TLC’s Little People, Big World star Amy Roloff can count one big accomplishment this week. After speaking out about hurtful comments Rosie O’Donnell made about her fear of little people on her OWN talk show, the host issued an apology on Thursday.
VIDEO: ‘Hoarding: Buried Alive’: A Delusional Mom, A Down on Her Luck Daughter Clash
“When I first heard [the comments], I was little sad and disappointed, because it brought back other memories of people reacting that way,” Amy tells The Hollywood Reporter. “And some of them where scary, some of them affected the types of things I wanted to go into like getting turned down for a job in an industry or an internship.”
On Sunday, the Roloff family returns for a new one-hour special that relates pretty directly to the controversy with Rosie. It finds Amy going after a dream she has had for 20 years now, which has been limited by the prejudice she faced after graduating from college with a degree in personal management and hospitality. But now, she’s getting back into the field with her very own cookbook.
VIDEO: Can TLC’s ‘Sorority Girls’ Spread the Greek Life to Great Britain?
“I still feel as a little person how image-wise sometimes the hospitality industry can be,” she says. “The one way I feel like I can be like everyone or a part of everyone’s world is providing a meal. Providing a great time with dinner or food, to bring people together, you kind of forget that you’re a little person.”
It sounds as if Amy isn’t the only Roloff embarking on a new path on Sunday’s special, Little People, Big World: Battle for the Farm. While Amy works on her new project, Matt plans on moving forward with his own dream of tripling the size of Roloff Farms. But, that may backfire on him when he goes toe-to-toe with the state government.
“With the next special you are going to see some big changes kind of like, ‘What do we do now?’ and ‘What are we doing now?’ as the kids do go off,” Amy says.
STORY: One EP Describes the Complicated Casting of TLC’s ‘Undercover Princes’
Watch THR’s first look above at the special in which Amy tries to get her cookbook project on its feet and discusses the challenges she has faced in her career.
Little People, Big World: Battle for the Farm airs Sunday at 8 p.m. on TLC.
Email: Jethro.Nededog@thr.com; Twitter: @TheRealJethro
