‘The Waltons’: Mary Elizabeth McDonough Starved Herself After Being Called Too “Fat”

Even after the show was canceled in 1981, The Waltons remains an enduring part of pop culture – and so does its titular family. It’s hard to imagine anyone else playing each character but Mary Elizabeth McDonough starved herself after being made to feel like she didn’t belong as Erin because she was too “fat.”

Additionally, being allegedly told this by producers led McDonough to have a very negative view on herself. She developed unreasonable expectations for how she should look and to achieve those impossible goals, she became separated from the normal teenage life she’d been enjoying despite her stardom.

Mary Elizabeth McDonough starved herself as she felt the pressure of playing Erin Walton

McDonough has suggested that producers told her she was too “fat” to play Erin, the second Walton daughter who worked as a telephone operator and manufacturing supervisor. “Erin was supposed to be the pretty one, so there was a lot of pressure for me to look a certain way and weigh a certain amount,” she shared on the British talk show Loose Women.

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She continued, “I created a body image issue for myself — a lot of radical diets and starving and trying to fit in and be perfect, until I realized there is no perfection in that way.”

McDonough would play Erin throughout the show’s entire nine-season run, along with six films – she was right where she belonged, regardless of what producers told her about her appearance.

The other side of teen stardom

Young actors frequently face pressure to appear a certain way when starring on a high-profile television program. Fortunately, McDonough did get to enjoy some healthy normalcy during her teen years, according to a 1975 profile by Universal Press International.

On the other hand, the profile was created when McDonough was just 13, so some of the pressures that led her to starve herself may not have manifested just yet. Indeed, the profile reveals that she quite liked hamburgers. That would change in the coming years.

But when the show was on hiatus, she attended high school just like all her peers, and there she was treated normally by teachers and classmates alike. When not doing homework, the young McDonough loved listening to Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, and Joni Mitchell. At home, she helped tend her family’s vegetable garden, growing lettuce, beets, corn, and carrots.