Why did Meadow gain weight?
Meadow Soprano and Jamie-Lynn Sigler have been together for nine years, but that doesn’t make them inseparable.
“She’s very guarded, and I’m the kind of person who wears my heart on my sleeve,” Sigler said.
As the firstborn of a fictional mob family in the Sopranos, HBO’s critically acclaimed drama, Meadow Soprano had some rocky teen years.
Sigler, 25, who plays Meadow, discussed her life and career in front of about 50 people at the University of South Florida Sun Dome on Monday evening.
She won the part in the show’s pilot episode after a five-audition process. Then, while network executives debated whether to pick it up for production, Sigler faced her life’s hardest challenge.
The Long Island teen started working out in the mornings before school. She stopped eating dessert on weekdays. Within a few months, she barely ate at all. She rose at 3 a.m. to start four-hour morning workouts.
“Everything in my life revolved around counting and burning calories,” she said.
When she finally arrived to start shooting the show’s first season, producers noticed her extreme weight loss.
They gave her two weeks to start gaining weight, to show them she could beat an eating disorder diagnosed as exercise bulimia. They began auditioning replacements.
Sigler managed to start eating again, though it would take years to beat the condition.
“The first three seasons are basically a record of my eating disorder,” she said.
Meanwhile, Meadow had her own problems on the show.
Her mixed-race boyfriend infuriated her Italian mob-boss father. Her next boyfriend got himself murdered.
Somewhere along the way, people noticed that Meadow – and Sigler – was beautiful. Sigler posed for racy photos in a 2001 issue of Maxim magazine.
“It’s not like I wake up every morning and think about being a sex symbol,” she said, but “if people think I’m sexy, that’s great.”
When Sigler left the set after her last-ever scene as Meadow about a week ago, the director pretended they needed to repeat a shot for the show’s finale.
Sigler returned to a set filled with the cast and crew, champagne and flowers.
Someone said, “Meadow’s a wrap,” she said, and emotion overwhelmed her.
“I was bowling.”
