Bella Thorne and Zendaya have been best friends since their days spent playing CeCe and Rocky on Disney Channel’s Shake It Up, but apparently the girls didn’t always get along. When we chatted with Bella about her new movie The DUFF, she revealed that she and Zendaya had to overcome a lot of outside pressures that forced them to compete against each other.

“Zendaya and I were put in a very unfortunate position where we were kind of forced to compete against each other [during Shake It Up], which made the whole first season of the show just very awkward for us,” Bella EXCLUSIVELY tells us. “We wanted to love each other, but yet we were constantly being put against each other. It was, ‘Who’s better at this?’ and ‘Who’s better at that?'”

“And then second season we kind of just had this tell-all talk where we started crying and really just put everything out there on the table, and that’s when we became best friends.”

We can’t believe that Bella and Zendaya felt like they were in constant competition during the beginning of the show. They always made it seem like they hit things off right away!

Luckily, after their serious bonding session, they never turned their backs on each other. Bella even guest starred on Z’s show K.C. Undercover!

“We text each other all the time, and we’re always sending photos back and forth,” Bella tells us. “Being on set with her again was awesome, just to have my Z back, and to see how much she’s changed and how some of the things that I used to say, now she’s saying… It’s so weird, but yet I love it!”

We’ve always loved Bella and Zendaya’s friendship, but knowing how hard they fought to become friends make us like them even more!

Are you shocked that they were forced to compete against each other? Let us know in the comments below.

Love J-14? Be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel for fun, exclusive videos with your favorite stars.