Actor Mara Wilson remembered her pal and fellow Nineteen Nineties baby star, the late Michelle Trachtenberg, in a shifting essay.
Wilson, who starred in “Matilda,” shared fond recollections of Trachtenberg, star of “Harriet the Spy,” in a piece printed by Vulture on Tuesday, a number of weeks after Trachtenberg was discovered useless in her New York Metropolis condominium.
“Not only was she nice, I realized, but she was remarkably intelligent,” Wilson wrote of assembly Trachtenberg on the 1997 Children’ Alternative Awards. “Yet she managed not to be condescending and didn’t try to impress with big words, the way other kids (including me) might have. She was smart, but she was also self-possessed, and didn’t need to show off.”
The pair turned quick buddies. As Wilson put it, the 2 “had the kind of closeness that grows between girls who’ve spent a short but intense amount of time together, like summer-camp friends.”
After the press excursions for his or her movies died down, Trachtenberg and Wilson wound up on the identical faculty. Wilson thought her pal could be a fan favourite along with her friends, nevertheless it was the other. She remembers youngsters referring to Trachtenberg as “full of herself” and “a total bitch.”
Ultimately Trachtenberg pulled Wilson apart to have a heart-to-heart.
“Are the kids here mean to you?” she requested.
A younger Wilson responded, “Sometimes.”
Trachtenberg then revealed that her classmates gave her nicknames corresponding to “Harriet the Slut, Harriet the Bitch, and Harriet the Bitchy Spy.” After recounting these experiences, Wilson states that she had “never seen Michelle cry before.”
“It wasn’t just that she was being bullied; it was that there wasn’t any way she could get them not to hate her,” Wilson recalled. “So much of being a child actor is about making everyone happy. It felt cruelly ironic to be so hated when our raison d’être was getting people to like us.”
Mike Windle by way of Getty Pictures
After the 2 parted methods, Wilson at all times defended her pal, even when school buddies would make crass statements based mostly on her character within the TV present “Gossip Girl.”
When the “Mrs. Doubtfire” actor came upon about Trachtenberg’s demise, she had a sinking feeling in her abdomen.
“This wasn’t supposed to happen. She was too young. She’d worked too hard,” she wrote.
Different stars paid tribute to Trachtenberg quickly after her demise.
“Heartbreaking,” “Harriet the Spy” co-star Rosie O’Donnell mentioned in a press release to Us Weekly. “I loved her very much.”
Sarah Michelle Gellar, her “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” co-star, likened the loss to dropping a sister.
“‘Michelle, listen to me. Listen. I love you,’” Gellar wrote in a put up shared to her Instagram account. “I will always love you. The hardest thing in this world, is to live in it. I will be brave. I will live… for you’ 💔💔💔🗝️”
