Mara Wilson Reflects on Bullying Michelle Trachtenberg Faced as a Teen: ‘Harriet the B–ch’

In an emotional tribute shared to Vulture Tuesday, Wilson described how she and Trachtenberg — who was found dead in her New York City apartment on February 26 at the age of 39 — became friends in the ’90s after she starred in Matilda and Trachtenberg in Harriet the Spy.

Wilson recalled how she, Trachtenberg and other child stars, including Jerry Maguire‘s Jonathan Lipnicki, formed a close friendship group and would often hang out.

“Not only was she nice, I realized, but she was remarkably intelligent,” Wilson wrote. “Yet she managed not to be condescending and didn’t try to impress with big words, the way other kids (including me) might have. She was smart, but she was also self-possessed, and didn’t need to show off.”

She also recalled 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,” she continued. “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.”

The pair would later go on to attend the same middle school in Los Angeles, where she said the Buffy the Vampire Slayer star pulled her aside one day and asked, “‘Are the kids here mean to you?'”

In tears, Trachtenberg continued, “‘Because they are to me… They call me Harriet the Slut, Harriet the B–ch, Harriet the B–chy Spy… and so much worse. They never stop.”

Though Wilson remembers that “everybody fell in love with Michelle Trachtenberg,” it was her fame and that uber-friendly demeanor that caused her to be misunderstood in school.

“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 b–ch.”

Wilson said she often came to her defense, telling the cruel kids: “‘She’s not… she’s really nice!'” writing that she found it difficult to “reconcile” the names Trachtenberg was being called “with the Michelle I’d known, the one who was never anything but warm and kind.”

Wilson had “never seen Michelle cry before” the day she confided in her at school, which led her to the realization: “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.”

Trachtenberg shared her experience with bullying before her passing, taking to Instagram in 2020 to open up about the challenges that she faced growing up as a kid in Hollywood, and how that impacted her relationships later on in life.

As an adult, Trachtenberg was open about her experience of childhood bullying, and about the challenges that fame poses to interpersonal relationships even as you age.

Sharing a photo of herself during her Harriet the Spy days, Trachtenberg wrote, “Back in my day all the kids had to write a bulls–t Valentine’s Day card to everyone in the class. I never got one on purpose, everyone got a valentine card. No one ever gave me one and they thought I didn’t need the attention. The kids and staff all laughed and thought everyone else should get one, being an actress since I was 3, apparently I didn’t need one.”

“The kids were cruel… I still have scars from being thrown down stairs and slammed into lockers head first,” she continued. “But summoning the courageous optimism that defined some of her best characters, resolved, “There is no need to harp on the past… I write this to every child, teen, person, out there who is bullied. You are something.”

While she was said to be struggling with complications from a liver transplant, an exact cause of death for Trachtenberg is still unknown, as the actress’ family objected to an autopsy.

Trachtenberg is survived by her parents, her sister and her boyfriend, Jay Cohen.