Demi Lovato Tackles Disney trauma in Hulu Documentary Child Star

In early April 2008, a few dozen people, including me, filed into a recording studio in midtown Manhattan to meet Disney’s “Next Big Thing.” That was how the company introduced a then-15-year-old Demi Lovato to the world, or to roughly 30 members of the media and advertising community.

The wide-eyed teen was in New York for the first time, and, upon taking her seat at a piano and belting out “This Is Me,” immediately established herself an exceptional talent. The power ballad was from Camp Rock, the first in a series of Disney projects that she’d lined up. Another movie (Princess Protection Program), a TV series (Sonny With a Chance), an album and tours with and without the Jonas Brothers would follow in stunningly quick succession. It was, at the time, all she’d ever wanted, putting Lovato on the same trajectory as Disney demigods like Miley Cyrus and Selena Gomez — and it came after years of being passed over for part after part.

“I was filled with gratitude, and there was this sense of wonder and excitement,” she recalls. “It was very much the honeymoon phase of my career, right before the train got moving in a way where I couldn’t pump the brakes.” 

Now, 16 years later, Lovato is seated before me in the Los Angeles home she shares with her fiancé, singer-songwriter Jordan “Jutes” Lutes, trying to make sense of everything that came next. By anyone’s measure, Lovato’s life has swung wildly between professional highs, including eight studio albums, all of which debuted in the top 10 of the Billboard 200, and personal lows, bottoming out in 2018 with a near fatal overdose, which was accompanied by three strokes, organ failure and a heart attack. Along the way, Lovato, who got her start on Barney & Friends at age 6, amassed a following of more than 266 million on social media, with whom she’s remained radically transparent about every step of her journey, which also includes a history with both sexual assault and an eating disorder. But before Lovato can move forward once and for all, she says, “I need to figure out why I entered this industry in the first place.”

So, as she closes in on 32, Lovato’s returning to the Walt Disney Co., making her directorial debut with Child Star, a bound-to-be-buzzy documentary set for a Sept. 17 release on Hulu. The project, which clocks in at close to 90 minutes, explores the deeply personal subject of early fame and the myriad challenges that come with trying to navigate it. In addition to her own story, which features prominently, she weaves in her intimate conversations with other former child stars, including Drew Barrymore, Christina Ricci, JoJo Siwa and Kenan Thompson. Though their talents and timelines vary considerably, taken together they provide a portrait of trauma and instability, with recurring tales of rejection, betrayal and unrelenting pressure.

What Lovato’s documentary does not do is cast blame on any one person or company, certainly not in the way that ID’s Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV did earlier this year with prolific producer Dan Schneider. Instead, the film is both a history lesson on child stardom — “From Shirley Temple to TikTok,” says producer Michael D. Ratner — and a macro look at what happens when you “give a really serious job to a really young kid and suddenly they’re making way more money than their parents,” adds veteran filmmaker Nicola Marsh, who serves as Lovato’s co-director. “The entire family ecosystem becomes dependent on that kid working that hard, and, I believe it’s Raven-Symoné who says it, they’ll milk the light out of you because there’s money to be made.” 

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Early on, releasing Child Star on a Disney-owned streaming service wasn’t in Lovato’s plans. In fact, the documentary initially was envisioned for YouTube Originals, the distributor of her 2021 doc, Demi Lovato: Dancing With the Devil, which chronicled her overdose in excruciating detail, including that the dealer who’d brought Lovato heroin that night also sexually assaulted her. Then YouTube Originals abruptly shuttered in early 2022, and Hulu swooped in. For Disney TV Group president Craig Erwich, “a very personal story around a very public story” was a winning formula for his platform.

