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As a teen, Soleil Moon Frye's breast reduction made magazine covers. It taught the former 'Punky Brewster' star that 'people want you to stay little forever.'
As a teen, Soleil Moon Frye's breast reduction made magazine covers. It taught the former 'Punky Brewster' star that 'people want you to stay little forever.'

Yahoo

time23-05-2025

  • Entertainment
  • Yahoo

As a teen, Soleil Moon Frye's breast reduction made magazine covers. It taught the former 'Punky Brewster' star that 'people want you to stay little forever.'

Soleil Moon Frye has been in the public eye since she was a mismatched-shoed little girl on TV's Punky Brewster in the '80s. At 48, she feels like she's finally coming into her own. 'When we're really young, we have so much of that spark of who we want to be, of what we want to do and then, as life transpires, oftentimes we go on these different roads,' Frye tells Yahoo Life for our Unapologetically series. 'I personally feel like so much of the journey in my life — and this moment — has been guiding me back to who I really am and who I always was. Yet it took the path less traveled to get there.' Frye's path as of late has led her to documentary filmmaking. She helmed Paramount+'s two-part docuseries The Carters: Hurts to Love You, an exploration of how fame, mental illness and addiction led to singer Aaron Carter's death in 2022, told from the perspective of his twin sister, Angel Carter Conrad. Before that, Frye exposed her own experience growing up in Hollywood and losing friends to addiction and suicide in Kid 90, which was released by Hulu in 2021. She's currently completing a documentary about singer Shifty Shellshock, a childhood friend and ex-boyfriend who died from an accidental drug overdose in 2024. The projects come amid a larger period of self-discovery for Frye. She and her husband of more than 20 years, Jason Goldberg, who share four children, divorced in 2022. After their split, Frye reconnected with Crazy Town frontman Shellshock (real name: Seth Binzer), whom she had known as a teen. They went on to date, but ended their relationship prior to his death. 'It's been such a journey getting to this moment in time, and there's been so much love, faith, pain, grief,' she says. 'So many experiences of peeling back the onion.' Frye tells me about some of those layers — from growing up in a world that felt way too comfortable having discussions about her teenage body, to coming into her own as a filmmaker. I'm so thankful to be doing what I love each and every day. It makes me emotional because I love, love, love sharing stories … and to share stories that help create meaningful conversations is truly a dream. [Plus, there's been my own] self-discovery — through Kid 90 and [my old] diaries and what that brought up for me, the documentary [Werewolf and the Waves] I'm working on about [Shellshock] and The Carters, [which] led me into deeper empathy and compassion around looking at addiction as a disease. Every step has led me to right here, right now and I'm really thankful for it. It's been a beautiful, heart-wrenching journey to get here. In my 20s and 30s, there was a lot of wanting to make other people proud. … I cared what other people thought. … [My 40s have] been that process of unlearning and going: I have to do this because I love it and it feeds my soul. For a long time, I cared about what other people thought. I was really fortunate to have an incredible foundation at home and amazing family and friends and I look at our journey of growing up and growing up in the business [as] so colorful. There was so much fun and joy within our friendships. Some of my friends have gone on to have these incredible families and really healthy, exquisite lives and some of my friends didn't make it out. Some had struggles with their families and some had absolutely beautiful, stable families. … When you take mental illness and addiction and you combine that with money and fame and all of these other elements, then that can really implode. So many young people globally are struggling in front of their screens, while somebody else is liking, disliking or calling them out. This is a global crisis. I think about what a sensitive, loving, beautiful heart this young man had — and what becomes that breaking point? That certainly made me look at my own life. I remember wanting to please people and that doesn't even have to be something that your parents or the industry puts on you. It's something that you may put on yourself. But when you layer that, it can become explosive. Right? I had gone through this rapid development so early on as a teenager and feeling that objectification, all those layers. I can't even imagine doing it under the microscope of social media. That's what young people are going through — and I don't think we've begun to scratch the surface on what that looks like and what that means. I know. It's wild because I had [a breast] reduction and so much of that was health reasons — my back, all these different things — and then I remember it made it look like I had [other work done]. People were like, 'Oh, you did this and this and this.' No! What?! But I think we've lived so often in this sensationalist society where we love to build people up, and then we love to break them down. It was so surreal, and so crazy. I think so often when you grow up — and this is something that I related to with Aaron — is that when you play a character [like Punky], people want you to stay little forever. It's like they want to remember you as that little girl or boy. Then we grow up. I know for me, I went through such an awkward stage while trying to figure out who I was, who I wanted to be, in such formative years. So, as we were speaking earlier about coming back into myself, it's been such an incredible journey. One of the most incredible things has been that they're like, 'Oh, mom's been on this ride too.' I think that as much as we communicate and share stories about the awkward stages and our bodies, I think so much of it is inside. It's so internal. So you can make changes to your body, but so much of the work is the internal part of it. Something that is most important to me is us having conversations and not brushing things under the rug and looking within to get to the root of our experiences. I live in the bath a lot of the time — and I walk a lot. The last few docs were so intense and I remember there were days when I'd be on Zoom and I'd be like: 'Excuse me' and I'd have to [step away] because of the things that I was seeing or hearing. It was just so emotional. So meditation, walking, those are the things that I that I most lean into — and then my kids' arms. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Soleil Moonfrye (@moonfrye) I feel like I'm graduating from my teens to my 20s. I'm entering my 20s. … I am still such a kid in so many ways. I have this joy for life and discovery and adventure and excitement that feels incredibly youthful — and at the same time, this incredible gratitude and appreciation for the experience. Sometimes I'll look at pictures of when I was in my teens and 20s, and I'm like, Look at that young woman and how beautiful and full of life she is. I really didn't see it at the time. I had so many insecurities. … I cared about what the world thought. I didn't have that level of self-love, so I wasn't really able to appreciate the beauty of what was. So I've really made it a point for myself, in this moment, that I really want to appreciate all the different versions of myself, so that when I'm 80, 90 or 100 years old, looking back, I can be like, Wow, you really were able to feel that moment and appreciate [it]. That's something that I work on on a regular basis. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Aaron Carter documentary gives intimate look into family's journey with addiction and loss
Aaron Carter documentary gives intimate look into family's journey with addiction and loss

