Bill Maher Picks on Bella Thorne Over Her Anxiety Struggle

On the latest episode of the comedian's Club Random podcast, Thorne opened up about her struggle with crippling anxiety and how she "fell into weed" to help cope with her difficult childhood. And while it should've been a safe space to have an honest and enlightening conversation about mental health, Maher took it upon himself to completely dismiss almost everything the actress had to say.

“What is it with you kids and anxiety?,” he said. “What is causing all the anxiety?”

In response, Thorne attempted to clarify that her anxiety was also triggered by the state of the world right now and all the “constant bad, bad, bad everywhere you look," which Maher immediately undercut by calling it a “disingenuous argument."

“So how can you be that fucking concerned about what’s going on in the world?” he said, before accusing the younger generation of not being aware of what was going on.

“I know what’s going on in the world! I should have the anxiety!," Maher continued. "I follow it, you kids don’t follow it. You don’t know what the fuck is going on in the world! What are you upset about?” And of course, he then proceeded to throw in a line about how “everybody is so easily offended" nowadays, adding that "you kids wake up offended.”

Later on, Thorne also touched on how social media affects anxiety and talked about how she believes young children shouldn't be forced to deal with that. However, Maher continued to brush off her past trauma's impact on her anxiety by saying that "everybody wants to be you" now.

“I think a lot of the people who are the most anxious have the most privileged lives,” he said. “Look at your life! Everybody wants it.”

Maher then circled back to his claim about young supposedly being uninformed about what's going on the world, because they're too busy focusing on their mental health, causing Thorne to call it "a very narrow kind of mindset in the way of trauma."

“Everyone really has their trauma. What’s happening in Ukraine is unspeakable — that is something else," Thorne said. "But as far as trauma for every human being, I lost my dad when I was eight. I was molested growing up."

And though Maher later tried to reel it back in by saying he wasn't "judging at all" and that molestation was a "serious problem," he kept pushing back against Thorne's statements about her anxiety, which she responded to by saying, "Everyone, even on any platform at any time in anyone’s life, we do that as a society."

"We look at someone and say, ‘Oh, they have it all. They must be so fucking happy. You’ve got nothing to complain about in your life,’” she said. “Yeah, well, you know, they’re still with their therapist every day. They might have PTSD and traumas and other things that haunt their dreams.” And Maher's less than helpful response? "You don’t have to be sad.”

Watch the interview below.

Photos via Getty / Jeff Kravitz / FilmMagic & Axelle / Bauer-Griffin / FilmMagic