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Audra McDonald Says She Was a 'Hyperactive Child' and Her Parents Put Her In Theater Instead of Giving Her Ritalin

Broadway star Audra McDonald said she was “not functioning well” before she found an outlet in performing.

“I was hyperactive child who was having a lot of problems in school, not socializing well, considered very overdramatic, and … not functioning well,” McDonald, who is currently starring in Broadway’s Gypsy, said of her childhood in Fresno, Calif. McDonald had previously thanked her parents “f​​or disobeying the doctor's orders and not medicating their hyperactive girl and finding out what she was into instead, and pushing her into the theatre” during the acceptance speech for her record-breaking sixth Tony Award win — for Lady Day at Emerson's Bar and Grill in 2014 — Playbill r eports. After receiving backlash to those comments, McDonald clarified in an open letter to Time, saying, “I myself have benefited from psychotropic drugs to help combat depression in my youth,” and that she does not “denounce the use of medication for ADHD or any other psychological disorder.”

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