Lindsey Shaw is reflecting on one of the most difficult times in her life, both personally and professionally.
In Wednesday’s episode of Ned’s Declassified Podcast Survival Guide (which you can watch in the video above), Shaw recalls the painful moment in 2014 when she learned that she was being let go from her role as Paige McCullers on then-ABC Family’s Pretty Little Liars.
“I got called into [series creator Marlene King’s] office, and she was just like, ‘So, we’re gonna let you go,'” Shaw says, adding that she was told, “It’s not because of your acting.”
Shaw knew the real reason. In recent years, she has become comfortable speaking candidly about struggles with drugs and alcohol, as well as with her relationship to food and her body, and the toll they’ve all taken on her life and career.
“I just gave away everything I cared about,” she says. “I don’t know that I’ve ever gotten back to the point in my career that I was before that talk, that meeting, or that whole season of using. It’s a f–ing lot, dude. Caring about your body can make you go in all different directions, from plastic surgery to drugs to withholding to any kind of s–t.”
Still, Shaw remains grateful to the PLL team for handling her exit “with so much care,” both on and off screen. Not only did the writers craft a beautiful goodbye scene for her character midway through Season 5, but Shaw also recalls King asking if she had someone to talk to about what she was going through. When Shaw replied that she didn’t have anyone, King, replied, “We’ll find somebody.”
As for that beautiful scene, Shaw remembers that she and co-star Shay Mitchell “couldn’t even talk” between takes while filming Paige and Emily’s airport goodbye. “We just hugged each other and let it be what it was,” she says.
And Shaw, of course, will forever appreciate that the producers brought Paige back to wrap things up in the show’s seventh and final season.
“I used that show as a therapy session every time I went in,” Shaw says. “I cried harder there than I did in that whole six years by myself. Everything went into Paige. … It was a great and crazy and scary and sad and wonderful and tragic ride.”
