Inside Demi Lovato's 'really difficult' reunion with a co-star in new doc: 'Quite tense'
Demi Lovato's directorial debut focuses on a topic close to her heart: the pressures of child stardom.
"Child Star," which premieres on Hulu on Sept. 17, explores the impact of becoming famous at a young age — an experience Lovato knows all too well, given her background as a Disney Channel star.
Nicola Marsh, who co-directed the documentary with Lovato, praised Lovato's determination in an interview with TODAY.com.
“She had a real burning, burning passion to make this,” Marsh says. “It’s quite obvious when you meet her that the scars of her childhood are quite visible.”
The documentary features interviews with Lovato and a cohort of other notable former child stars, all of whom are still in show business: Jojo Siwa, Christina Ricci, Drew Barrymore, Raven-Symoné, Kenan Thompson and Alyson Stoner.
"What we are trying to do is tell a larger story about what happens when you get slotted into a system, and you’re just a cog in that much bigger machine — and you’re a child in the middle of all of it," Marsh explains.
This isn't the first documentary to broach this topic. In March, "Quiet on Set" made waves for exposing the often dark dynamics behind the scenes during Nickelodeon's heyday.
“I think it’s always really sad to have to kill your heroes,” Marsh says. “I think we are in a place where we are revisiting stuff that feels cuddly and sweet and then realizing that Bill Cosby wasn’t a nice guy. It is difficult, but it is really important to not sweep stuff like that under the rug, otherwise we’re just going to repeat it over and over again.”
With “Child Star,” Marsh wants to highlight the risks of involving children in commercial industries.
“Whenever anything makes a lot of money, there’s going to be much less scrutiny on the people who are making the money,” she says. “People are going to want to look the other way, because the stakes are quite high and people’s livelihoods are depending on it. But children are guileless and want to please the adults around them. And so they are just incredibly easy to exploit. Not all children, but definitely children who want to be child stars.”
Marsh spoke to TODAY.com about working with Lovato and the documentary's most memorable moments.
Lovato didn't initially plan to appear in 'Child Star'
Though Lovato conducts the majority of the interviews in "Child Star," she originally didn't plan to appear in the documentary, Marsh says.
"One of the biggest challenges was that Demi didn’t really want to be in it. She really didn’t want it to be about her," Marsh says. "But I also knew that if you want to get people to open up, the best thing you can do is to be talking to somebody that you have commonality with, that you share stuff with."
"It's much easier for Drew and Alyson and any of them to talk about the skeletons in their childhood closets if they’re talking to somebody who also has plenty of skeletons," she continues.
Given the heavy subject matter, which ranged from eating disorders to childhood abuse, Marsh was pleasantly surprised at how open many of the actors were in interviews.
"It was really surprising to me when really well-respected and renowned celebrities actually wanted to talk about it, and the stuff that they said was quite revealing, you know. Once you get somebody talking, they can be quite candid," she says.
At the same time, she noticed that they were always hyper-aware of the cameras.
"They’re never not thinking about how what they’re saying is going to be perceived," she says. "That sense of detachment from their own voice makes it incredibly difficult for them to be present because they’re just outside of themselves looking in."
Lovato opened up about childhood bullying
One of Lovato's most emotional revelations in "Child Star" was that her childhood bullies had created a “suicide petition” urging her to harm herself.
"It was passed around, and people signed it," Lovato recalled in the documentary. "It was so extremely hurtful."
Lovato said the bullying drove her motivation to succeed as a child star.
"I was like, 'I'm going to become so famous they can't escape my name,'" she said.
For Marsh, the revelation added context to Lovato's coming-of-fame story.
"We had all these conversations where I’d be like, 'Why did you want to be famous at such a young age?' And she kept on saying it was the bullying," Marsh says.
The level of bullying that Lovato experienced was even more "intense and scarring" than Marsh had imagined.
"Demi was already a kid with suicidal ideation, and that can leave a mark on your self esteem," Marsh says. "It’s a very frightening experience as a young kid."
She and other former child stars talk about substance abuse
Lovato, Christina Ricci, and Drew Barrymore shared candid memories of their early experiences with substance use as child actors.
Barrymore has previously been open about her drug and alcohol use as a young child. She revealed in her 1990 memoir "Little Girl Lost" that she had her first drink at 9 and began using cocaine at 12.
"I used to get high with my mom's friend at like, 10," Barrymore told Lovato in the documentary.
"Having a 10-year-old daughter now, it's unfathomable," she continued. "But that's just how I grew up."
Ricci shared similar experiences from her teenage years in "Child Star."
"I immediately went right to drugs and alcohol in my teens," she said in the documentary. "I don't remember feeling like there was any other way to be happy."
Lovato recalled feeling overwhelmed by the pressure of being a Disney star: "I would say, 'If you're going to work me like an adult, I'm going to party like an adult.'"
"Finding drugs was easy," she said. "That was the only way I knew how to escape."
Lovato also shared more details about the impact of her near-fatal drug overdose in 2018.
"I get a lot of anxiety when I think about how close I came to not being here at all," she said in the documentary.
Inside Lovato’s ‘really difficult’ reunion with ‘Camp Rock’ co-star Alyson Stoner
Lovato and Alyson Stoner talked about their time working together on the "Camp Rock" movie series in an interview for "Child Star."
“It was really difficult for Alyson to discuss how difficult it was to work with Demi when Demi was a kid,” Marsh says.
While filming “Camp Rock 2,” Lovato was struggling with mental health, substance abuse, and an eating disorder.
"The last few years of working together felt really challenging," Stoner said to Lovato in the documentary.
"I do remember a sense of walking on eggshells," Stoner continued. "There was definitely a lot of fear of a blowup."
According to Marsh, Stoner and Lovato hadn't spoken in a long time before reuniting on the set of "Child Star."
"The dynamic between Alyson and Demi was really real," Marsh says. "Things were quite tense and they had a lot of water that hadn’t quite made it under the bridge."
Stoner says her heart was "racing" during their discussion.
"You could just feel the tension of Alyson trying to get herself to say that, and Demi kind of afraid of what she’s going to say, but also still pushing it forward," Marsh recalls.
In the end, Lovato apologized to Stoner for her behavior at the time.
"Most people don’t want to open that Pandora’s box, and so I felt like I had to give Demi a lot of credit for wanting to find out and look inside," Marsh says.
This article was originally published on TODAY.com