Hollywood legend Molly Ringwald has opened up about how her experience filming a certain TV series was completely ruined.
The 58-year-old actor has appeared in some iconic movies and franchises since her early start in the industry, including Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club, The Kissing Booth trilogy and Riverdale.
Given how many high-profile projects she’s got under her belt, while appearing on Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen earlier this week, she was asked to rank 10 of them – resulting in certain revelations.
After placing Pretty in Pink in the top position, with nothing but praise for the whole process, things took a decidedly downward turn when discussion turned to the late 00s show, The Secret Life of an American Teenager.
The series ran from 2008 to 2013, in which Shailene Woodley played a pregnant 15-year-old Amy Juergens and all the chaos that comes with it. Her mum, Anne, was played by Molly across five seasons.
Despite her featuring in 96 episodes across multiple years, the screen star firmly ranked the show lowest on the list, dubbing it the ‘worst’.
Her confession was met with shocked gasps from the audience at her confident bashing.
When prompted to explain her stance, she said: ‘It was hard… I loved the cast, I loved Shailene, so many people that I worked with [but] there was one person that was really difficult.’
She continued: ‘I’m not gonna say who that one person is, but they brought it down to a one.’
Although the actress has a lot of love for her career, she has always been candid about the tougher times as well.
In 2024, she got candid about encountering ‘predators’ early on in her career. Explaining that she was a more reserved young person who didn’t go out clubbing or socialise much, that didn’t stop her being ‘taken advantage of’.
‘‘You can’t be a young actress in Hollywood and not have predators around,’ she said on a podcast at the time, although, having starred in Harvey Weinstein movie Strike It Rich at one point, she added: ‘I wasn’t raped by Harvey Weinstein so I’m grateful for that.’
Reflecting that she was ‘definitely in questionable situations’, she concluded: ‘But I do have an incredible survival instinct and a pretty big superego and kind of managed to figure out a way to protect myself. But it can be harrowing.’
Her daughter, Mathilda, has also been trying to break into acting as a career and appeared in the Amazon Prime hit, The Idea of You.
As Molly shared at the time: ‘ I have a 20-year-old daughter now who is going into the same profession, even though I did everything I could to convince her to do something else. And it’s hard.’