'New Amsterdam' Season 3: What happened to Tyler Labine? Real story behind Dr Iggy Frome's 'eating disorder'
Dr Iggy Frome's (Tyler Labine) struggles with food addiction, have served as an important storyline on Season 3 of 'New Amsterdam'. In fact, in one of the episodes, his assistant who found him shaky and pale suspected he had Covid-19. However, as Iggy's friend and patient Dr Lauren Bloom (Janet Montgomery) discovered it was simply because Iggy was starving himself after a binge. Iggy then goes onto share with Dr Bloom how his deep-seated issues around food emerged. He talks about how his father would pinch his gut and call it disgusting and keep a chart to monitor his nine-year-old son's progress when it came to losing weight. Most heartbreaking of all is that Iggy tells Dr Bloom, that he was so miserable that he even tried to end his life.
While all of this may be gut-wrenching to even hear a character on a show talk about, fans at the time didn't realize that this was reality for actor Tyler Labine who plays Dr Iggy. Tyler also endured a father who called him disgusting, several failed attempts at losing weight and a suicide attempt. In an interview with People magazine, Tyler says of the suicide attempt, "At 11, I'd lie in bed at night dreaming about getting liposuction, and at 12, I made a clumsy attempt at killing myself. I was a really outgoing, funny kid, but I was in so much pain inside." The actor goes onto say that he's grateful to have a platform to share his story on, "It's been really cathartic to embark on this journey with Iggy ... but it's a big breakthrough for me to tell my story, and hopefully it will help other people."
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So what led to Tyler sharing his story on the show? In the first two seasons of the show, Dr Iggy was often seeing eating anything he could get his hands on, a 'quirk' which was being treated almost light-heartedly. But the truth was it was anything but lighthearted for Tyler. Tyler then felt he had to share with the producers that he was being very triggered by this as he suffered from an eating disorder.
Tyler's story then became Iggy's story on the show after several long discussions. Just as Dr Bloom pointed out that Iggy's approach to food will affect his children, Tyler and his wife had a similar conversation. Tyler said, "A few years ago, in my late 30s, I was talking to my wife, and she said, "You'll never be happy with your body." She also pointed out that my having a vegan protein shake or a diet-plan meal for dinner wasn't sending a healthy message to our kids. I knew it was time to look into getting help."
Tyler in what is no doubt an inspiring message to others suffering from eating disorders said, "Now, I've been sober for the last three and a half years. I'm in a 12-step program, I'm on antianxiety meds, and I do talk therapy once or twice a week, which has allowed me to start erasing some of those messages from my parents."
To find out more about Iggy and Tyler's inspiring story, you can catch new episodes of 'New Amsterdam' on Tuesdays 10/9c on NBC.
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