CBS News

time14-04-2025

  • Entertainment
  • CBS News

Aaron Carter documentary gives intimate look into family's journey with addiction and loss

A new documentary is pulling back the curtain on the late pop sensation Aaron Carter and his family's challenges with mental health, addiction and loss. "The Carters: Hurts to Love You," streaming on Paramount+ April 15, is an intimate look at a family thrust into the spotlight by Aaron and brother Nick Carter of Backstreet Boys fame. Home videos and archival performance footage illustrate the celebratory highs and heartbreaking lows experienced by the Carters, while Aaron's twin sister Angel and others connected to the family recount a story of pain and love. "The feeling of our childhood, you can't put into one word, because it's sadness, it's fear, but it's love too, it's hope," Angel says in the film. Nick and Angel are the only living Carter siblings from the original five. Aaron died at 34 in 2022 in an accidental drowning in a bathtub at his California home. He had the inhalant difluoroethane and anti-anxiety medication alprazolam in his system, the Los Angeles County Coroner's office said. "Aaron loved being a singer, he loved going on stage, he loved performing for people," Angel says in the film. "But I think there was a tremendous amount of pressure put on Aaron throughout his childhood." The Carters' sister Leslie died at age 25 in 2012 and their other sister Bobbie Jean died at 41 in 2023, during the filming of the documentary — both of apparent drug overdoses. Director Soleil Moon Frye had a special connection to the project, growing up as a child star herself in the 1980s sitcom "Punky Brewster." "I was so fortunate in growing up that I was able to have a sense of childhood," she told CBS News. "I loved performing and being on stage, and that was such a beautiful part of my life, and within the joy and love, there was also a roller coaster of emotions and insecurities." While some of her childhood friends grew up, like she did, to have families and careers, others "didn't make it through," she said. "So when I went on this journey over the last few years, I felt connected to Angel, to her family, to their experiences. I saw so much of myself and my friends through their journey." Like Nick and Angel, Frye also lost a loved one while making the documentary. One of her closest childhood friends lost his battle with addiction in June, she shared. "This documentary was a place for me to channel so much of that grief, because I had lost one of the great loves of my life to his battle of addiction. And so I understood and had an empathy for this family so much because I had been through it with loved ones," she said. Amid her own heartbreak and healing, Frye said she also wanted to provide a safe, healing space for Angel and Nick as well. "There had been so many stories about this family, so much noise, so many different people telling different perspectives — and Angel really deserved the safe space to share, to share her journey, and to provide that light," Frye said. "I felt an incredible sense of responsibility to honor their memories and create this from a place of love and empathy and compassion." While most viewers can't relate to childhood stardom, Frye hopes the universal challenges the family faces will help others struggling with these issues feel like they're not alone. "I hope in some way, that people will experience the documentary and be able to connect it to their lives and loved ones," she said. "This is one of the most universal stories that has to be told right now. We are in a global crisis, mental health, addiction. These are conversations that we have to be having." Watching the documentary, Frye says she can see so much of her kids through young Aaron, whom she called vivacious, loving and beautiful. "And then as all of these elements and pain come into his life, you see what happens — the unraveling and social media ... the bullying ... and then what ends up happening," she said. "In that transformation, I'm watching him, but I'm watching millions of families across the world when I when I see that." To continue the conversation or seek support, the film concludes with resources to mental health resources, including the Kids Mental Health Foundation, which Angel and her husband Corey Conrad co-chair. "The Carters: Hurts to Love You" streams exclusively on Paramount+ April 15. Paramount+ is owned by Paramount Global, which is also the parent company of CBS News.

