Bridgerton Actor: I Had No Support Amid Psychotic Breaks

Ruby Barker felt her star rise as she appeared in Netflix's smash hit Bridgerton, but it was not an enjoyable time. As she reveals in a podcast interview, the British actor suffered not one but two psychotic breaks after filming the first season of the period drama, which saw her character, Marina, ostracized due to a scandalous pregnancy. To this day, "not a single person from Netflix, not a single person from [production company] Shondaland ... have even contacted me or emailed me to ask me if I'm okay or if I would benefit from any sort of aftercare or support," Barker told Oxford University's "LOAF Podcast" in an episode shared Saturday, per Variety.

Barker first alluded to mental health issues during a hospitalization in May 2022, per Variety. Barker thanked Netflix for "saving her" by casting her in Bridgerton, but also claimed to have been "struggling since Bridgerton." She said she'd been "really unwell for a really long time" and referred to "intergenerational trauma." She now says she was recovering from a second psychotic break. The first had come just a week after wrapping up filming for Season 1. "During filming [in 2019], I was deteriorating," she said on the podcast, per Deadline. "It was a really tormenting place for me to be because my character was very alienated, very ostracized, on her own under these horrible circumstances."

"When I went into hospital a week after shooting Bridgerton Season 1, it was really covered up and kept on the down-low because the show was going to be coming out," Barker said. "In the run-up to the show coming out, I was just coming out from hospital, my Instagram following was going up, I had all these engagements to do," she continued. "My life was changing drastically overnight and yet there was still no support." Barker said she tried "to act like it was okay and that I could work." But "it's almost like I had this metaphorical invisible gun to my head to sell this show because this show is bubbly and fun," she added. "I don't want to come out and poo poo on that because then I'll never work again." (More Netflix stories.)