Call Her Daddy

Madelaine Petsch: PSA: You Can’t Fix Him

September 17, 2025

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  • Childhood experiences of emotional instability and parentification can lead to a lifelong pattern of seeking external validation and difficulty in forming healthy romantic relationships. 
  • Therapy can be a crucial tool for processing childhood trauma, understanding learned behaviors, and ultimately developing self-love and healthier relationship patterns. 
  • The desire to provide a loving and stable environment for a child can be a powerful motivator for personal growth and healing, even for those who previously did not want to have children. 
  • The speaker's perspective on motherhood has evolved from a desire to end a bloodline to embracing the opportunity to rewrite her narrative and provide the love she didn't receive. 
  • The speaker advocates for normalizing women changing their minds about having children and asserts their autonomy over their bodies and reproductive choices. 
  • The speaker emphasizes the importance of consistency, kindness, love, communication, and trust in a relationship, highlighting her growth as an emotional communicator through therapy. 

Segments

Childhood Fashion Fails
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(00:06:13)
  • Key Takeaway: Past fashion choices, like scene kid aesthetics and colored skinny jeans, represent a rite of passage and a reflection of personal identity exploration during formative years.
  • Summary: Madeline discusses her worst fashion phase, including having gauges in her ears and embracing a scene kid/emo style, while Alex shares her experience with colored skinny jeans and thinning her own hair.
First Kiss and Brother’s Enemies
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(00:07:33)
  • Key Takeaway: Rebelling against sibling restrictions can sometimes lead to unexpected romantic connections, highlighting the complex dynamics of adolescent relationships and personal autonomy.
  • Summary: Madeline recounts her first kiss, which happened with her brother’s enemy, leading to their first boyfriend, and contrasts this with Alex’s experience of her brother being supportive of her relationships.
Random Jobs Before Acting
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(00:09:25)
  • Key Takeaway: Resourcefulness and unconventional tactics, such as feigning distress to make sales, can be employed when facing financial necessity, though they may not always be sustainable.
  • Summary: Madeline describes her experience as a window salesperson, where she resorted to crying at doors to convince husbands to buy windows, leading to a high return rate.
Riverdale’s Wildest Plotlines
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(00:10:54)
  • Key Takeaway: The creative direction of a show can sometimes lead to plotlines that are challenging to act out, pushing the boundaries of believability and character development.
  • Summary: Madeline discusses acting with her brother’s dead corpse and her character becoming a witch with lasers shooting from her hands, highlighting the surreal and often bizarre nature of Riverdale’s storylines.
Childhood Family Dynamics
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(00:16:37)
  • Key Takeaway: Growing up with parents who don’t understand local culture and a father with behavioral issues can lead a child to feel different and take on a parental role to manage household instability.
  • Summary: Madeline describes her South African parents, her mother’s role as a protector, and her father’s extreme mood swings, which made her feel like she had to fix problems and manage his emotions.
Father’s Mental Health Struggles
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(00:19:12)
  • Key Takeaway: A child’s early realization of a parent’s mental health struggles, particularly when accompanied by rejection, can deeply impact their sense of self-worth and lead to a long journey of understanding and validation.
  • Summary: Madeline recounts a core memory at age eight where her father told her he didn’t love her, leading her mother to explain his behavior was not her fault and was related to his struggles.
Therapy’s Transformative Journey
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(00:29:58)
  • Key Takeaway: Committing to long-term therapy, even for nine years, is essential for unpacking deep-rooted childhood trauma and evolving beyond learned unhealthy relationship patterns.
  • Summary: Madeline discusses her nine-year commitment to therapy, initially prompted by a relationship mirroring her father’s issues, and how it helped her process childhood trauma and develop self-love.
Healing from Childhood Trauma
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(00:35:37)
  • Key Takeaway: The desire to ‘be somebody else’ and the struggle to self-love stem from childhood experiences of not feeling loved by a parent, requiring conscious effort to embrace one’s own identity.
  • Summary: Madeline reflects on how her childhood experiences impacted her self-worth, leading to a desire to be someone else and the ongoing work of loving herself, even as a successful adult.
Breaking Generational Cycles
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(00:38:03)
  • Key Takeaway: Witnessing parental relationships where love is defined by staying through dysfunction can create an unhealthy model for future relationships, necessitating conscious effort to seek genuine love and healthy partnership.
  • Summary: Madeline discusses how her parents’ decision to stay together despite dysfunction influenced her past belief that love meant staying no matter what, and how she now advises friends to prioritize healthy relationships for their children’s sake.
Shifting Views on Motherhood
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(00:46:34)
  • Key Takeaway: Overcoming past reluctance towards motherhood, driven by a fear of replicating childhood dysfunction, can be achieved by realizing the power of choosing a supportive partner and consciously creating a loving environment.
  • Summary: Madeline shares her shift from not wanting children due to fear of repeating her parents’ dysfunction to now wanting to be a mother, inspired by the idea of choosing a partner and providing the love she lacked.
Motherhood Evolution and Autonomy
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(00:47:23)
  • Key Takeaway: The speaker’s journey from feeling incapable of being loved to embracing motherhood as a way to rewrite her narrative and provide unconditional love.
  • Summary: The speaker discusses a recent realization, prompted by her therapist, that she can choose to have a child with a best friend, shifting her perspective from not wanting to continue a bloodline to actively wanting to change her narrative and offer love.
Relationship Expectations and Qualities
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(00:52:15)
  • Key Takeaway: Consistency, kindness, love, communication, and trust are paramount in relationships, especially given the speaker’s profession as an actor.
  • Summary: The speaker outlines what she desires in a relationship, emphasizing consistency and kindness, and discusses the challenges of trust in her acting career, while also highlighting her strong communication skills developed through therapy.
Riverdale Cast Dynamics and Rumors
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(01:00:22)
  • Key Takeaway: Despite rumors, the Riverdale cast maintained professional boundaries, with the speaker emphasizing she did not engage in romantic or sexual relationships with co-stars.
  • Summary: The speaker addresses rumors about the Riverdale cast hooking up, clarifying that she never dated or slept with anyone on set, and shares advice from Cole Sprouse about not mixing business and pleasure.
New Movie Projects
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(01:05:17)
  • Key Takeaway: The speaker demonstrates her acting range by taking on diverse roles in horror and romantic comedy genres, showcasing her ability to learn new skills for her craft.
  • Summary: The speaker discusses her roles in ‘The Strangers Chapter Two,’ a brutal fight for survival, and ‘Maintenance Required,’ a romantic comedy where she plays a mechanic, highlighting her producer role and the joy she finds in learning new skills for her roles.