This week's TV: ‘Government Cheese,' ‘Ransom Canyon,' and more
This week's TV: ‘Government Cheese,' ‘Ransom Canyon,' and more

Boston Globe

time14-04-2025

  • Entertainment
  • Boston Globe

This week's TV: ‘Government Cheese,' ‘Ransom Canyon,' and more

Nick Carter and Angel Carter Conrad in "The Carters." CBS/Paramount+ 1. 'The Carters: Hurts to Love You' Tuesday on Paramount+: With a title taken from Backstreet Boys' Nick Carter's 2023 same-named pop song, the new bio miniseries is a tale of two famous brothers, Nick and Aaron, one living, one dead. In 2022, at age 34, one-time child star Aaron drowned, his system flooded with drugs, in a death the coroner deemed accidental. What happened? How did early fame alter their trajectories? Through home movies, music videos, interviews, and the lens of their sister Angel, the docuseries strives to understand the diverging paths of two talented siblings from the same home who found their time in the spotlight. Directed by 'Punky Brewster' star Soleil Moon Frye. Advertisement 2. " ' Wednesday on Britbox: The Agatha Christie classic, first published in 1944, gets a glossy BBC makeover. The arch three-part miniseries, set in the 1930s, stars Hollywood royalty Anjelica Huston as the bedridden widow Lady Camilla Tressilian. The aristocratic owner of an English seaside estate hosts a coterie of strange and suspicious characters. Upon the discovery of a corpse, Inspector Leach (' Advertisement 3. 'The Diamond Heist' Wednesday on Netflix: Producer 4. 'Ransom Canyon' Thursday on Netflix: The new contemporary ranch drama joins the field of neo-westerns like 'Longmire,' 'Yellowstone,' and ' 5. 'Secrets of the Penguins' Sunday on National Geographic at 8 p.m., then migrating to streaming on Disney+ and Hulu: It's amazing penguins still have secrets after the recent movie 'The Penguin Lessons' and the 2006 Oscar winner 'March of the Penguins.' Still, who doesn't love those flightless birds, even though it's a fallacy that they mate for life. Blake Lively narrates National Geographic's three-part docuseries just in time for Earth Day on April 22. Advertisement

