Erin Moriarty writes, “Within 24 hours of beginning treatment, I felt the light coming back on.” This is the moment in her Instagram post where she finally identifies what had been subtly destroying her from the inside out. It’s a brief statement. However, it carries a weight that is difficult to describe for anyone who has witnessed this actress being torn apart online over the past few years.
To put it plainly, the discussion surrounding Erin Moriarty’s weight gain and physical makeover has been unpleasant. She was referred to as a “50-year-old skeleton,” a “Botox zombie,” and worse in forums. Megyn Kelly dissected her face for a whole podcast segment. Accusations of plastic surgery escalated into something more amusing than worrisome. It seems that very few people thought about the possibility that there might be a medical issue.
In Graves’ disease, an autoimmune condition, the thyroid is essentially attacked by the immune system, causing it to overproduce hormones at rates that the body cannot tolerate. The Cleveland Clinic’s Dr. Ossama Lashin has put it in almost visceral terms: everything in the body is operating too quickly, burning through calories and tissue like an engine without a governor. Patients shake, their hearts race, they perspire all night, and they lose weight without trying. According to Lashin, they feel as though “this is not me.” For a longer period of time than she should have, Moriarty attributed her symptoms to stress and exhaustion, which makes perfect sense for someone moving at the speed required for a leading television role.
The timeline fits so neatly that it’s both interesting and possibly uncomfortable to sit with. It wasn’t a surgeon’s table, as evidenced by the dramatic weight loss between seasons two and three of The Boys, the gaunt face, and the sunken features that sent Reddit into a frenzy. Her body was being burned by an untreated illness. When the real story was more about a public health crisis going unnoticed, the internet created a whole narrative around cosmetic vanity.
The body begins to return to normal once treatment is started, usually with methimazole, a daily drug that slows the production of thyroid hormone. The metabolism settles. The appetite settles. Involuntarily, people who had been losing weight start gaining it back. In other words, Erin Moriarty’s weight gain in the months after her diagnosis is a normal physiological process. It’s not a story from the tabloid. It’s healing.
It’s difficult to ignore the fact that she handled the public rumors more gracefully than the majority of people would have. When the memes were going viral, she didn’t post a furious denial. She didn’t take the surgery rumors to court. She encouraged her followers to take their own symptoms seriously, disclosed her diagnosis when she was ready to do so, and moved on. That shows maturity, especially for someone who had just witnessed strangers use genuine cruelty to describe her appearance.
In a small percentage of cases, Graves’ disease can also affect the eyes, resulting in what medical professionals refer to as proptosis—a noticeable forward bulging of the eyes due to inflammation behind them. Additionally, this modifies the face in ways that appear differently on camera. It’s possible that some of what viewers and commentators perceived as surgery was actually the disease changing her features in real time.
Though it seems obvious, the larger lesson is still worth mentioning. It is rare for a celebrity’s physical transformation to be solely a tale of selfishness or bad choices. Sometimes it’s sickness. Sometimes it’s medicine. Sometimes the reality is more humane, melancholic, and quieter than what the internet prefers. When presented correctly, Erin Moriarty’s weight gain journey is a tale of someone overcoming adversity and being unlucky enough to do so in public. The light reappeared. That’s the part to keep in mind.
