HEALTH BATTLE

Why ‘Father of the Bride’ Star Couldn’t Speak for 2 Years

Kimberly Williams-Paisley revealed the partial paralysis of her left vocal chord left her unexpectedly unable to speak.

Father of the Bride star Kimberly Williams-Paisley revealed the shocking reason she couldn’t speak above a whisper for two years. In an interview with People, Williams-Paisley said partial paralysis of her left vocal cord left her unexpectedly unable to speak in 2022. “I felt trapped in my own body,” she said. The actress said she had to turn down jobs and skipped out on social events because of her condition. Doctors first determined that Williams-Paisley’s neck muscles were tensing, causing her vocal cords to hit each other. To “get my body to unlock,” she said, she tried a myriad of unconventional remedies— including hypnosis, a vegan diet and a psychic. Then, in August, she had surgery to move her paralyzed vocal cord closer to the other, and was immediately able to speak again. “I still can’t yell down the road. And at the end of a long day of talking, I’ll sound a little more raspy than I used to, but I think that’s sexy,” she said. “And I’ve learned that when you talk quieter, people lean in, which is not bad either.”