Demi Lovato and Alyson Stoner may have played best friends in Disney Channel’s Camp Rock and Camp Rock 2, but the reality was much different.
According to Alyson, there was a significant fallout between them and Demi that lasted for years, primarily due to Demi’s struggles with drug use and body image issues during the making of Camp Rock 2: The Final Jam and the subsequent 2010 tour.
“There was definitely a lot of fear of a blowup,” Alyson noted during an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, as the pair sat down for Demi’s directorial debut and upcoming documentary on growing up famous, called Child Star.
The Cheaper By the Dozen star also recalled having “a sense of walking on eggshells” when it came to dealing with the “Skyscraper” singer while on set.
The two Disney Channel stars first met in 2008 while filming the original Camp Rock, when Demi was 15 and Alyson was 14. As Demi’s career shifted from Disney to pop music, her struggles with substance abuse, bulimia and mental health deepened. In 2018, she endured a near-fatal heroin overdose that resulted in brain damage, three strokes, a heart attack, and a bipolar disorder diagnosis.
Demi reflected on this period, saying, “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.”
“I think I’d passed the threshold of what I could withstand emotionally and physically,” Demi further explained. “And I didn’t realize that child stardom could be traumatic — and it isn’t traumatic for everyone, but for me, it was.”
Alyson, who uses they/them pronouns, shared that before agreeing to be part of Demi’s upcoming documentary about child stars, they needed to have a “healing” discussion.
“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-trainwreck pipeline,” Alyson told The Hollywood Reporter. Because Alsyon and Demi hadn’t spoken in years, they had a “healing” talk before filming anything.
Child Star, which premieres on September 17, 2024, on Hulu, will also feature interviews with JoJo Siwa, Drew Barrymore, Kenan Thompson and Raven-Symoné.
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