Amy Schumer credits trolls for Cushing’s diagnosis

Amy Schumer says she wouldn’t have known she had Cushing’s syndrome if it weren’t for internet trolls.

“A year ago, the Internet really came to me,” Schumer, 43, told Alex Cooper on the Jan. 22 episode. Call her dad podcast, sharing that commenters criticized her suddenly swollen face.

Schumer says she ignored the comments at first — “I was like, ‘Okay, everybody, relax'” — until doctors started commenting with possible diagnoses for Schumer, all based on her appearance. “The doctors chimed in on the comments and they said, ‘No, no… there’s really something wrong. Your face looks so crazy.’ ”

The Train wreck star said doctors thought she might have Cushing’s syndrome, which like it Mayo Clinic explains, occurs when the stress hormone, cortisol, remains in the body for too long. It is caused by taking steroids for a long period of time and can cause weight gain, acne – and characteristic facial swelling called a “moon face.”

“At first I was like, ‘Fk off,'” Schumer said, until she realized, “Wait, I’ve had steroid injections for my scars” from her breast reduction and C-section. (Schumer and husband Chris Fischer welcomed son Gene, 5, in 2019.)

“So I got these steroid injections, and then it gave me this thing called Cushing’s syndrome — which I wouldn’t have known if the internet hadn’t come so hard on me,” explained Schumer, who first shared her Cushing’s diagnosis in February 2024.

The comic told Cooper just before she started shooting the comedy A little pregnant which premieres on Netflix Feb. 5, “I learned that I had this condition and that I had something called moon face, and I’m in a movie — and there’s a camera right in my face.”

“Everybody says, ‘You look good,'” she said, until a friend gave her the blunt truth, telling Schumer, “Your face looks a little bit insane.”

Schumer explained that she “relaxed” with Cushing, telling Cooper, “it’s just going to work itself out,” but before she started filming, she was worried about her appearance on screen, saying, “I felt really down on myself before I started filming this movie … I was really struggling to figure out how to act in a movie while I had this going on.”

She said it took a friend, the director Lorraine Caffery, who told her: “You know, I think you look amazing.”

“I just needed someone to step me up.”

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