The below has been excerpted from DISNEY HIGH: The Untold Story of the Rise and Fall of Disney Channel’s Tween Empire by Ashley Spencer © 2024 by the author and reprinted by permission of St. Martin’s Press.
Demi’s Sonny contract went beyond the standard series terms that many previous Disney Channel stars signed and more closely resembled something out of the old Hollywood studio system. It stipulated that, in addition to Demi’s commitment to Sonny with a Chance (at the time called Sketchpad), she would be required to do two post–Camp Rock Disney Channel Original Movies, as well as a theatrical Sonny film, if Disney pursued any of those options.
Demi was contracted to receive $38,750 for her performance in the first Camp Rock, $75,000 for Princess Protection Program, at least $100,000 for the Camp Rock sequel, and $10,000 per episode for Sonny’s first season with a 5 percent bump on the second season (the same series scale Selena was signed to on Wizards). If a Sonny theatrical movie were to come to fruition, she was locked into a $500,000 base for that picture (half of what Hilary Duff had been able to negotiate for The Lizzie McGuire Movie four years earlier).
But Demi had always prioritized music over acting, and now, her music career was heating up faster than Sonny. “Acting is just kind of a way to pay for the singing,” Demi told Women’s Wear Daily in 2009, quickly clarifying, “I mean, not anymore. Acting now is like a new challenge, new hobby, a new passion even.”
Demi would perform concerts on the weekend and get the rush of hearing thousands of fans scream her name. Then, she’d return to set on Monday to do food gags and pratfalls. “Demi’s heart was in the music. The show and the films were not what they wanted to be doing,” her Sonny co-star Allisyn Snyder said. “They wanted to be in the studio, and they wanted to be going on tour and then they get back here, and it was kind of like going back to school after summer break.”
But it wasn’t just about the oppressive schedule and imbalance of passion. The reality was much more painful. Throughout her time on Disney Channel, Demi was struggling with bulimia, self-harm, and substance abuse. “It was really clear right away, even when she was that young, that there were going to be some issues,” said Lee Shallat Chemel, who directed an unaired version of the Sonny pilot. “Very talented, incredibly ambitious, and obviously, a beautiful singing voice. But there were issues with her mom and her family, and you could see that there was trouble brewing.”
Soon after production got underway on Sonny with a Chance in September 2008, Demi got sick and had to take a day off of work. Showrunner Michael Feldman said he passed her mom in the studio hallway and asked how Demi was doing.
“Oh, she’ll be back to work tomorrow,” Dianna assured him.
“That’s good, but how is she feeling?” he asked again.
“I told her she needs to buckle up and get back to work, so don’t you worry!” Dianna replied.
“I’m not asking you whether she’ll be here or not,” he said. “I’m asking you from one parent to another, how is your child feeling?”
The combination of a parent whose quality of life is dependent on their child’s success and a corporate system that renders sick days for that child a potential financial loss is, fundamentally, working against the health of a child. But why was a teenager who was known to have a variety of personal issues allowed to be put in that high-pressure position in the first place and then allowed to continue with little intervention?
“It was a bad situation,” said supervising producer Drew Vaupen, who departed Sonny after eleven episodes to create and oversee Good Luck Charlie. “We all wanted to help Demi. But she had star power. There was just no way to get to her.”
No one wants to say they had the ability to stop the metaphorical bleeding, but concern over Demi’s disordered eating and depression was allegedly made known to at least some network executives from as early as 2006. It would take until a public incident at the end of 2010 for meaningful action to be taken.
“People were so concerned, but it’s a gentle road to travel. You have to really be respectful of privacy issues. There was never a day that didn’t go by that you’re not trying to do something to help,” Sonny line producer Patty Gary Cox said. “I know there was a lot of concern from the network. They were very involved in talking to my executive producers about it and trying to figure out how to help her.”
