Scarlett Moffatt says she turned to Samaritans after being ‘overwhelmed’ by cruel messages from trolls – OK! magazine

Scarlett Moffatt has confessed she turned to Samaritans for help after feeling “overwhelmed” by the sheer number of cruel messages she would receive from trolls.

The 30 year old, who recently revealed her heartbreak at only being able to see her grandmother through window amid coronavirus outbreak, explained that after she went on Gogglebox back in 2014 she joined Twitter to speak to viewers about the show.

However, the TV personality was immediately met with “horrible messages about how ugly, fat and stupid I was,” and admitted: “It hit me hard.”

At first, she didn’t allow these comments to hold her back from going for more TV opportunities, as she later starred in and won I’m A Celebrity…Get Me Out of Here!.

Following her win, she co-presented Ant and Dec’s Saturday Night Takeaway and became even more popular.

“But I quickly noticed, the more popular I was getting on TV and in the press, the more unpopular I was getting on social media. I was getting trolled way more with people attacking the way I look, speak, dress – you name it,” she explained.

While co-presenting the show, she began receiving “thousands of comments” shaming her for how “bad” her teeth were. She explained that it really “got to me most because I was so insecure about my teeth as a child.”

Writing in Grazia magazine Scarlett, who recently hit back at persistent trolls with a stunning body confident snap, continued: “I’d smashed them in an accident and had ill fitting caps put on as I was too young for veneers at the time and had to wait until I was 21 to have them properly fixed.

“Seeing people pick apart something you’re already so aware of made me not want to go in for the next show.”

Following her stint on the show, Scarlett decided to make a fitness DVD, thinking it would be a win-win scenario of getting paid to lose weight.

This, too, only brought her misery as people started changing their tune from accusing her of being “too fat” to being “too thin”. In an attempt to stop the trolling, she gained all the weight back.

“That’s when everything spiralled out of control. All of the trolling overwhelmed me,” she said.

“I stopped leaving the house, spending hours on Instagram reading nasty messages, searching hashtags of my name and reading the comments under online articles. I believed everything said about me. I felt I wasn’t good enough for anyone.”

She never confided in her friends or family about the intense trolling or subsequent feelings she had through all of this.

So instead of going to those closest to her, she turned to Samaritans for help.

She said: “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.”

Scarlett later found herself opening up to her mum, Betty. She said: “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. Now, I have coping mechanisms to take me out of that dark place.”

Scarlett continued by explaining that she’s grown a lot since those times, both in how she deals with trolls as well as how she views her own body.

She said: “I want my platform to stand for something different, to show people you’re not just the sum of your parts or what you look like.

“Despite everything that’s happened since Caroline Flack’s passing, it’s clear that sadly nothing is going to change anytime soon. But that just tells me that we need to keep shouting.”

Scarlett ended her honest story by adding: “I feel lucky it didn’t have tragic consequences for me because it truly could have.”

See more of GRAZIA’s interview with Scarlett online at graziadaily.co.uk

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