The former child/tween/teen actress turned adult actress and documentary maker left out an important part of the suicide of this actor.
He was being constantly abused by the disgraced director and the director’s friends.
She didn’t want to say it, so I will.
Soleil Moon Frye
Jonathan Brandis
View this post on Instagram
View this post on Instagram
Soleil Moon Frye Reflects on Suicide of Friend Jonathan Brandis: ‘I Carry His Memories with Me’
In making her new documentary, Kid90, Soleil Moon Frye combed through scores of old videos, audio recordings and diaries — and made some bittersweet discoveries regarding her friend, actor Jonathan Brandis, who died by suicide in 2003.
“I found so many voicemails Jonathan left me when we were kids,” the actress, 44, who currently stars on Peacock’s reboot of Punky Brewster, tells PEOPLE in this week’s issue. “Some of them were 10 minutes long, his innermost thoughts. It just made me cry listening to them. He was a real friend.”
Brandis, a teen heartthrob who starred in Ladybugs and seaQuest DSV, was just 27 when he died.
“Jonathan was very smart and he was very polite and always easygoing,” his father Greg Brandis tells PEOPLE. “In a sad way, he was probably bipolar. [His death] wasn’t due to the entertainment industry. I look back now, and in his 20s he showed signs of manic depression. I hope that anyone suffering can go get help.”
For Frye, reflecting on Brandis’ death, as well as the losses of other friends to drugs and suicide, revealed an important lesson.
“I had some elements of guilt not seeing [the pain],” she says. “How often do we really look at each other and go, ‘How are you?’ and actually hear what someone is saying? I learned that I just wasn’t listening in the way I do now.” – Source
Read more on these Tags: Jonathan Brandis, Soleil Moon Frye
