Who Ruined 'Secret Life' for Molly Ringwald? A Very Obvious Guess

Molly Ringwald is making headlines this week after revealing to Andy Cohen that the “worst” experience of her acting career was filming the ABC Freeform series Secret Life of the American Teenager thanks to a “difficult” co-star. Considering Ringwald has been open about the grossness of her early days working with John Hughes, that’s a pretty significant statement to make.

Right out of the gate, it’s not Shailene Woodley, and Ringwald makes it a point to say as much. So, let’s assume Shailene wasn’t eating clay back then. However, that’s where Ringwald stops when it comes to dropping names.

Via PEOPLE:

“It was a hard… okay. I loved the cast. I loved Shailene [Woodley], there’s so many people that I worked with that… there was one person that was really difficult,” she said.

Ultimately, Ringwald clarified that she was “not going to say who that one person is,” but they “brought it down to a 1” on Cohen’s rating scale.

For some background, my wife used to watch Secret Life, and to this day, I’m amazed that it launched Shailene Woodley’s career because it was bad. Like watching paint dry bad. Selena Gomez’s best friend Francia Raisa was on it, and I like to believe Secret Life is the reason her fame has never gone past that title.

Anyway, I’m losing the thread here. One of the actors was particularly grating to watch: Mark Derwin, who played Ringwald’s on-screen husband. That guy sucked. Was it just his character and bad writing? Maybe! That really shouldn’t be dismissed as a factor. But he is the person who would’ve spent the most time with Ringwald besides Woodley.

Of course, if you ask Google what Ringwald and Derwin’s relationship is like, the AI results that you should never trust will say she respects him as a coworker based on her prior remarks to Movieweb:

I think we liked each other from the get-go, but I think as time goes on, obviously you get to know the person more and you get more comfortable with them. I think our relationship has definitely grown and as the characters have grown, we’ve gotten to know each other better and it just really helps to get it even more sort of realistic. You develop little quirks together and impressions and it just makes it more realistic.

Here’s the thing, Ringwald said that in 2009 when Secret Life was still filming. She was literally promoting the second season, so there’s no way in hell she would’ve said, “Hey, by the way, I hate this man’s face” in the middle of a publicity interview. Granted, that’s my feeble human brain making that deduction, but it is a much better guess than relying on a 17-year-old quote devoid of all context. Suck it, Skynet.

You can check out Molly Ringwald on Watch What Happens Live below: