Y&R Alum Mckenna Grace Opens Up About Living & Acting With Scoliosis

Mckenna Grace played the role of Faith Newman in The Young and the Restless from 2013 to 2015. More recently, the actress dramatically starred in The Handmaid’s Tale and has now revealed her battle with scoliosis and how it affected her career. Read on to find out more about her struggle and how a surgeon helped her.

Young and the Restless alum Mckenna Grace and scoliosis

Fans of The Young and Restless and The Handmaid’s Tale didn’t know of Mckenna Grace’s battle with scoliosis until now. The actress, who played Faith Newman in the soapie had been living with scoliosis from the age of 12. However, in October, Mckenna underwent spinal surgery and opened up about her struggle with the condition.

Grace, 16, spoke to The Hollywood Reporter about her spinal condition and how she had struggled with it for four years. However, she only learned about scoliosis from her father, who is a surgeon. Mckenna explained:

I’m a very affectionate person, so I hug my parents a lot, and whenever I would hug him, he would feel my back and my spine, and he would tell me my back felt weird.

Meanwhile, the first hint about her condition came with a video on Grace’s Twitter page on November 9. In the post, Mckenna wrote:

Occasionally, life imitates art and the night of my episode of Handmaid’s Tale where I was in a hospital bed came out, I was actually in real hospital bed.

Mckenna promised to elaborate on her hospital visit later, but warmly thanked her surgeon, Dr. David Skaggs and the rest of the medical team that helped her.

Mckenna and scoliosis awareness

In a further tweet, Grace shared:

This account is now a scoliosis awareness and a @dr_skaggs fan account! This is a video of me standing up & walking for the first time. My amazing nurses made a goal to eventually make it to the bridge outside of the ICU-where we saw A Friend of the Family billboard @CedarsSinai

To explain the banner, besides Y&R and The Handmaid’s Tale, Mckenna also stars in Friend of the Family as Jan Broberg.

Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter, she explained that she wants to speak out about the condition after struggling with it on set. She told the outlet:

On Ghostbusters, there wasn’t a lot of hiding a big old clunky, massive back brace. But for the most part, I just kept it to myself. Even though it’s not the type of thing that is a liability, I didn’t want productions to overthink and think that I was a liability.

Mckenna also said that, due to her health, problem, her costumes had to be tailored during various projects. Meanwhile, she also needed some time off in the middle of filming The Handmaid’s Tale. Grace said:

It was very difficult to schedule a surgery in the midst of everything I was doing. I had been shooting since around May, and then I went straight from that project onto another one that worked six-day weeks – like, adult hours – and that was for a month.

Speaking of her scoliosis and the surgery, she says she has returned to her usual activities and is focusing on her physical health. Meanwhile, the surgery to her spine took her from having a 47-degree curve to a 6-degree curve on her back.

Meanwhile, the American Association of Neurological Surgeons considers a curve significant if it is greater than 25 to 30 degrees, so Mckenna’s scoliosis was considered severe. However, it is good to hear that the talented young actress will be able to work without any problems in the future. Readers can watch Grace in The Young & the Restless below.