Iwalk past Lauren Goodger’s house twice trying to get my bearings before I spot it: a gleaming Range Rover, with a personalised licence plate. It’s the only trace of reality TV stardom on the Romford cul-de-sac where Goodger, 37, lives with her three-year-old daughter, Larose. When the door swings open to reveal a woman in tiny black shorts and a matching tank top I ask, reflexively: “Are you Lauren?” and instantly feel foolish. It’s a ridiculous question. Goodger is one of the most-photographed celebrities in the UK today, a staple of tabloid newspapers and gossip magazines since The Only Way Is Essex (Towie) first appeared on our screens in 2010, and in so doing, created the enormously influential genre of structured reality TV. Inside, Goodger, who returned to the show this year for the first time since 2016, apologises for the non-existent mess and tells me how nervous she is to be meeting me – she never usually does interviews without a sign-off on what will be written. “The media,” she says, “have 100% got it in for me.” She warns me that she will be guarded in our interview, and then proceeds to talk with the candour and humour that are, of course, why the Towie producers cast Goodger on the show all those years ago. If she is apprehensive about being interviewed, I don’t blame her. Goodger, perhaps more than any other British celebrity today, is a target of vicious bullying. One recent Sun headline read: “Lauren Goodger looks like a car crash.” There are 93 threads about Goodger on the gossip website Tattle Life, many of them appallingly misogynistic: users deride her as a “has been Towie sl_g [sic]”, mock her weight, and criticise her parenting choices. When a six-second clip of Goodger engaging in a sex act was leaked without her consent in 2014, even the usually female-friendly Grazia magazine speculated that Goodger could be “crying wolf, latching on to a hot topic to make money”. Goodger is one of many famous women of the 2000s and 10s who faced public derision. Paris Hilton, Britney Spears, Charlotte Church, Janet Jackson, Jade Goody: rightly, we look back at how these women were treated, and shudder. Only for Goodger, the abuse continues – that Sun article was published only six months ago. “Why me?” says Goodger, perching on a cream sofa and drinking a cup of tea. She is barefoot and deeply tanned, with matching French tips on her fingernails and toes. “Have I done something wrong in my past life?” In person, Goodger is warm and perceptive – she notices my flicker of irritation with a creaking sunshade in her garden and apologises instantly – with a wonderful, throaty laugh that is more of a cackle. She is simultaneously anxious, asking me what I make of her, and as hard as a press-on false nail. As one of the UK’s original reality stars, Goodger’s on-again, off-again relationship with nightclub promoter Mark Wright was the narrative spine of the show’s first two seasons: without them, the show would never have been such a huge success, nor won a Bafta. Her co-stars – Wright, but also Gemma Collins and Sam Faiers – have parlayed the show’s exposure into lucrative careers. Collins is a national treasure; Wright, now a radio DJ, lives in a £3.5m mansion with his partner, the actor Michelle Keegan, and models for M&S; and Faiers has a successful nationwide beauty brand and a spin-off reality show. In the golden era of reality TV, when Towie ruled our screens, Goodger was once paid £25,000 for a single magazine cover. Now, there is much more competition, with Instagram already crammed with influencers. “The money is just not what it was in this industry,” says Goodger. At the beginning, she says: “I probably earned the most, but lost a hell of a lot. And that has humbled me, 100%.” She is referring to her fake-tan brand, Lauren’s Way, started when she was 23, which was stocked in Superdrug and Debenhams; she has since fallen out with her business partner. Being back on Towie in 2024 is very different. Gone is the high drama of her old storylines. Now, “I’m more the big sister, the agony aunt, the sensible mother,” she says. Producers are “very careful with me”, she feels “protected”. But this wasn’t always the case. In 2010, “TV was raw,” Goodger says. “There were no boundaries and no welfare.” The early seasons of Towie are so good because the emotions were real, even if scenes were set up for dramatic effect. “We didn’t have any control,” says Goodger. “[We] didn’t know what was coming out, what was being said. That was probably when I discovered anxiety. I never had anxiety before.” Throughout the first two seasons, Goodger was – to use the exquisite phrasing popularised by the show – routinely mugged off (disrespected) by Wright, who appeared congenitally incapable of not leering at other women. He told Goodger he expected her to cook and clean for him. In the season two