Lindsey Shaw revealed her personal life was the reason behind her Pretty Little Liars character Paige McCullers’ departure from the hit series.
“I got basically let go from Pretty Little Liars in season 5 because of the weight that I had lost, and it was really an embarrassing thing,” the 34-year-old actress shared on the Wednesday, July 5, episode of the “Ned’s Declassified Podcast Survival Guide” podcast. “I didn’t look good too skinny and then, you know, then when I started to put the weight back on, I couldn’t handle it being too heavy, so it kind of played into this dumb cycle.”
Shaw starred as one of the love interests of Shay Mitchell’s Emily Fields on the teen drama, which ran for seven seasons on Freeform (formerly ABC Family) from 2010 to 2017. Though Paige departed the fictional town of Rosewood, Pennsylvania, after the show’s fifth season, she later returned for a handful of season 7 episodes.
The Ned’s Declassified School Survival Guide alum went on to explain that her body image issues coincided with drug use struggles. “When I had my drug problem and I was in between working on stuff, you know, I would never have to address my relationship with food because I was always like, ‘Oh, I could always just go get more Adderall,’” she told her podcast cohosts Devon Werkheiser and Daniel Curtis Lee.
Shaw says she was informed of her PLL exit during a meeting with show creator I. Marlene King, a decision that was made with her well-being in mind. “[I. Marlene was] like, ‘It’s not because your acting,’ she’s like, ‘But do you have anybody to talk to?’ And I was like, ‘Um, no.’ And she’s like, ‘We’ll find somebody, and we have to let you go for now,’” she tearfully recalled. “It was really sweet because they brought me back in season 7, and it was so lovely of that writing team to see that relationship and that character out. But I was — that was rough.”
The former…
Read the full article here
