OMGMiley Cyrus, Joe Jonas and More Celebrities Who’ve Seemingly Shaded Disney Channel Over the Years

Bella Thorne

“There are definitely a lot of pressures in the Disney eye to be so perfect and I think that’s where Disney in a sense goes wrong because they make their kids seem perfect,” she said during a February 2021 interview with Fox News. “That image is very difficult. It’s also never been me … I always just like to do whatever no one else is doing.”

The actress continued, “Little kids growing up don’t need to see perfect people. Kids need to see real. They need to see diversity, they need to see intriguing.”

Joe Jonas

While chatting with Vulture in 2013, Joe called out the Disney Channel for its “terrible” writing and strict rules.

“It just ended up being some weird slapstick humor that only a 10-year-old would laugh at. They took out the kissing scene that Nick had,” he recalled. “I had to shave every day because they wanted me to pretend like I was 16 when I was 20 (when the show was done, I cut my hair off and grew as much of a beard as I could). We went along with it at the time, because we thought Disney was our only real shot, and we were terrified that it could all be taken away from us at any moment.”

Jake Paul

Following his time on Bizaardvark, the internet personality talked about his time on Disney Channel during a March 2019 appearance on the “Impaulsive” podcast. Jake revealed his decision to leave the show during the second season, explaining that he was “literally making crumbs compared to what I’m making doing my [YouTube channel].”

Miley Cyrus

In a February 2019 interview on the “RuPaul: What’s The Tee” podcast, Miley admitted that she hated her Disney persona at first. “I didn’t really get to be a kid very much, because I worked so much, but I wanted that,” she explained. “Since the last record, my last record was called ‘Younger Now’ and it says, even though it’s not who I am, I’m not afraid of who I used to be. That was my epiphany.”

Years prior, when chatting with Marie Claire in 2015, the actress explained how being Hannah Montana impacted her mental health.

“I was told for so long what a girl is supposed to be from being on [Hannah Montana]. I was made to look like someone that I wasn’t, which probably caused some body dysmorphia because I had been made pretty every day for so long, and then when I wasn’t on that show, it was like, ‘Who the f–k am I?'” she said.

Stefanie Scott

In a 2015 interview with BuzzFeed, the actress threw some major shade at the network. She claimed that her role as Lexi Reed in A.N.T. Farm forced her to “sugarcoat everything all the time.”

“That’s one of the hardest things, not being able to express myself in a certain way or being stuck having to promote something or say something you don’t believe in. It’s kind of hard after a while when you are feeling things and having a rough time in your personal life and you can’t express your emotions through your work,” Stefanie explained. “I wanted to tell stories of troubled girls where everything isn’t perfect all the time. I didn’t want it to stop there and be labeled as ‘a Disney girl.’ I quickly realized I wanted to do more. If you’ve been on a Disney show, people target you as being the ‘sitcom funny girl’ who can’t take herself seriously and doesn’t really have true emotions because they have to be perfect and pure — not shattered and torn in any way.”

Demi Lovato

Demi opened up about their time on the network to Harper’s Bazaar in March 2020, and admit that they had a hard time with the workload. “I’m grateful for the opportunities that I got. Do I wish that I’d had more downtime? Yes. I think when you are a teenager and you’re given your big break, you’ll do anything to make it happen,” she said. “I do feel that a lot of the way some of my life was handled and lived led to me kind of having a bit of a downfall, just because I was so overworked and I wasn’t dedicating enough time to my mental health or my personal life.”

In a separate interview with Billboard from 2016, Demi joked that they had “PTSD after leaving the channel.” They added, “We joked around that it was Disney High, except we all were shooting shows and really overworking.”

Dylan Sprouse

Before parting ways with the network the Suite Life star and his brother “had a really awesome idea for where the show needed to go,” but it got turned down.

“We were 18. If that isn’t old enough to know exactly what the show needs, then … well, I would beg to disagree,” the actor told Vulture in December 2017. “I don’t think [Disney] were willing to work with us, really ever. So we stopped the show.”

Selena Gomez

“I’m growing and changing,” the actress told The New York Times in 2015 about moving away from her Disney image. “I was in a relationship, and I was being managed by my parents, and I was still under Hollywood and Disney, and I was being held to this expectation of being the good girl.”

She continued, “I knew deep down that this wasn’t what I wanted to do. Being exhausted … forcing something that wasn’t right, even in my personal life. I had to have moments where I was crying and I was like, ‘Why am I not in love with what I do?’ I was forced to get very uncomfortable for a while in order to make the decisions I made.”

Years later, she recalled her Disney Channel days during the Television Critics Association press panel in August 2021, per Us Weekly. “I signed my life away to Disney at a very young age and I didn’t know what I was doing,” Selena said at the time. “I didn’t know what I was doing [as a kid]. I was just running around on set.”