The potential awkwardness of having a company that played a seismic role in the child stardom pipeline now airing a no-holds-barred doc on the subject was addressed in their very first meeting. “It would have been crazy to pursue it without talking about that,” says Ratner, who also produced as well as directed Dancing With the Devil. By all accounts, Hulu gave the team the freedom it needed to explore the subject honestly. “They were like, ‘Yeah, go for it.’ Like, ‘Lean into it because if you try to avoid it, it looks worse,’ ” recalls Marsh. “And it’s not an exposé, but it is quite blunt, and it’s a credit to Hulu that they didn’t get cold feet — or maybe they did, but they certainly didn’t tell us.” 

Lovato and her fellow producers got to work compiling a lengthy list of potential subjects — some Lovato knew, many she didn’t. She’d text, slide into DMs, go through reps, whatever it took. But unlike Lovato, who’s continually and unflinchingly shared her story, not everybody was ready or interested in revisiting their past. In fact, the frequency at which the team was told “no” shocked Lovato; Marsh insists she was more shocked when anybody said yes. She’s still marveling at the fact that Ricci wanted to talk about how her father had been a physically violent, failed cult leader, and sets became, as she describes it in the doc, “a refuge of emotional safety” — or that Thompson was willing to share how he went, as he says, “from rags to riches to rags,” when a man fronting as an accountant stole virtually all of his Nickelodeon earnings. “The honesty with which they came to the table was extraordinary,” says Marsh. 

Raven-Symoné was the first recorded interview — and though Lovato hadn’t actually remembered it, they’d met years before when the That’s So Raven actress guest starred on Sonny With a Chance. But it was Barrymore — in many ways the poster kid of child stardom, having made E.T. at 6 — who gave the doc the credibility that Lovato felt it needed. She had interviewed Barrymore a few years earlier for a podcast that she was doing at the time, and this conversation picked up where that one left off. They discuss how they both craved boundaries that didn’t exist in their childhoods, and then swap stories about their frighteningly early dalliances with drugs and alcohol. The latter is a subject that Ricci is similarly forthcoming about: “I don’t remember feeling like there was any other way to be happy,” she tells Lovato, revealing how she’d sneak booze into her Diet Coke on set. (Lovato admits she’d do the same in her coffee.) 

Alyson Stoner, who uses “they/them” pronouns, is the only one of Lovato’s Camp Rock co-stars who agreed to participate, and, they acknowledge, theirs was a lengthy, sensitive courting process. “My concern was that it would fall under the umbrella of sensationalized E! True Hollywood stories that then actually perpetuated what I call the toddler-to-train wreck pipeline,” they say. Plus, working with Lovato on Camp Rock 2 and its corresponding tour, they claim, proved inordinately challenging, and the two hadn’t been in contact in years. To assure Stoner that she’d evolved considerably and that her heart was in the right place with the doc, Lovato agreed to what Stoner calls a “healing” sit-down before the actual interview. 

By the time cameras rolled, the former co-stars were sharing devasting memories about the emotional toll of seeing their teenage bodies photoshopped in magazines and the incessant pressure of being “on-brand” as a Disney kid. Lovato is quick to admit she was always envious of the Nickelodeon stars, since that brand prided itself on being edgier and more irreverent. “At Disney, you became this instant role model, whether you liked it or not,” she says now. “And because Disney Channel was so big at the time, there was also this unspoken pressure that if you did make a mistake, you knew that there were millions of people just waiting to take your spot.”

In what is easily one of the doc’s most powerful scenes, Stoner addresses Lovato’s erratic behavior on the sequel, acknowledging that their heart is racing as they do so. “I remember a sense of walking on eggshells,” they say of being around Lovato, who’s since been open about her struggles with body image and drug use during that period. They added, “There was definitely a lot of fear of a blowup.” Lovato not only accepts the feedback but seems to encourage it. And in fact, as she notes, she did blow up, famously punching a backup dancer on the Camp Rock 2 tour, precipitating her first of several visits to rehab. 

Like many of Child Star’s subjects, who say they’ve blocked out challenging chapters from their past, Lovato remembers very little after the first Camp Rock. “I think I’d passed the threshold of what I could withstand emotionally and physically,” she says of what she now understands to be a trauma response. “And I didn’t realize that child stardom could be traumatic — and it isn’t traumatic for everyone, but for me, it was.” She says she looks back on those years now and can’t help but feel profound sadness, wondering how many more people she treated poorly. 

