Scarlett Moffatt appeared on The One Show sofa where she has spoken out about her struggle with facial tics ahead of her documentary debut. The County Durham star was diagnosed with Bell's palsy when she was 11.
Moffatt, who found fame among other TV-loving families on Gogglebox, was involved in a car accident when she was younger and as a result, she developed early onset tics. They did eventually subside, but the star opened up to hosts Alex Jones and Ronan Keating about scary it was.
"I remember how scary it was, and in particular not being in control of my own body," she admitted. "My tics were facial tics, breathing tics, there weren't any verbal ones but there were involuntary facial tics."
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Moffatt will make her documentary debut with the film Britain’s Tourette’s Mystery: Scarlett Moffatt Investigates next week and said that she was driven to explore the topic after learning about the impact of the pandemic on children with Tourette's. She explained how she learned of a sudden influx of young teenagers, particularly girls, seeking medical help for the condition.
Asked by Keating about the role social media has played in helping youngsters, Moffatt admitted: "I know from my own experiences that half of the issue was feeling lonely. And if I had other people on social media experiencing the same thing I wouldn't have felt so lonely."
There has been a rise of teenagers sharing their "tic attacks" on social media platforms, such as TikTok, and it has helped to raise awareness of other types of Tourette's. "I had seen the verbal tics and swearing tics when I was younger," Moffatt told the show, "but I'd never actually seen anyone with the same tics as I had, so I think it would have been nice to seen other young people going through the same thing."
Calling for parents to ask their teenagers how they are coping, Moffatt said she hoped that the documentary will help youngsters who have been left on the sidelines throughout the pandemic. "During the lockdown, we rightly focused on the vulnerable and the elderly, but I think we also left teenagers to their own devices, literally on their own devices. I just hope parents will be able to sit their teenagers down and ask them how they're doing, how they're coping."
The film will be Moffatt's first time fronting a documentary like this, and thankfully her anxiety about the daunting task was eased slightly after a chance meeting with the king of documentaries himself. "I met Louis Theroux at a Halloween party," she recalled. "He told me to just be yourself because people can see through that if you're not. I've got a newfound respect for him, documentaries are so hard."
"I think because I've always done jazz hands and fun things and because this is so close to my heart, I feel like I've been to the university of TV," she admitted when asked about where her worries about being received come from. "But there are light moments and bits of humour but because it's close to my heart, it's sincere."
Britain’s Tourette’s Mystery: Scarlett Moffatt Investigates is on Channel 4 at 10pm on Tuesday, July 19.
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