finale, Goodger had finally had enough, pushing Wright into a swimming pool after he banned her from attending his pool party. But when I bring this up, Goodger defends Wright. “It’s a TV show,” she says. “This is what people have got to understand.” She doesn’t “hate the guy. I’m actually really proud of him.” They developed storylines together; they would go home after filming for tea and biscuits. After Goodger appeared in one scene in her underwear for a spray tan, Wright said: “She looks 19 stone, the div.” Goodger was a size eight, but this was the age of size zero, when protruding hipbones and clavicles were mandated for young women, and she was routinely fat-shamed in the press. “When I was young,” says Goodger, “I looked bloody good.” She went on a diet and put out a fitness DVD. “It was hell … taking my food to restaurants, and all that,” she recalls. If at times she used the media obsession to make money, setting up paparazzi shoots on the beach “looking curvier than usual” as one accompanying article put it, for up to £10,000 at a time, who can blame her? “They want bad photos,” says Goodger, “because they’re worth more.” In person, Goodger is very pretty, but she doesn’t look exactly like her Instagram photographs, which appear heavily filtered. She pulls up paparazzi shots of herself on her phone. “I look like a different person in every single photograph,” she says. I suggest this is because, over the years, she has had a nose job, breast implants, fillers, Botox and a Brazilian butt lift. (“I wish I’d never done that,” she says of the butt lift, a freebie from a Turkish clinic.) But Goodger insists that paparazzi intentionally capture unflattering photographs, and suspects they even edit pictures to make her look bad. “I’m nothing like what they make me look in the media,” she says. It sounds conspiratorial. But then Goodger pulls up a recent set, taken while she was filming Towie. “Look here babe,” Goodger says. “They’ve edited it.” At first, I’m sceptical. But then I see it. The metal railing behind her is undeniably warped. “Everyone else, clear railing, then there’s me: look, wonky railing.” “Being quite blunt,” she says of her trolls, “I don’t actually care. Like, I don’t. I’ve been through so much more worse than these weirdos obsessed over me.” In July 2022, Goodger’s ex-boyfriend Jake McLean died in a car accident in Turkey. “Jake was the second person I loved,” she says. At the time, she was heavily pregnant with her second child, daughter Lorena, with her then-partner, builder Charles Drury. The pregnancy was unplanned – Larose was only 10 weeks old when she became pregnant with Lorena – and the relationship was turbulent. They repeatedly broke up and reconciled. Another woman gave an interview to the Sun saying she’d had a fling with Drury. Goodger had planned a home birth, so when her waters broke she spoke to her doula and NHS midwife, and both advised her to stay at home. “[They said] as long as baby is moving, heart rate is fine, waters are still clear, you’re probably better off staying at home, because you’re doing a home birth, we’re all set up,” she recalls. “If you go into hospital, there’s a risk of infection.” She stayed home. Her NHS midwife came to check on her that evening. Lorena’s heartbeat was normal. But by the following day, Goodger was still not in labour. Nice guidelines state that women should be offered an induction of labour if it has not started 24 hours after their waters break, and advised to give birth in hospital. Goodger says she was told: “You do need to come in if you’re over the time, but ultimately it’s your decision.” She stayed at home for another day. The midwife visited that evening, and listened to Lorena’s heartbeat, which was normal. The following day, 8 July, the third day after her waters broke, Goodger’s contractions started. The midwife came back. She couldn’t find a heartbeat. An ambulance was called. Outside the hospital, still in the ambulance, Lorena’s “head was literally hanging out … No one was expecting me. They were all looking at me. My partner was screaming: ‘Can you just put her in a room?’” It was a two-hour labour. Lorena was purple. “Ten doctors come in to try and save her, give her the adrenaline, and everything, and it was too late.” She was later told that if Lorena had been delivered roughly seven hours earlier, she’d have lived. “I wish I was checked more or I’d gone in on the second day and got checked on a monitor,” she says. “But I can’t change what’s happened. And you don’t think that’s going to happen.” Goodger doesn’t blame her midwife – they are on friendly terms. But she wouldn’t do a home birth again. Goodger tells the story stoically, without a shred of self-pity. “You said to me before: ‘Are you happy?’ I don’t know. I actually don’t know. Because how can I be [happy] when she’s there?” She gestures to a photograph of Lorena on the mantelpiece. “[She]’s beautiful. Nine pounds, beautiful little girl. Exactly like Larose. They could have been twins … But I’m never going to know her eye colour, because she was just asleep.” Goodger’s eyes brim with tears that do not spill. Lorena’s funeral was held on 4 August. “It was beautiful, but really hard,” she says, “because I was also going through a breakup, which I didn’t realise.” The following day, Drury was arrested and subsequently charged with inflicting actual bodily harm and using controlling and coercive behaviour. Goodger was spotted outside her home with a black eye. Drury denied the alleged assault, telling the Sun shortly after his arrest: “There’s a completely different side to stuff.” He went on to plead not guilty to all charges at a preliminary hearing in July 2023, and after Goodger withdrew her support for the prosecution, charges against Drury were dropped in February 2024, and a not guilty verdict was recorded by the court. Goodger doesn’t want to talk about what happened that night. “I’m trying to protect my daughter,” she says, “and I’ve never really spoken about it.” I suggest that it sounds as if she withdrew her support for Drury’s prosecution so that Larose could have a good relationship with her father. “Yeah,” says Goodger. “That’s it. That was it. I think – I’m not that sort of girl. I sort of forgive people and move on and let it go.” They are now amicable co-parents, and Drury looks after Larose three weekends a month. “Regardless of what my relationship is, she needs her dad,” Goodger says. After Lorena died, Goodger “survived because I had no choice”. She felt extremely alone. “Everybody was there at the beginning,” she says, “then everyone vanishes.” Two years on: “Some days are OK, and other days I’m like, what am I living for? It’s only for Larose … I’ll never get over it. Because it’s the worst thing you can ever go through.” Goodger is, by her own admission, at the moment “living basic”: although the house we meet in is high-spec and modern, it’s an ordinary semi. Given Goodger’s celebrity and near-1 million Instagram following, I’d expected something grander. But after Lorena’s death, Goodger wasn’t focused on making money. “I didn’t want to do anything else but being the mum.” She is on the adults-only subscription website OnlyFans, where she posts pictures of herself in lingerie for a $50 (£38) monthly membership. She is visibly uncomfortable talking about this work. “I don’t want to have to do OnlyFans,” she admits. She also has legal problems. In May 2024, the Financial Conduct Authority brought charges against Goodger, alongside six other influencers, for unauthorised communications of financial promotions. Goodger cannot comment on the case, for legal reasons. Just before Towie first aired, the producers sat Goodger down, saying: “‘You are famous, you’ve got to leave your jobs.’” The early years of reality TV fame were fun. “Going out and getting papped,” she says, “getting a column with the Sun.” It sounds like the dream, I say. “Yeah,” she cackles. “It was. At first.” When I ask Goodger if she enjoys being famous, she answers immediately. “No,” she says, shaking her head, “no.” Does she wish she’d never gone on the show? “I don’t want to sound ungrateful, because I’m grateful that I got the chance … but it hasn’t been easy, and that’s plain for everyone to see.” She wishes she could have “come back and done things a bit differently”. Before Towie, Goodger felt secure and self-confident. “My standards were high,” she says. With the brutalising media attention, the trolls and paparazzi pics, “I went down down down. I just accepted less than what I should have.” Her self-esteem tumbled from “the pressure and believing the shit and the horrible headlines and the stories that they write, and not valuing myself,” Goodger says. She dated someone in prison. “I haven’t helped myself over the years, with certain partners or getting myself in certain situations,” she says, “but it doesn’t make me a bad person.” Now, Goodger says she has “come back to the old Lauren a little bit”. She doesn’t drink alcohol, or go clubbing. She has boundaries. If someone isn’t good for her or her daughter, she cuts them out of her life. “I would never date someone in jail now,” she says. There is an indomitable quality to Goodger that reminds me of the grand old dames of yesteryear. Goodger has survived almost everything a human can endure – the loss of her daughter, national ridicule, “revenge porn”, financial troubles – and yet here she is, poised, shrewd and savvy, determined to make reality TV finally work out for her. “What an experience,” she says, with triumph. “You can’t tell me nothing. I’ve been there and done it. I’m so strong in certain areas. I’m finding me. I’ve found who I am. Do you know what I mean?”