Abbott Elementary star Tyler James Williams is opening up about the early struggles of living with Crohn’s disease.
The 32-year-old actor, now partnering with AbbVie for their “Beyond a Gut Feeling” campaign, spoke with People about his long battle with the inflammatory bowel disease and his mission to share his story in an “actionable way.”
Williams was diagnosed in August 2015, just two months shy of his 23rd birthday.
“I spent a portion of my life and career in wild amounts of discomfort and pain, only to find out that had I had a more in-depth conversation with a gastroenterologist, a lot of that could have either been treated more directly or avoided,” he explained. “So I don’t want anybody who’s in the position that I was in previously to have to go through the same things.”
Years before his official diagnosis, Tyler James Williams remembers one of his first major flare-ups hitting when he was just 19, around the time he starred in Disney Channel’s 2012 movie Let It Shine.
“I’ve experienced some of the milder symptoms of the disease, but then also some of the very extremes as well,” the Golden Globe winner told People. “But so much of that was due to the neglect of not treating the disease ahead of time.”
According to the Crohn’s & Colitis Foundation, Crohn’s is a form of IBD that causes chronic inflammation of the gastrointestinal tract, affecting over half a million people in the U.S. Symptoms can include abdominal pain, diarrhea, cramping, and fatigue.
Williams admitted that during his first hospital stays, he didn’t grasp how serious the disease was. “I thought I could just work through it until ultimately I ended up in such an acute position of pain because the disease was kind of running wild,” he said.
By January 2016, his health had spiraled — he was hospitalized every two weeks and needed extensive surgery to remove a damaged portion of his digestive tract. “I needed to have three surgeries over the course of three months and was hospitalized on both the east and west coast for the better part of a year,” Williams recalled.
The Everybody Hates Chris star described the emotional toll as equally heavy. “There was a unique type of depression in feeling loneliness with the disease. I think that was, from a mental health point of view, one of the lowest places I’ve ever been,” he said. “I was in a really dark place for a while feeling like there was no way to get over this hump or to ever feel better.”
Now, with the help of medication, a revamped diet, and a stronger fitness routine, Williams says he’s finally in tune with his health as Abbott Elementary gears up for its fifth season.
“It took a while to get here though,” he admitted. “There was a long time I didn’t think I could get to this place where I felt what other people feel, what I describe as normal. And it’s a beautiful place to be now.”
