Demi Lovato is getting honest about her struggle early on in her career as a Disney star.
The 33-year-old pop star made a recent appearance on Keke Palmer’s Baby, This Is Keke Palmer podcast and got candid about her challenges her younger self faced, revealing that she has a lot of “compassion” for the version of herself she was during the early days of her career.
“There’s so many emotions that come to mind when I think about that period of time in my life,” Demi told Keke on the March 3 episode of her podcast.
“I have a lot of compassion for my younger self, because we were held to such high standards at such a young age… I think I was so hard on myself at the time that I wish I’d had more grace for myself,” she shared.
Lovato kickstarted as a teenage Disney star with As the Bell Rings series and Sonny with a Chance, and rose to fame with her role in Camp Rock and Camp Rock 2, in which she starred along with Nick Jonas, Joe Jonas and Kevin Jonas.
Mentioning the time of her Camp Rock 2 press tour, Lovato revealed she went through a “breakdown” and made amends at the time.
“I had to make amends to a lot of people, saying like, ‘I’m sorry. I was so challenging to work with at the time. I was so miserable in my own skin and dealing with what I was going through, that I wasn’t the nicest person to work with at the time,’” Lovato revealed.
“And I think that chapter of my life where I was being really reflective of everything and, like, I wanted to make sure I wanted to right my wrongs.”
Keke, who was also a child star, noted that the steps they made when they were younger were in order to survive.
Demi, agreeing to Keke, added, “I was 16, 17, like, I don’t know. I just wasn’t always the nicest because what happened was when people would come on set and they’d say, ‘Good morning, Demi. How are you?’ In my head, I would literally think, ‘You don’t care about me. You don’t really care how I’m doing.’”
“I just wanted so badly for someone to see that I was struggling. And when I ended up having my breakdown, like everyone did, and I was able to explain to people afterwards, like, it wasn’t personal. Like, when I showed up and was bratty on set, like, that was not my intention. I was just doing, like, exactly what you said, doing what I had to do to survive,” she recalled.