I'm a Sucker for America
I'm a Sucker for America

Yahoo

time29-01-2025

  • Entertainment
  • Yahoo

I'm a Sucker for America

From the G-File on The Dispatch Hey, I'm on Day 4 of my bout with the flu. My fever has come down to the point where I no longer find myself miming scenes from Punky Brewster, a bit like Martin Sheen doing martial arts in his Apocalypse Now hotel room. Anyway, one of the stories I glimpsed briefly through the fog came Monday, or as I called it at the time 'Falula.' A video of Anthony Mackie, the African American actor tapped to take over the role of Captain America, appeared on a panel in Italy to promote Captain America: Brave New World. 'To me Captain America represents a lot of different things and I don't think the term 'America' should be one of those representations,' Mackie said. 'It's about a man who keeps his word, who has honor, dignity and integrity. Someone who is trustworthy and dependable.' Much like the influenza in my bloodstream, it went viral. By Tuesday, Mackie tried to clarify. 'Let me be clear about this, I'm a proud American and taking on the shield of a hero like CAP is the honor of a lifetime,' he wrote on Instagram. 'I have the utmost respect for those who serve and have served our country. CAP has universal characteristics that people all over the world can relate to.' I'll be honest. I don't think it's a great mea culpa. The issue wasn't that he insulted 'those who serve and have served our country.' The issue was he insulted America itself. We'll return to that in a moment. I'm happy to take Mackie at his word, that he didn't mean it to sound the way it did to some. I should also say that I'm also incredibly tired of these sorts of controversies. We went through this when Superman dropped 'fighting for the American way' from his motto. In 2021 it was 'Truth, Justice and a Better Tomorrow.' In 2006, it was 'truth, justice, and all that is good.' Now, I didn't like that stuff very much back then, and I still don't. But I will say that the case for Superman going full cosmopolitan—citizen of the world and all that—is much stronger than the case for Captain America. Superman isn't from here—Earth, I mean—and you could tell he was already trending globalist by 1987 in Superman IV: The Quest for Peace (known in my corner of the world as Superman IV: Quest for My Money Back): The culture war fights over these things can be exhausting, even for people not sweating Theraflu. It's a bit like the war on Christmas or the Gulf of America: The point is just to make people angry as simplistically as possible. By the way, there are arguments other than 'Hollywood hates America' that explain why an actor promoting a movie in Italy might opine, clumsily, that you don't have to be an American to like Captain America. But, for obvious reasons (or at least once-obvious reasons), blaming capitalism is less fun for righties than blaming America-hating Hollywood libruls. Now, let me be clear: I am not saying that there isn't ample anti-Americanism, from subtle to strident, in Hollywood fare. There is. A lot of West Coast progressives are, or have been, quite hostile to America. And I don't just mean Oliver Stone or Jane Fonda, or the aforementioned Martin Sheen. I could give you a few paragraphs on my contempt for Adam McKay's contempt for America and capitalism, the two things that made it possible to translate his talent into fabulous wealth. But my tank is running low. Suffice it to say, I think a lot of prominent Hollywood types are uncomfortable talking about America in basic patriotic terms, never mind making a good case for America as an indispensable nation and force for good in the world. Some can: Tom Hanks and Gary Sinise come to mind. And some of the right-wingers in show business can go too far in the other direction, thinking that defending your country to foreigners means pointing out that without us you'd be speaking German. That's one reason I hate these fights. The loudest voices are more scared to concede a point to the other side than to take a reasonable, nuanced position. Saying America has fallen short of her ideals more than once doesn't make you an America-hater. And saying that Americans should be proud of America's ideals and her commitment to them, no matter how flawed, doesn't make you some jingoistic freedom fries gobbler or the closeted Nazi dad in American Beauty. The point is, Hollywood needs to get over its reflexive discomfort with basic patriotism. Saying this is a good country and a force for good in the world isn't the same as saying it's perfect or that it hasn't made mistakes. And saying it's better than a lot of authoritarian countries should come easily—if you're not worried about box office returns in China or Iran. But let's get back to America. Mackie says that the defining characteristics of the character he plays are 'honor, dignity and integrity. Someone who is trustworthy and dependable.' Is it so hard to add 'patriotism' to that list? And is it too heavy a lift to concede that being patriotic isn't at odds with those other virtues? Indeed, should patriots, regardless of where they are on the ideological spectrum, think that honor, dignity, and integrity should define America's conduct whenever possible? Yesterday, I had a great conversation with Francis Dearnley