Marie Osmond faced weightloss demand from producers on Donny & Marie

Former child star Marie Osmond was scared into staying slim during her stint on 1970s variety show Donny & Marie after allegedly receiving threats about her weight from TV producers. The Paper Roses singer reveals her lifelong weight struggles began when she was guilt-tripped into shedding 10 pounds (4.5 kilograms) as a teen in order to keep the show on the air and was told to keep the threats a secret from her family and her co-star, brother Donnie Osmond.
She tells U.S. talk show host Wendy Williams, “I weigh about 125 pounds right now, and I’m the same height I was (when) I was 14 years old when I started doing Donny & Marie… but I was about 103 pounds and I had producers take me out into parking lots and threaten me to never tell my parents and said that 200-and-something people’s jobs were on my back and they were gonna cancel the show if I didn’t drop 10 pounds… I didn’t tell anybody about this… I got down to 93 pounds. (It was) totally crazy.”
Osmond, now 53, admits her weight problems prompted her to try out every diet fad available, until she found healthy eating programme Nutrisystem, for which she is now a spokesperson.
She says, “I’ve been on every diet, from where you drink lemon water for three days, yeah, I’ve done it all. Finally you get smart and you realise that the only way to really lose weight is to eat food! Be healthy.”