Busy Philipps recounted the ‘terrifying’ moment she watched her daughter Birdie suffer a seizure over FaceTime while away at boarding school in Sweden.
The actress made the shocking reveal on her podcast and said it happened over the weekend while her and Birdie’s father Marc Silverstein were nearly 4,000 miles away in New York City.
‘I was just kind of like muttering to myself and then I heard Marc screaming for me and I was like, ‘What does this f****** guy want now?” recalled an emotional Philipps.
She continued: ‘And I went upstairs but then I heard his voice and I knew something was really wrong. And he just said, it’s Birdie, it’s Birdie. She’s had another seizure. The paramedics are on the phone.’
This marks the second seizure for Birdie — who no longer uses they/them pronouns — as she also had an outburst in March while Philipps was shooting the Mean Girls movie musical in New Jersey.
Busy Philipps recounted the ‘terrifying’ moment she watched her daughter Birdie suffer a seizure over FaceTime while away at boarding school in Sweden
‘The paramedics were on FaceTime and she had just come out of the seizure and she was still in the post-aura state,’ the White Chicks star explained.
‘They were like, hooking her up with stuff and on FaceTime.’
Philipps felt helpless as Birdie cried out for her.
‘It was terrifying to see how she was and she was just reaching,’ she added.
Luckily, the teenager was in the company of a friend who she had traveled with her to Stockholm to watch the Hunger Games prequel, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, at a movie theater.
‘Her friend who was with her, she was holding the phone so she was kind of, it was like this weird medium shot. So you could see everything that was happening. So it felt, it was just so weird,’ said Philipps.
‘[Birdie] was reaching toward the camera and just saying like, calling out for me. Just saying, “Mama. Mama. Mama. Where are you? Mama.”
Philipps said that it was the girls’ decision to head to Stockholm that day that put them in close proximity to a hospital.
‘So they’d gone to the movies in Stockholm. It’s actually amazing that they were there because their school is far…and there’s not a hospital where their school is. So they’d gone into Stockholm so they were literally two minutes from the children’s hospital,’ she told her listeners.
This allowed for the paramedics to get to Birdie in record time.
The actress made the shocking reveal on her podcast and said it happened over the weekend while her and Birdie’s father Marc Silverstein (pictured in 2018) were nearly 4,000 miles away in New York City.
‘I was just kind of like muttering to myself and then I heard Marc screaming for me and I was like, ‘What does this f****** guy want now?” recalled an emotional Philipps; seen in November
‘The paramedics were there almost immediately, I guess. And Birdie’s friend Sarah, shout out Sarah, literally, I don’t even understand,’ she continued.
Philipps commended Sarah for her quick thinking as well as the lengths she went to to get Birdie help.
‘She’s 17 but this girl managed to get one person to go tell the theater, to shut it the f*** down, she got two guys that they obviously didn’t know that were sitting behind, because Birdie started choking and throwing up, to move Birdie gently to the ground and put her on her side.’
Sarah ‘got someone else to call the Swedish 911′ while she reached out to the school to get Birdie’s parents’ contact information.
Meanwhile, Philipps said she was frantically searching for a way to get to her daughter — even considering taking a private jet.
‘I was literally googling private planes. I was like, “How much does it cost? $100,000? Can I put that on a credit card? How does that work?”
‘I was like, How do I not know anyone with a f****** private plane. I got to hang out with fancier people.
‘Would Taylor Swift fly me to Sweden right now? Who knows Taylor Swift?’
This marks the second seizure for Birdie — who no longer uses they/them pronouns — as she also had an outburst in March while Philipps was shooting the Mean Girls movie musical in New Jersey; seen in 2022
Philipps said she was frantically searching for a way to get to her daughter — even considering taking a private jet
Swift famously owns a $40million Dassault Falco that she often loans to her close friends and family.
Philipps recalled panic she felt when Birdie suffered her first seizure in March and how distance also played a role.
‘[When it happened] I couldn’t, obviously I couldn’t leave [the Mean Girls] set,’ she said.
Birdie had not gone off to college yet and was still living with her parents in New York so it was easy for her dad Marc to rush to her side.
She continued: ‘And Marc had run to the school and had gotten there at the same time as the paramedics so he had seen her in this, similar sort of thing before.
‘But [this time] it was really awful seeing it on a screen, being in a different country across an ocean.’
Earlier in the episode, she admitted she feels ‘stuck’ and spoke to her therapist Tuesday about the toll this year has taken on her mental health.
‘I feel stuck. My therapist yesterday said, she was like “You sound like you’re disassociating.” And I understand because I feel like this year has, I don’t understand what’s happening. I feel stuck in a f****** movie, in a way that’s not even disassociating, just like I keep getting put in different movies.
‘And I just want to be in mine, like my life again. Like my movie, where it’s okay.’
!['[Birdie] was reaching toward the camera and just saying like, calling out for me,' she recalled. 'Just saying,](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2023/12/14/00/78938849-12861829-image-a-18_1702513276502.jpg)
‘[Birdie] was reaching toward the camera and just saying like, calling out for me,’ she recalled. ‘Just saying, “Mama. Mama. Mama. Where are you? Mama”‘
Philipps and Silverstein separated last year but have seemingly continued to live under the same roof; seen in 2019
She and Silverstein also share 11-year-old daughter Cricket
It’s unclear if Birdie has been formally diagnosed with epilepsy.
According to the Mayo Clinic, doctors typically diagnosis patients with the disorder if they’ve had ‘at least two unprovoked seizures at least 24 hours apart.’
Philipps and Silverstein sent their eldest child off to college in August and the actress admitted that it was still something she was ‘trying to process.’
She and Silverstein — who separated last year but have seemingly continued to live under the same roof — also share 11-year-old daughter Cricket.
The Freaks and Geeks star and the screenwriter have yet to formally divorce.