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Mayim Bialik says it 'upsets' her to be called an anti-vaxxer

Mayim Bialik has found herself the subject of many headlines in 2021, and that's not always a good thing.

"After the New York Times did a piece on me which I found really kind of like, neutral," the actress and frequent Jeopardy! guest-host told former NBA star Jalen Rose for his Renaissance Man podcast. "I can't tell you the number of people who were like, 'she's an anti-vaxxer.'"

She told Rose that the reaction was frustrating.

"And it's like, 'Did you not read the article?' That upsets me just as a human," she said. "It doesn't upset me as a celebrity so much because, like, I'm grateful to my publicist for reminding me not to read comments. I had a little slip … But the fact is, like, when people say things about you that aren't true, that hurts. And that hurts, whether it's between you and your girlfriend or, you and your lover or, you know, on the New York Times comments section … I really just wanted to be like, 'I'm not an anti-vaxxer.' Like, my kids were vaccinated late. That's true. And we were vaccinated."

Bialik and her ex-husband, Michael Stone, share two teenage sons, Miles and Fred.

Published Oct. 11, the profile was headlined, "Mayim Bialik Wants the 'Jeopardy!' Job. Is She Neutral Enough?" And it looked at what Bialik's said over the years about a specific supplement that claims to boost brain health, for which she is a spokeswoman, attachment parenting and, yes, vaccines.

"I credit me and my publicist, Heather, that like there really wasn't a lot more," she told the newspaper about her controversies over the years. "I've been talking for a long time."

Indeed, Bialik's been in the spotlight since she was a pre-teen, appearing on TV shows, such as The Facts of Life and Webster, and the movie Beaches. She's even written books, including 2012's Beyond the Sling on attachment parenting, in which she wrote that she was not vaccinating her two young sons, and the story pointed that out. It also included the fact that Bialik said in a video last year that her sons would be vaccinated against COVID-19, although she added that "we give way too many vaccines."