‘My Big Fat Fabulous Life’s Whitney Way Thore Shares She Was ‘Almost Suicidal’ After Online Hate (Exclusive) [Video]

Sitting down with ET’s Deidre Behar ahead of season 12’s premiere on TLC, the reality TV star, 40, opened up about the mental health challenges she faced from social media harassment. 

“After season 11 premiered, the amount of hate that I was getting surpassed anything that I’ve experienced in my entire career, and I was almost suicidal over it. Especially because so much of it was about my mother,” Whitney tells ET. 

The TLC personality lost her mom, Barbara “Babs” Thore, to a cerebral amyloid angiopathy in December 2022. Babs had suffered a stroke a year earlier in December 2021. According to Whitney, many of the mean messages included people telling her that her mom would be angry and disapprove of the choices she was making in the wake of Babs’ death.