A former child star who appeared on Outnumbered has slammed claims she previously sold her old underwear online.
From 2007 until 2016, Ramona Marquez played Karen Brockman on the BBC sitcom, being cast on the programme when she was just five years old.
She played the youngest daughter of couple Pete and Sue Brockman (played by Hugh Dennis and Claire Skinner) while her older brothers Ben and Jake were played by Daniel Roche and Tyger Drew- Honey.
Ramona exploded onto screens when asking,’ Daddy, what’s a t**t?’, one of her first lines, in the pilot episode.
Over the subsequent years viewers saw her grow up in front of their eyes on screens, however the 23-year-old has now spoken about the pressures of being in the public eye from such a young age.
‘I’ve never known any different. I was so young. I do have some memories from before I was five, but not many. I hear about other instances in TV where young kids were exploited, and I feel lucky that we were always respected,’ she said.
However away from set, Ramona faced intense scrutiny from the tabloids, with one article in 2021 declaring she was ‘selling off her old BRAS for £4 after quitting acting for uni’.
In reality she’d simply set up a Depop account to make some extra cash selling hundreds of items of clothing and one sports bra while studying Spanish and Mandarin at university in Manchester.
Reflecting on that particular headline, Ramona explained: ‘I sold a sports bra. It wasn’t even mine. I’d never even seen it before. It just must have been my sister’s or something, who knows, and then it was in the news.’
‘And it was such a misrepresentation. It was just a crazy, crazy thing to write.
‘There’d be nothing wrong with that if I wanted to, but I’m actually not, so let’s just keep the facts straight,’ she added when speaking to The Independent.
However, Ramona said she found the attention she’s received over the years ‘pretty funny’, adding she might just be ‘desensitised’ to it by now.
While starring on Outnumbered, the actress also appeared in the 2009 movie Enid, about the life of Enid Blyton, and in the 2010 film The King’s Speech as a young Princess Margaret.
However, she’s not been seen on screens in eight years, since the last Outnumbered Christmas special in 2016.
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But Ramona is now keen to return to acting after graduating and working on the latest Christmas episode, saying it was her ‘complete passion and ambition’.
Outnumbered ran for five seasons from 2007 until 2014 and was praised for its realistic portrayal of family life.
After eight years off screen, the new episode will be set at Christmas and follow the Brockman family as they deal with the challenges of parenting adult children, all of whom have their own lives and problems to deal with now too.
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Outnumbered airs on Boxing Day at 9:40pm on BBC One.
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