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

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To have a forum to reflect on what, it turns out, were shared experiences has been cathartic for Lovato. After all, these were not the conversations being had when she and her peers were coming up. “We were sharing space, and yet there was such an isolation,” recalls Stoner, who faults a fiercely competitive and unrelenting work environment, which made it nearly impossible to be each other’s support system.

Lovato and Stoner both say that they’re encouraged by the next generation, who have a healthier relationship with their boundaries and mental health. In fact, it was Lovato’s desire to capture that Gen Z perspective in the doc that led her to Siwa, who recently turned 21. The two had previously performed together, so the ask wasn’t cold. Plus, Siwa, a self-proclaimed Lovato superfan who in her early fame was known for her signature side-ponytail and oversized bow, had already heard about the project and was eager to share her view. Not only was she of a different generation, one that came of age with social media, but also she perceived her child star experience as positive. “Though there was some bad things that happened,” Siwa allows, “some advantages that got taken.”

As she reveals in the doc, the morning after the “Karma” singer shared a video of her coming out as queer on social media in 2021, she received a call from the president of Nickelodeon, who, while not explicitly named, was Brian Robbins. “What are we going to tell the kids?” she recalls him asking, to which she, at 17, replied, “That I’m happy?” His response, per Siwa: “Well, you need to have a call with every retailer [that sells JoJo Siwa merch] and tell them that you’re not going crazy.” So, she got on the phone with every retailer, from Target to Walmart to Claire’s, but she claims her relationship with Nickelodeon was never the same: “I basically got blackballed from the company.” 

When asked for comment, a spokesperson for Nickelodeon tells THR, “We are unaware of the incident JoJo is referencing and she was certainly not blackballed by Nickelodeon. We have valued and supported JoJo throughout our incredibly successful partnership, which included a JoJo-themed Pride collection at a major national retailer, among our many collaborations together. We continue to cheer her on and wish her nothing but the best.”

Reflecting on the saga now, Siwa is convinced her naivete had worked to her advantage. Today, at 21, she cares a lot more about what people think and suggests she would have handled the situation differently. “If the president of my music label called me now and was like, ‘Yo, what the fuck?’ like the president of my network did then, I would lose my mind,” Siwa tells me of a shift in outlook that she hadn’t anticipated. “Honestly, I’d be like, ‘Oh my God, I’m so sorry. Yes, I’ll go back in the closet. Or I’ll delete it. I’ll say it was a prank. I’ll get a boyfriend.’ But back then, I was like, ‘I’m in love and I’m happy. Shut up.’ ”

Meanwhile, Lovato couldn’t help but be impressed, admitting now: “It would have run me back into the closet.” For Lovato, coming out as bisexual at 25 had been a decision she’d agonized over for close to a decade, which she largely attributes to her religious upbringing — though she’d hinted at it through her music, notably with 2015’s “Cool for the Summer,” which quickly became a gay anthem. “I knew my parents loved me, but coming out is a different type of acceptance, especially when you’ve grown up in a Christian household,” she tells me. Ultimately, the response from her mother, a former Dallas Cowboys cheerleader, was something along the lines of: “I just want you to be happy.” (Lovato later came out as nonbinary as well, though she uses both “she” and “they” pronouns.)

Her mom, who also contributes to the doc, has remained a positive fixture in Lovato’s life, which doesn’t mean it was always an easy relationship. “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?” says Lovato, who acknowledges her mom and stepdad struggled to hold the line with her: “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?” (Lovato’s biological father, an addict who died of cancer in 2013, had been out of her life since childhood.)

