Breaking It DownAll of Demi Lovato’s ‘Child Star’ Documentary Biggest Revelations: JoJo Siwa, Alyson Stoner, More

Demi’s Biggest Revelations

In addition to directing Child Star, Demi made onscreen appearances as she interviewed each subject featured in the documentary.

“Being on camera makes a lot of my body issues come up and when I’m on camera I’m hyper aware of that. It just makes me a little uncomfortable,”  she admitted. “I didn’t realize that [fame] would have such a negative impact on my mental health. And unfortunately sometimes that looks explosive. Like an incident where you punch your backup dancer on an airplane or you overdose from heroin.”

Demi also revealed that she doesn’t remember much of shooting her show Sonny With a Chance.

“It was part of my disassociation that I don’t remember so much of my show,” she noted. “But I do remember how difficult I was to work with because I was in so much pain and I was hurting.”

Demi also discussed the pressures of being a role model, noting, “I had to be so conscious of everything that I did as a Disney kid. You obviously couldn’t cuss or swear in public. You couldn’t be seen with red solo cups because it could insinuate that there is alcohol.”

JoJo’s Biggest Revelations

JoJo, 21, rose to fame after her appearance on Dance Moms led to numerous collaborations with Nickelodeon.

“Basically I signed an umbrella deal for everything so they owned all my rights to everything. Except social media,” JoJo shared with Demi. “We were very smart to be able to keep that separate. But if I had like a brand deal, I had to get it approved by Nickelodeon. But they owned everything.”

In January 2021, she came out as a member of the LGBTQIA+ community, which had a significant impact on her career.

“I didn’t realize I guess that no child star — who is still a child star — had ever come out before. The president of the network called me and was like, ‘What are we going to tell the kids? What are we going to tell kids and parents?’ And he was like, ‘Well you need to have a call with every retailer and tell them you are not going crazy,’” she claimed. “So I did and I had a call with every retailer.”

Siwa elaborated: “Everything after I had come out had changed. The way they communicated with me, worked with me and how they developed my work.”

She noted that she was notably absent from the Nickelodeon Kids’ Choice Awards in 2022, despite her previous involvement with the event. JoJo alleged that the network had blackballed her, though a Nickelodeon representative later described the oversight as an “honest mistake.”

The Dance Moms alum also revealed to Demi how she now posts hundreds of times a day on Snapchat, a stark contrast to her earlier career. “There’s nothing left for me at the end of the day,” she admitted about her career.

Alyson’s Biggest Revelations

Alsyon reflected on their experiences during the promotion of Camp Rock, revealing that it was a particularly difficult time due to their eating disorder. They described it as “[That] was a really dark time for me with my eating disorder. [It is the] only sense of safety and control that you have.”

As they talked about their ups and downs, Alyson admitted that their friendship with Demi had been fraught with complications. “Just like I was trained to be at your beck and call and whatever you want from me, I will provide,” they said.

Following the first Camp Rock film, Stoner and Demi grew distant.

“It felt so hard to access you in that way. We lost that thread of trust, closeness and it didn’t seem like you wanted to be reached either at that point,” Alyson recalled. “The last few years of working together felt really challenging. The treatment did feel drastically different. I do remember a sense of walking on eggshells and so there was definitely a lot of fear of a blowup.”

Later in the documentary, Alyson revealed their own struggles within the industry, particularly regarding financial issues. “I uncovered that people in my surrounding network had been taking money without me knowing for years,” they shared.

Drew’s Biggest Revelations

Drew Barrymore first gained widespread recognition for her role in Steven Spielberg‘s 1982 film E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, but her career began long before that.

“[I started working at 11-months old.] It was a Puppy Chow commercial and I have never stopped working since then except for when I was institutionalized by my mother,” Drew shared with Demi, recounting her time in rehab at 13 and 18 months in an institution. She entered rehab again and sought emancipation a year later at age 14.

Reflecting on her upbringing in the famous Barrymore family, Drew said, “[My dad] was so cool — he was lethally, deadly cool. Toxically cool. [My mother] knew she needed to get away from him. He was dangerous and on a lot of drugs. Then she is just this single mom raising a baby in 1975 with no money.”

Drew pondered her early career choices, wondering, “I wonder why did my mom think it was a good idea for me to go into this. Was it because she wanted to be an actress herself? Was it because my dad and his family were actors?”

Drew has talked about her fraught relationship with her father, who left when she was six months old. Although they reconciled before his death in 2004, she viewed Steven Spielberg as more of a father figure during her formative years.

“I did not have a father and he was the person who made me feel like all of a sudden I wanted to be my best for,” Drew explained to Demi about her relationship with the famous director. “There was no authority in my life so I loved any boundary he set for me. It didn’t hit me until I was an adult that, ‘Oh, that is how parents are supposed to make you feel.’”

Drew, who has been candid about her struggles with drugs and alcohol, also revealed that she “used to get high” with her mother’s friend when she was just 10 years old.

“She would give weed to me and her son,” Drew recounted. “I can’t believe how much I respect life knowing that I disrespected it so many times. I have done s— no one knows I did. That is so crazy that somehow nobody found out about it.”

Raven-Symoné’s Revelations

For Raven being in front of the camera began almost as soon as she was born.

“I knew it was work immediately. My parents made sure that I understood this was a job. I get paid for it and you show up professionally,” she explained. “[You know what money is] when you are told how much you are getting paid for the job that you do. So I knew at 3 how much I was making and I understood it was a job. If you lose it, you don’t make that money.”

When asked if she saw herself as the primary earner in her family, Raven responded, “We call it a family business. Everybody has a job within the family business. Nobody likes to say one person is the breadwinner or not. Read through those lines.”

She continued, “Sometimes the parent’s dreams might bleed into the child’s. And you get so enmeshed. Parents forget that young kids are performing for their parents’ love and affection. It is a lot of money and money does crazy s—.”

Known for her role on The Cosby Show before moving to Disney Channel with That’s So Raven, Raven admitted that her memories from her early projects are fading.

“It is disappearing every single day,” she told Demi about her time on The Cosby Show in the ’90s. “Nothing is a pure memory for me right now.”

Later in the documentary, Raven and Demi discussed their time working together on Sonny With a Chance. Demi confessed to not recalling much from that period due to burnout. Raven observed that while Demi was not particularly friendly at the time, she quickly understood that Demi was struggling with the pressures of fame.

“People are going to milk all of the light out of you because you are young and you have the energy,” she advised Demi. “But you do not, you are still a human.”

Christina’s Biggest Revelations

Christina Ricci became a child star with her roles in Mermaids, The Addams Family films and Casper, all while navigating a challenging home life.

“I was really unhappy in my home life and at school. I was really bored and I was getting into really crazy trouble at 7. As soon as I started going on auditions every day after school with my mother, all of that stopped,” Christina shared. “But what I really loved is getting to go with my mom on the bus to New York. My mother was kept in a place in my home where she was not present. As soon as she and I got out of the house, she had a personality. We became very close.”

Describing her childhood as “very chaotic,” Christina explained, “My father was a failed cult leader and so he had all that really crazy narcissism that goes along with someone wanting to run a cult. He was very physically violent. There was never any peace in my house.”

The set provided Christina with a much-needed escape. “I knew nothing totally insane was going to happen. No one was going to get really mad and pretend to drive the car into a wall,” she said. “For me there was a refuge of emotional safety.”

As her career progressed, Christina turned to drugs and alcohol. “I don’t remember feeling like there was any other way to be happy,” she admitted. “If you felt like you had absolutely no control over your life, that is one of the few things you actually had control over.”