Doherty was a “great actress, loves her family so much,” she added, “and I just wish I could’ve felt strong enough in who I was to recognize that back then.”
And that’s the thing: Doherty, despite her admitted immature missteps, was strong—and not afraid to flex her muscle—before it was fashionable to be so.
“If you consider ‘difficult’ being a strong woman who sticks up for herself, yeah, I admit to it,” Doherty told Rolling Stone in 1992. “I’m open to different ideas, but if you get on my bad side and don’t listen to me and you don’t treat me with as much respect as you treat a man, you’ve got a problem.”
She had tested the waters early, pushing back against a proposed plot about Brenda wanting to drop a few pounds from her already petite frame because Doherty didn’t want to negatively influence her young fans amid an epidemic of eating disorders.
The idea was scrapped, and not an advance in thinking too soon for a time in which the star’s hair color wasn’t immune to stereotypes.
