said that things then “spiralled out of control”, adding: “When it was really bad, I would ring the Samaritans, give a fake name and rant for 15 minutes.
“Talking to someone who didn’t know me or judge me helped.
“Eventually, I broke down in front of my mum and told her how I was feeling. I ended up seeing a therapist for a year.”
The full interview is in Grazia, out now.