Barker—who played Marina, a woman rejected by Regency-era London society because of a scandalous pregnancy—spoke about her experience during an interview on Oxford University’swrapped in 2019, and the second happened in 2022. She said she received “no support” from Netflix during that time.
“Not a single person from Netflix, not a single person from Shondaland, since I have had two psychotic breaks from that show, have even contacted me or even emailed me to ask if I’m OK or if I would benefit from any sort of aftercare or support,” Barker, 26, said. “Nobody.”“I am in hospital at the minute and I am going to be discharged soon and hopefully get to continue with my life,” Barker told her followers at the time.
The work itself was a challenge too, Barker said, explaining that the turmoil and isolation that her character, Marina, suffered through took a drastic toll on her mental health. “During filming, I was deteriorating,” she said. “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.”by her wealthy cousins for her pregnancy, the result of a clandestine love affair. Marina is urged to marry quickly to conceal the secret, and in the ensuing tragic conflict, ends up getting outed in the show’s central gossip column.
She continued: “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...my life was changing drastically overnight and yet there was still no support and there still hasn’t been any support all that time. So I was trying really, really hard to act like it was OK and that I could work and that it wasn’t a problem.