Like Child Star, Lovato doesn’t point fingers — not at her parents, her representatives or her former employer. She does, however, take issue with how Disney Channels Worldwide’s then-president, Gary Marsh, characterized the company’s level of responsibility for its young talent in a 2012 interview that I read to her. “At the end of the day, it’s the parents who really have to be parents,” Marsh had said. “We give them all the tools they might need, but the network is not responsible for raising their children.” Lovato disagrees, noting all the ways in which having any kind of mentor or adviser to help her and her family navigate the many challenges would have been helpful. In fact, after she left the Disney orbit, she’d heard the company hired a life coach with whom she was working at the time, which is exactly the type of support she believes she would’ve benefited from. “I just think leaving it up to the families is really risky,” she says, “because not everyone has a healthy family dynamic, and you’re putting them in a pressure cooker.”

In that same interview, Marsh acknowledged the immense pressures that were being put on these young stars and how it wasn’t realistic to expect all of them would behave like perfect poster children. By then, Lovato had already exited the Disney system and released a doc for MTV about her post-rehab journey, which she’d later reveal she recorded under the influence of cocaine. “Someone like Demi is an unbelievably talented young woman who had some challenges in her life from before we met her and will probably have those challenges far into the future,” Marsh said at the time. “It’s not fair, if that’s the right way to express it, to lay that at the feet of the network that discovered her.”

***

As a pair of small dogs burrow in Lovato’s lap, she tells me that she was never interested in making another doc “just to make another doc.” Initially, Child Star was designed to be more of a cautionary tale that she and her family could have used when she was starting out. But as she dove in, she came to see that there were a whole new set of challenges that exist for young stars of the digital realm, where there aren’t yet laws in place to protect child influencers. So, in addition to the prominent journalists, lawyers and psychologists whom Lovato and her team peppered in as talking heads, they devote real estate to activist Chris McCarty and Washington State Rep. Kristine Reeves, who are hard at work on proposed legislation that would, among other things, legally require parents of child influencers to set aside a healthy portion of their earnings until those children reach adulthood.

In the months since the doc wrapped, Lovato has remained in touch with McCarty and Reeves and has offered to testify should they be able to get a hearing. “I think a lot of celebrities want that 30 seconds of fame, but Demi’s much more invested in being helpful and getting it right,” says Reeves, who tells me: “I really appreciate her leadership and, quite frankly, her mentorship.”

As far as Lovato’s own future is concerned, she doesn’t know what’s in store. She insists she’s more at peace now than she’s been in years. She’s also in love, and someday, maybe even soon, she’d like to have children. Asked what she’d do if her future daughter came to her and said she wanted to follow a similar path, Lovato replies with a speed that suggests she’s thought this through already: “I’d say, ‘Let’s study music theory and prepare you for the day you turn 18, because it’s not happening before that. 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,’ ” she says. “ ‘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, but I’m in this weird position in my career because I still rely on music for my income.” 

In recent years, Lovato has shied away from even acting because being on camera has exacerbated her body-image issues. But then she took a role in Stephanie Laing’s forthcoming feature, Tow, opposite Dominic Sessa and Rose Byrne, and she was reminded how much she enjoys it. She plays a pregnant woman, which, she acknowledges, helped alleviate some of her concerns.Nevertheless, there will be more acting roles. In the meantime, she’s back in the studio recording new music, though she’s not sure she’ll ever tour again. “It takes a toll on your body,” says Lovato, whose back hasn’t been kind to her. “I’m not 15 anymore.” And then, as she’d said when we sat down, she’s still trying to figure out what, exactly, that wide-eyed teen who Disney trotted out as its “Next Big Thing” was seeking. So, I wonder aloud, if she’d reached any kind of conclusion? 

“I think part of me always thought that if I made it in the industry that I would get the love from my birth dad that I didn’t have. And he was troubled, and I think I always chased success because I knew it would put me in his line of sight again and it would make him proud of me,” says Lovato, her eyes welling with tears. “But now that I’ve dealt with those daddy issues, I don’t need the industry as much as I once did, and I’m proud of myself for getting here.” 

This story first appeared in the August 14 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.