Camila Mendes broke the silence on her eating disorder and panic attacks during the filming of Riverdale.
During a podcast On Purpose podcast with Jay Shetty, she opened up about her mental health struggles and what actually triggered them. She noted, “My perfectionism came up a lot. I needed to be on all the time and at my best and looking my best.” She continued with her confession and noted that she has been facing these issues since high school and her condition gets worse when she finds herself under constant pressure, which happened during her time on the set of Riverdale.
The star quipped, “That’s when I really started to come face to face with it. And I felt a lack of control because I’m wearing a costume for a character that dresses differently than I would want to dress in my daily life.”
“She’s wearing tight dresses and mini skirts and heels and showing my stomach, my little midriff or whatever. And if I felt bloated or if I didn’t feel good about myself that day, I had to wear something that made me feel worse and made me feel super insecure. And that perfectionism pattern showed up a lot through my relationship with my body,” Mendes explained, referring to her character Veronica Lodge.
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“I would sometimes have panic attacks about that. Of feeling so disgusting and needing to be on camera and just not being able to accept the way that I looked,” she said.
The Upgraded actress shared that she feels panic attacks because of a lack of space that helps her feel and process her emotions. “I’m somebody who doesn’t experience a panic attack coming because I only have the panic attack if I feel, for whatever reason, that I’m not allowed to feel the emotion that I’m feeling freely. So, if I’m feeling like I want to cry and I know that I can’t, that will cause my panic attack,” Camila Mendes said.
It is pertinent to mention that Riverdale, a teen drama series that cast Lili Reinhart, KJ Apa, Vanessa Morgan, and others, started on January 26, 2017, and concluded on August 23, 2023, after seven seasons.