Eden Sher is not Sue Heck, though it’s taken her some time to figure herself out.
The actress shot to fame, while she herself was going through the debilitating shame of being a teenager herself (we’ve all been there).
But while the rest of us grew out of our teenage selves and were able to leave all those moments behind us for the most part, Eden continued to be recognised as her TV-self, even in the most incredibly inappropriate moments.
Like, for example, undergoing a C-section to save the lives of your twin babies, while completely drugged up, anxious, and with your organs splayed on a table beside you.
Eden is now taking her story to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival with one-woman show I Was On A Sitcom, which flatly lays out the reality of growing up on TV and how the character and her own self were seemingly inseparably intertwined, even to herself.
Speaking to Metro.co.uk as I Was On A Sitcom is shown to first audiences in the US, Eden explained her story – despite having some genuinely traumatic and painful moments – could only ever be a comedy.
‘Obviously, while I was in it, it was not funny. It was not, ‘I didn’t see any of the jokes anywhere,’ she begins.
‘But then once I was able to take a breath and my babies were okay, even though I was still feeling anxiety, I was back to my normal level of anxiety where I could see like, “Okay, wait a second. Remember when that happened in the hospital? That was f*****g nuts, right?” And yeah, I can’t not view it through a sitcom lens.’
The mum-of-two was undergoing the emergency surgery when medics and staff began quizzing her about where they recognised her from, which Eden ‘didn’t realise how insane it was because I was in such a daze.’
‘It’s so normal in my life for someone to be like, “you look so familiar!” And not know necessarily who I am in that moment. Like, “did we go to college together? Are we friends of friends?”
She continued: ‘It’s like, my organs are on the table. And I was on so many drugs. I didn’t even think about the fact that one of the technicians kept [asking] … it just blended into the whole experience.
‘So that is hilarious to be like – I’m on drugs. I’m terrified for my babies’ lives. And I think it’s totally normal for this person to be like, “You look familiar,” and for me just on autopilot like, “no, I don’t know you, thank you so much.”‘
Eventually, after the newborns were delivered and taken away, the medic realised who Eden was and began talking about The Middle, and still she ‘didn’t even register it as something weird.’
‘I was like, “That’s right, thank you so much, that’s really really nice of you!” My husband was the one who later was like, “remember that nurse?!”‘
Speaking about the encounter, Eden is laughing and bubbly, and still baffled – but wants to give the staff the ‘benefit of the doubt,’ as maybe he was ‘trying to keep it casual’ to distract her from the fact her organs were still on the table.
Eden herself struggled to seperate herself from The Middle’s Sue, as the longer the show went on the more they appeared to be the same person, so much so that ‘it got confusing’ – when ‘fundamental traits of mine became a Sue thing.’
‘Like I would laugh, and people would be like, “oh, what a classic Sue laugh!” I’m like, “well, I don’t know, that’s I had that laugh for 17 years before Sue even existed.”
Asked if she thinks the same thing would have happened if she was playing a character completely on the other scale – or for lack of a better word, cool – Eden just laughed, adding: ‘Maybe, but I don’t think I would have been cast.’
The star played Sue for nine years from 2009, and while she had been acting professionally since she was a child, it was her first major and long-running role.
A natural comic, she had starred on a sitcom previously which only ran for 11 episodes, and first found The Middle to be ‘such a cool job,’ but could ‘never have expected’ how it would change her life.
‘After season four or five, I started to realise: “Oh, my life is going to be different, my life is forever intertwined. Like forever.”‘
Playing an awkward teenager had its cons, but certainly had unexpected positives – like getting ‘to experience some of that awkwardness in such a safe, confined environment.’
‘There’s an episode where I get rejected at prom three times, or where I get splattered with cheese all over me and my prom dress.
‘Like, I had those feelings in my real life. I totally identified with them. One time in my real school, I peed my pants. I literally peed my pants. Obviously, I was 15 years old, it was mortifying. But doing it as Sue when she was 15 … people were like, “Hahahaha, so funny, so good!” So it was almost cathartic.’
There was another major plus from Sue’s time on The Middle – getting to know co-star Charlie McDermott, who played big brother Axl, and who is a director of I Was On A Sitcom alongside Sara Rejaie.
There was ‘really no other person’ Eden could have asked to take up a director role, seeing as he ‘knows it better than anyone,’ she explained.
He had been living in the UK with his wife and returned to the US at just the right time, when Eden was ‘feeling the most lost’ about what she had written.
‘I had a lot of crises of confidence after The Middle ended,’ she admitted, with a proposed spin-off about Sue not being picked up, and multiple other projects falling through for reasons beyond her control.
She was already beginning to wonder if she would ever work again when the global pandemic kicked off – ‘and then I got pregnant, which was intentional, but it was so insane.’
‘It was not like, “Hey, I got pregnant, hey I had a baby, I took four weeks maternity leave, let’s get back to it.” It was an insane journey. It gave me a profound shift in what life could be, what my personal identity is, what’s important and what I’m capable of. And so I had all this to say about my journey with pregnancy and motherhood. And then I realized how intertwined it was with my journey with my work and career and who I am.
‘I really honestly found out through writing it, how they are all connected. And then I realised, I don’t think I could have had this to say immediately after The Middle was over. I kind of needed time to reflect on it.’
I Was On A Sitcom has had a majorly positive reaction so far, with Eden admitting she was ‘shocked and stunned’ by people’s kind words after performing for the first time.
‘My journey is not that of a big movie star who’s constantly feeling violated… but there are situations where it’s inconvenient to be recognised. And when I started seeing audience members come in I was like, “Are they going to think I’m making fun of them? Are they going to think I’m ungrateful or complaining, or disappointed I don’t talk more about my experience on the show and it’s this very personal thing? Are they going to be upset?”
‘But it makes me cry, afterwards pretty much everyone who waited outside had been so supportive. I feel weird saying it about myself, but everyone was like “That was so well told, I was so in it, I feel so welcomed into your life.”
‘All I did was tell my story. I almost didn’t even put any opinion or feeling in it. I just laid it out. There’s some good jokes in there, I’m really proud of a lot of jokes in there.
‘I’m just hoping that everyone feels like they know me a little bit better.’
Eden, her husband and their twins are preparing to jet off to Edinburgh for Eden to tell her story on stage, and couldn’t be more excited to visit the ‘beautiful, magical, crazy city.’
If you still need that last little push to be in the audience for Eden’s show, she has some words for you.
‘If you want to learn about the details about how a C section works, if you want to know exactly how identical twins are formed in your body, and if you want to know a little more about my relationship to Sue Heck, come on down.’
I Was On A Sitcom comes to Edinbugh Fringe this August; tickets available.