By her own admission, Demi’s mother, Dianna, had long avoided confronting the situation. When Demi was in sixth grade, Demi’s older sister told Dianna that Demi had been visiting pro-anorexia and bulimia websites. Rather than discuss it with Demi, Dianna ignored the concerns and decided Demi’s weight loss was due to a growth spurt. “I even gloated that she might get more jobs because she was thinner,” Dianna wrote in her memoir. When Demi had first begun cutting her wrists, the De La Garzas hired a life coach to help. But later, Dianna found bloody tissues in Demi’s bed, a sign that she’d resumed cutting. She swept them aside and rushed Demi out the door to make it to the Sonny set on time. “So many people—music representatives, television executives, castmates, and management—were depending on Demi to be strong and do her job,” Dianna wrote. “Nothing was just a family matter anymore. Walking away wasn’t an option.”
Demi has also said she was privately coping with losing her virginity as the result of a rape that occurred when she was fifteen, during an initially consensual experience that turned traumatic. She told someone in power about it at the time, but “they [the accused rapist] never got in trouble for it,” she said in her 2021 documentary Dancing with the Devil.
Demi’s bulimia worsened. She was throwing up blood. Gossip blogs shared photos and posts that encouraged commenters to speculate about any changes in her demeanor and appearance. But on the Camp Rock sets, Maria Canals-Barrera, who played Demi’s character’s mom, said she noticed nothing amiss. “It took me a while to believe some of the things I heard later about her struggles,” Canals-Barrera said, “because I was completely clueless.”
As Demi got older, she—like many teenagers—became more difficult to control. She had begun drinking alcohol at age thirteen. When she passed her high school proficiency exam at age sixteen, she no longer required a guardian on set. That same year, Demi bought her own car with money she had earned and frequently went out with friends until the early hours of the morning. She tried cocaine for the first time at age seventeen.
“What do you say to your child when she is the one paying most of the bills?” Dianna wrote in her memoir. “I couldn’t tell her that I’d take her car away when she was the one who owned it. I couldn’t take her phone away when she was the one paying to use it. And although I tried to make her follow our rules while she lived under our roof, she was the one paying the rent.”
Network and label executives said they were unaware of any serious problems until they later became public. But for a company that loved to micromanage, there were blatant warning signs to even the most ignorant. At Miley Cyrus’s sixteenth birthday party at Disneyland in October 2008, Demi posed for photos on the red carpet with what appeared to be visible cutting marks on her wrists. (Her personal publicist at the time attributed the marks to “indentations” left by tight gummy bracelets.) And when Demi was on her first headlining tour in the summer of 2009, opening act and fellow Hollywood Records artist Jordan Pruitt said it was clear that “Demi was going through a really hard time” and that “made it very tumultuous.” Jordan added, “Everyone was talking about her drinking and disordered eating.”
(In 2019, Jordan filed a since-resolved lawsuit alleging her former music manager sexually abused her, and she also sued Disney and Hollywood Records for allowing her to work with and be unsupervised around him while she was signed to the label in the mid- to late 2000s. When asked about the case, Jordan said, “Unfortunately, all I am legally able to say is ‘no comment.’ ”)
On the road, Disney Channel representatives were rarely present. Tours were the domain of the Disney touring entity, its external partners, and the artists’ personal management. And as young talent was being pulled in infinite directions across the Disney divisions, the impetus could always be shifted to other parties to take action. Whether it was concern around Demi or any of the other performers, the stance of, “If there’s actually a problem, I’m sure someone else is addressing it,” became an easy one for those in power to take. And even if Demi’s behavior was violating the morals clause that appeared in some of her contracts, what incentive was there for someone working on a project to report her for a breach? They would lose their job if she got fired or sought treatment and the project was canceled.
“You feel a profound sense of responsibility,” said Anne Sweeney, then-president of the Disney/ABC Television Group. “But that sense really needs to be shared by everybody: by family, by parents, by agents, by managers. And, sadly, it isn’t always the case.”
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