Dedee Pfeiffer is back on the small screen.
Since 2020, the “Cybill” alum has been starring in David E. Kelley’s hit ABC crime drama “Big Sky,” which she describes as a “rebirth” after taking a 10-year hiatus to battle addiction issues and raise two children as a single mother.
“When you’re active in your disease, you’re the identified problem. The minute you go into recovery … the day you say I want to change, you become the identified possibility,” Pfeiffer, 58, tells Page Six in an exclusive new interview.
While away from Hollywood, the actress also went back to school, earning a master’s degree in social work from UCLA.
She says leaving acting behind for a decade provided her with a reality check, as she got to work with the homeless and the Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health.
“To really submerge myself in the real world, in the bowels of the real world, for 10 years and then come back, was really shocking,” she tells us.
Pfeiffer’s family was instrumental in turning her life around.
She shares that her loved ones approached her and “wanted to offer help,” to which she “shockingly” admitted that she had already been searching for guidance but did not know how to initiate it.
“At that time, my answer was [that] I was already looking for 800- [and] anonymous [helpline] numbers that I was going to call. I just didn’t know how to ask for help,” she recalls. “I was kneecapped with shame, I was kneecapped with embarrassment, I was kneecapped with the feeling of feeling like a failure because I couldn’t stop and I didn’t know how to stop. I kept trying but I couldn’t do it, which just makes you feel like s–t about yourself.”
Now on the flip side of her disease, Pfeiffer urges others to understand that “help is there for you” — but only when prepared for it.
“The support you’re going to get is so beautiful,” she enthuses. “It saved my life.”
As for the advice she would give her younger self, the “For Your Love” alum says she always felt like she was “out of the box” and “couldn’t fit in.”
“I kept trying to fight for that seat at the table until I realized somebody said, ‘If there’s no seat at the table, make your own damn table,’” she says. “But when I was young, I was so busy trying to be what everybody wanted me to be. I never felt comfortable in my own skin. And now I feel like I’m in a generation — at 58 years old — [where] I finally can say, ‘This is who I am, and if you like it, great — if not, that’s OK, go sit at a different table,’ and I’m totally fine with that.”
Pfeiffer denied that her famous sister Michelle had anything to do with her addiction issues.
Instagram/Dedee Pfeiffer
Pfeiffer denied that her famous sister Michelle had anything to do with her addiction issues.
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