Former Disney Channel star Alyson Stoner made a candid confession about working with Demi Lovato in her new memoir, Semi-Well-Adjust Despite Literally Everything.
The 32-year-old singer and actor worked with Lovato in Disney Channel’s two Camp Rock movies (released in 2008 and 2010). Stoner confessed that during that time in the spotlight, they faced immense criticism from the “Heart Attack” singer’s fans.
“For several years, I felt suffocated under the weight of Demi’s power and terrified of her PR team,” Stoner, who identifies as non-binary and uses they/them pronouns, writes in the memoir, according to E! News. “The extreme remarks from her fanbase, and the way mass media gave a fabricated identity a life of its own.”
Stoner said that the cast of Camp Rock witnessed their co-star’s experience with substance abuse, which Lovato has spoken openly about, and her behavior because of it.
“Her moods swung unpredictably from euphoric to furious to dejected,” Stoner continued. “The hardness in her eyes and bite to her speech that she formerly used to jokingly imitate Regina George from Mean Girls cemented as a fixed state.”
The Independent has contacted Lovato’s representatives for comment.
The Phineas & Ferb star said that when the cast of Camp Rock joined the Jonas Brothers on their tour in 2010, they prepared for Lovato to behave a certain way.
“To get through the tour, the entire crew bent the knee, accepting that at any moment we could be open targets for her to externalize her pain,” she continued. “At sixteen, being forced to submit to her power plays was confusing. She verbally lashed out behind the curtain, and then we’d walk onstage for a sound check, meet-and-greet and publicly kiss her crown.”
Stoner also claimed that they not only received online death threats from Lovato’s fanbase, but “media outlets centered [Lovato] as a main topic in [Stoner’s] interviews.”
“And I answered each question with a smile while feeling sick from withholding secrets,” they wrote. “I felt so pathetic about struggling to move on, especially when I knew I wasn’t even a passing thought on her mind anymore.”
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They said that after 14 years of not speaking to Lovato, they appeared in her 2024 documentary Child Star, where the two actors discussed the challenges of being a child performer.
“Demi apologized, and I didn’t realize that my teen self had been waiting on the doorstop to hear her say sorry ever since that tumultuous time,” they wrote about the conversation in the documentary. “I had the chance to more fully understand and empathize with her excruciating experiences.”
In Child Star, Stoner recalled how they felt distant from Lovato while filming the second Camp Rock film.
“I remember that it felt so hard to access you in that way,” they explained. “Like we had lost that thread of trust, we had lost that closeness. It didn’t seem maybe like you wanted to be reached either at that point. So the last few years of working together felt really challenging.”
Lovato acknowledged that this was a difficult time in her career and then apologized for her behaviour.
“I know that we both were going through our own stuff, but it still didn’t give me an excuse to treat anyone poorly, and so I just want to genuinely, deeply apologize for any stress or any walking on eggshells, any hurt feelings,” she told Stoner.
