Demi Lovato Is ‘Remorseful’ About How She Treated People on Set as an ‘Egotistical Child Star’

Demi Lovato is looking back at the trauma associated with her time on screen as a child. Ahead of the release of her documentary Child Star, Lovato appeared on the cover of The Hollywood Reporter to talk about her experience in the public eye and said she felt a heavy sense of guilt over how she may have treated people on set.

“I think about people in the wardrobe department on my TV show because I’d go in there in bad moods all the time,” she said. “And I worry about guest stars that came on or the other actors or the people during Camp Rock 2.”

“And it’s easy to excuse that behavior because I was so young and in so much pain, but I’m really remorseful, and that’s a guilt that stays with you forever,” she added.

Aside from the sense of guilt, Lovato also shared that she didn’t remember much of her days as a child star after the first Camp Rock, since she suppressed many of those memories due to trauma. “I think I’d passed the threshold of what I could withstand emotionally and physically,” she said. “And I didn’t realize that child stardom could be traumatic — and it isn’t traumatic for everyone, but for me, it was.”

Lovato also recalled the tensions that came from being the primary earner in her family as a teenager. “Having the child be the breadwinner almost inherently changes the dynamic of a family, and then it becomes, like, how do you discipline that breadwinner?” the singer said of their parents. “I mean, they’d try to ground me, but I was an egotistical child star, and I thought I was on top of the world. I’d be like, ‘But I pay the bills,’ and what do you say to that?”

In the THR cover story, the singer said that if she ever has children, she’d prevent them from pursuing music before they turn 18.

“I’d say, ‘Let’s study music theory and prepare you for the day you turn 18, because it’s not happening before that,'” she told the outlet. “Not because I don’t believe in you or love you or want you to be happy, but because I want you to have a childhood, the childhood that I didn’t have. ”

“ ‘And also, let’s come up with a backup plan,’ which is something I wish I’d done because sometimes I think it’s time for me to move on,” she added. “But I’m in this weird position in my career because I still rely on music for my income.” 

Child Star, which Lovato co-directed, is set to be released on Hulu on Sept. 17. The 90-minute documentary will feature interviews with Drew Barrymore, Christina Ricci, and Jojo Siwa with the aim of “deconstruct[ing] the highs and lows of growing up in the spotlight through the lens of some of the world’s most famous former child stars.”