Mara Wilson is remembering her friend, the late Michelle Trachtenberg.
The former child star, 37, penned an emotional tribute to Trachtenberg — who was found February 26 at the age of 39 — for Vulture, describing how they became friends in the 1990s after she appeared in Matilda and Trachtenberg starred in Harriet the Spy.
Wilson said that she, Trachtenberg and other child stars, including Jerry Maguire’s Jonathan Lipnicki, formed a close friendship group and would often hang out. Wilson shared how Trachtenberg was there for her after her mom died.
“That April of 1997, while we were at the film festival, marked one year since my mother had died,” Wilson wrote. “Being with the group in New York felt safe, the one place my mother’s absence didn’t haunt me. Still, on the anniversary of her death, I burst into tears. Michelle and everyone else rallied around me, giving me hugs and doing whatever they could to make me laugh.”
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Later, Trachtenberg moved from New York to Burbank, California, where Wilson lived, and the actors ended up at the same middle school.
Wilson described how the late Buffy the Vampire Slayer actress once confided in her about being bullied by their school peers who thought Trachtenberg was “mean.”
“‘Are the kids here mean to you?’ she asked. ‘Sometimes,’ I said,” Wilson wrote. “‘Because they are to me,” she said, tearing up. ‘They call me Harriet the S–t, Harriet the Bitch, Harriet the Bitchy Spy … and so much worse. They never stop.’”
“I had never seen Michelle cry before. I’d never seen her anything other than perfectly composed and confident. That’s what it was, I realized. That’s why they said she was ‘mean.’ Because they were mean to her first, then when she went on the defense, they called her a bitch,” she continued.
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“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. 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,” Wilson added.
Wilson also shared how she reacted to the news of Trachtenberg’s death last month.
“I was packing for a work trip. I looked at my phone and felt my stomach drop. My hands were shaking and my knees went weak — I thought I might pass out. I sat in a chair, and started to sob,” she wrote.
Wilson added, “This wasn’t supposed to happen. She was too young. She’d worked too hard. I always thought I would get the chance to see her again, to tell her how much I’d always looked up to her. To tell her the times we spent together as children were some of the best of my life.”
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News broke on February 26 that Trachtenberg was found dead in her New York City apartment. Her cause of death was listed as “undetermined” as the actress’ family objected to an autopsy. (Trachtenberg is survived by her parents, her sister and her boyfriend, Jay Cohen.)
