Mara Wilson is mourning the loss of her childhood friend Michelle Trachtenberg, who died last month. She was 39.
Wilson’s Matilda and Trachtenberg’s Harriet the Spy, both released in 1996, boosting both child stars further into the spotlight. The actresses attended the same middle school in Burbank, and Wilson is reflecting on how their classmates did not treat Trachtenberg well in a personal essay published by Vulture on Tuesday.
“I thought, she’d be one of the beloved girls in school. But that didn’t happen. Every time I even heard someone say ‘Michelle Trachtenberg,’ a kid would jump in to say that they’d heard she was mean, full of herself, a total bitch,” Wilson recalls. “‘She’s not,’ I’d say, every time. ‘She’s really nice!’”
Right before Trachtenberg graduated middle school in 1999, Wilson remembers the Buffy the Vampire Slayer star pulled her aside in tears, asking, “Are the kids here mean to you? Because they are to me. They call me Harriet the Slut, Harriet the Bitch, Harriet the Bitchy Spy … and so much worse.”
This was the first time Wilson saw Trachtenberg cry. “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 said. “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.”
From the moment they met, Wilson thought Trachtenberg was “remarkably intelligent” and “self-possessed.” While they lost touch after middle school and Trachenberg went on to star in several movies and TV shows, Wilson “never stopped defending her.”
Wilson noted that a college acquaintance said to her: “Michelle Trachtenberg is so mean on Gossip Girl that I feel like she just has to be a bitch in real life.” Though Wilson fired back: “She’s not! I knew her. She was a sweetheart.”
The person blamed Trachtenberg’s roles for their assumption of her: “But she’s so good at playing a bitch!” Wilson replied, “because she’s a good actress.”
Wilson remembers Trachtenberg to be the opposite of her peers, she treated people well when others didn’t, like when Jerry Maguire child actor Jonathan Lipnicki was being picked on, she was “being nice to him.” Wilson continued, “Jonathan was five years younger than her, but she didn’t treat him like an annoyance. I knew so many older girls who were mean to younger kids, but she wasn’t, even when Jonathan was trying to slip an ice cube down the back of her shirt.”
Trachtenberg died unexpectedly on Feb. 26 and was found by mom in her New York City apartment. Her previous co-stars took to social media to grieve their loss, including Blake Lively, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Chace Crawford, Ed Westwick, Kim Cattrall, Kenan Thompson, David Boreanaz, Melissa Joan Hart and more.
