Demi Lovato reflected on the hurdles of being a child star during an appearance on Keke Palmer‘s podcast Baby, This Is Keke Palmer.
During the interview, Lovato discussed spending her youth in the spotlight, being compared with fellow Disney Channel stars Miley Cyrus and Selena Gomez, and feeling pressure to date older men. Palmer asked Lovato about being on a network that was “always pitting” its young stars against each other in an attempt to crown “the number one girl.” Palmer added, “That makes it hard to become friends with people that might relate to your experience.”
“What was beautiful is that Selena and I had a friendship prior to Disney Channel because we actually were on Barney together, and so I felt this safety when I came into the Disney Channel having a built-in friendship there already,” Lovato replied. “I’m so grateful for that.”
She continued, “But it was challenging when, you know, people are comparing you to one another. You naturally have insecurities at a young age, so you start comparing yourself to other people. But one thing my mom instilled in me was, ‘There’s room for everyone. It’s not a competition.’ And even though it can be competitive and if you have that mindset it definitely is competitive, my mom was just always like, ‘There’s room for everyone. You have your own voice, your own lane.’ And that’s what I really stuck by. That’s what kind of got me through that period. So I was always rooting for everybody.”
Lovato explained that she now has mixed feelings about her time on the Disney Channel, which she joined in 2007 as part of As the Bell Rings. “There’s so many emotions that come to mind when I think about that period of time in my life,” she said. “Those were the years that started it all for me, and I have very fond memories. Some not so fond memories of the struggling that I had when filming those shows.”
She added, “You know, having struggled with an eating disorder while on camera was really challenging. I struggled with my mental health very much so, but ultimately, like, very fond memories. I made friends that I will have for the rest of my life.”
Elsewhere in the interview, Lovato and Palmer, who starred on Nickelodeon sitcom True Jackson, VP as a teen, reflected on engaging in relationships with much-older men. Palmer noted that it was likely because she was saddled with a lot of responsibility as “the breadwinner of my family just by proxy.”
“I found myself dating,” Palmer recalled. “I’m 15, why was my boyfriend 20? We were trying to find outlets, though, and a way to process this.”
“Why was my boyfriend 30?” Lovato responded. “Nobody our age could understand. But then you look back in hindsight — when I turned 30, I was like, ‘That’s not OK.’”
Palmer noted that it seemed “normal” to her at the time. “The moment when you realize, and you get to the age of a lot of people that were around you and doing stuff, it’s almost a mental break that can happen,” she said. “Because you realize, ‘You were taking advantage of me.’ ‘Oh, I was being exploited.’ At 15, I’m thinking, ‘My boyfriend’s older, because I’m doing an older job.'”
Gomez and Cyrus have similarly discussed their experiences on the Disney Channel with mixed feelings. In 2019, Gomez told ELLE she felt paralyzed by her public image after being part of the network for so long.
“Once I broke those walls down, because I think being a part of Disney—which, by the way, was one of the best experiences of my life—you do portray an image, and you are required in a way to have that image and to be a role model or whatever you call it, but the moment I started breaking those walls down, I felt very exposed, so I was very hesitant to share with people,” she said. “So I would sit down, I’d give the politically correct answers, I would talk about things that I was working on, things that maybe people wanted to hear.”
She added, “And the moment I started realizing that feeling of letting go of maybe judgement or being that exposed to people, I think I realized it was a gift. I was scared of it. I didn’t want people to know, but the life that I was given, I believe that I had to share it.”