from the Telegraph. He closed with a dire warning about the direction some fear America is going. Geopolitically, America's strength doesn't just come from our military might. It comes from the fact that our allies want to be with us for other reasons, starting with the fact we are a good country. They are our friends, and they look to America for moral, principled leadership. Lots of countries have superficial alliances—formal or informal transactional relationships with other powers. These are mercenary relationships. America has real friends who see America, for all of its flaws, as a nation that stands up for certain American ideals. They expect an America that conducts itself—or tries to—with honor and integrity. These friends organize their foreign policies around the idea that America is trustworthy and will honor her commitments. And we reap enormous benefits from that. I want America to be the preeminent global superpower not because I love being the strongest. I want America to be the preeminent global superpower because that's good for America and the world. And, more importantly, the alternative contenders for the job all suck. If China, Russia, Iran et al. were liberal democracies, I wouldn't care that much about who the toughest kid on the block was. But when all the other toughest kids are bullies, it's good that the toughest isn't a bully. Not so, say the America Firsters. We need to be a bully, too. Now, some of Donald Trump's defenders say that's a misreading. Trump is just delivering the long-needed tough love our friends need to get their acts together. And if that's all it turns out to be, that's fine. But whatever four-dimensional-chess theory you want to deploy to defend Donald Trump's rhetoric, it should account for the fact that a lot of his superfans don't see, or care about, any alleged subtext. Just text. They don't talk like this is all an effort to beef up the defenses of the free world. They talk like the free world doesn't matter—unless it pays up. They think it's great for America to bully allies and talk about using force for territorial expansion. They think, as podcaster Matt Walsh put it, 'the moral of the story is that we can and should simply force lesser countries to fall in line.' This week, Sen. Mike Lee tweeted, 'If you could snap your fingers and get us out of NATO today, would you?' He has taken to arguing that NATO is a 'raw deal' for America. 'NATO members must pay up now,' Lee declared. 'If they don't—and maybe even if they do—the U.S. should seriously consider leaving NATO.' This is embarrassing. The 'pay up' thing in particular is a sign of how Twitter rhetoric can break the blood-brain barrier. Pay up to whom? The issue isn't about paying dues or tribute to America, it's about NATO members spending more money on their own defense—which they've been doing. Even if Trump doesn't understand how NATO works, Lee does. But he mimics Trump's mafioso-protection-racket rhetoric all the same. There was a time when Mike Lee would have been appalled by Donald Trump because Donald Trump doesn't behave with honor, dignity, or integrity. And I've talked a lot about how the right has bent its definition of good character to fit Donald Trump. Apparently it's too much to ask that Trump conform to the preexisting definition. The NATO talk is just how this dynamic gets applied to foreign policy. The currency of life and politics for Trump is domination, intimidation, subservience, and transaction. Now we're told that's how America itself should interact with the world. To come back to Mackie, my problem with his statement and apology is that he still seemed incapable of understanding—and articulating— that there is no contradiction or inconsistency about a character defined by honor, dignity, and integrity being called Captain America. After all, in the comics and even in the Marvel movies, Captain America was never a 'love it or leave it,' or 'fight for it wrong or right' guy. He stood up for American ideals and American decency. When America was in the right, he fought for it. When America—or the American government—was wrong, he still fought for what is best about it. As Cap once put it: Doesn't matter what the press says. Doesn't matter what the politicians or the mobs say. Doesn't matter if the whole country decides that something wrong is something right. This nation was founded on one principle above all else: The requirement that we stand up for what we believe, no matter the odds or the consequences. When the mob and the press and the whole world tell you to move, your job is to plant yourself like a tree beside the river of truth, and tell the whole world – 'No, YOU move.' This gets to my whole thing about the difference between nationalism and patriotism. The patriot sides with what is right, the nationalist for 'the nation'— or its leader—right or wrong. America is not just an idea. But it is a nation formed around one. When it comes to foreign policy, my problem with Trump, Lee, and that whole crowd is that they're bending American idealism to what is really just nationalism, rather than trying to guide the nation in the direction of American ideals. And it seems to me that the patriotic thing to say in response is something like, 'No, YOU move.'

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