Ariel Winter recalls being called fat as a 13-year-old on 'Modern Family': 'It was rough'

Ariel Winter will always be Alex Dunphy in some people's eyes, and on the latest episode of Facebook Watch's "Red Table Talk: The Estefans," the 23-year-old actress is recalling how traumatizing it was to be on the receiving end of that in the thick of the acclaimed run of "Modern Family."

"I got called a fat slut when I was 13," Winter shared in this preview clip. "That was rough. Because I had gained weight and my body changed, I had to wear different outfits, and I wore a dress that had a cutout here. The headlines were dark. 'Fat slut' was rough for me, and it continued. It was the fans—some of them; we have lovely, lovely fans, but some of them were also hard on me in the way they loved Alex Dunphy, and because I wasn't Alex Dunphy and didn't look like Alex, I didn't want to dress like Alex ... I was just different in that way. I'm not my character."

She continued: "From them, they're like, 'How did you go from Alex Dunphy to being, like, a whore? You're trying to be sexy. You're 13. You're a horrible role model. What are you showing people? You got so fat on TV, now you look so fat.' Having my body change so much, it also changed when I was in high school because I got on antidepressants. I gained 30 pounds. It was rough going to school. It was rough online. On my Instagram, it was flooding comments. Flooding comments! And so then, I was like, 'OK, they hate this about me. I need to work on it.'"

"Modern Family" ran for 11 seasons from September 2009 to April 2020 on ABC.

The full "Red Table Talk: The Estefans" episode will arrive Thursday.