Miley Cyrus, Demi Lovato, and the dark side of the Disney Channel’s golden age

A normal girl, Miley Ray Stewart sports a wig to become superstar Hannah Montana, in the Disney series that aired from 2006 to 2011. Then there’s the magical lair of the three Russo siblings, who compete to inherit the family’s powers, behind the fridge of their sandwich store in The Wizards of Waverly Place (2007-2012). And remember the shy and clumsy Lizzie who dreams of being popular as her animated cartoon chronicles her teenage life in Lizzie McGuire (2001-2004). And what about Raven Baxter’s visions that punctuate every episode of That’s So Raven (2003-2007).

These sitcoms had a whole generation in their thrall and were the essence of Disney Channel’s golden age in the 2000s. Prior to these shows, Disney Channel was all about cartoons. However, when the shows’ stars stepped out of the spotlight, there emerged a pattern of eating disorders, struggles with the constant media scrutiny and the pressure to be perfect. It is precisely this dark side of the channel’s heyday that writer Ashley Spencer examines in her new book, Disney High: The Untold Story of the Rise and Fall of Disney Channel’s Tween Empire.

Spencer, who has worked for The New York Times, Vanity Fair and The Hollywood Reporter, has combed through the Disney Channel catalog — “My Disney+ thinks I’m probably 13” — she joked in an interview with Vanity Fair. She trawled through newspaper archives and talked to 150 people who were involved with the company to expose how the behind-the-scenes problems began when the channel became increasingly defined by the up-and-coming actors it was turning into stars. In other words, when the company realized the commercial value of churning out characters played mainly by irresistibly cute actresses. “They needed marketable, lovable stars to open up movie franchises, record deals, and market Disney on a whole new level,” Spencer writes in her book. “They succeeded.”

Disney’s stars, including Hilary Duff, Raven-Symoné, Miley Cyrus, Selena Gomez and Demi Lovato, suffered the consequences. These are some of the revelations that fill Disney High’s 336 pages, which also features the Jonas Brothers, the twins Dylan and Cole Sprouse, and the phenomenon that was the premiere of High School Musical in 2005. It is a review that begins in 1996 and ends in 2010, when the younger generation became distracted by social media.

Lizzie McGuire attempted to portray a 13-year-old girl’s reality. The embarrassment of buying a first bra and how to deal with an eating disorder were among the storylines. Off-screen, Duff was also struggling with an eating disorder. And while the famous sitcom served as a launchpad for Duff’s career beyond Disney, the issues that arose on set, including the pressure to look thin, stayed with her for years. “I would say that was five years of my life just trying to navigate becoming a person that I wanted to be outside of who everybody wanted me to be,” the actress said in 2023 on the Good Guys podcast, quoted in Spencer’s book.

The consequences this kind of pressure were also felt by Raven-Symoné, who was competing with Duff onscreen with her series That’s So Raven. That a black, non-normative girl was starring in a sitcom was revolutionary. “I want to bring a new beauty to television. I would love to bring what normal people look like to the screen,” Raven-Symoné said in 2006 in a Los Angeles Times interview. However, she was not immune to criticism and the pressure got to her. The recurring comment she heard as a then 17-year-old on the set of That’s So Raven and The Cheetah Girls 2003 movie, was that she was getting fat and should be on a diet.

During the filming of That’s So Raven, Raven-Symoné's body image was manipulated at the whim of the producers, who edited shots to make her look thinner, according to Spencer. Before turning 18, Raven-Symoné had two breast reduction operations and liposuction, writes Spencer. The producers’ defense was that they wanted to protect her and stop viewers from judging her.

Miley Cyrus and the problems of being a Disney star

“Once the Disney record labels started cooperating with the Disney TV side and everyone recognized that there’s a mutual benefit to cross-promoting talent on both ends, that’s when you are starting to get Disney Channel stars who are also putting out record-breaking albums, who are going on concert tours, who are selling so much merchandise,” Spencer tells The LA Times. “That’s how it became so ever-present in American society in the mid-2000s. That’s when magic happened.”

Extreme pressure, overwhelming mental workload, and being a Disney product are the challenges facing the channel’s stars, says Spencer in her book. For the network’s three best-known performers — Miley Cyrus, Selena Gomez and Demi Lovato — those challenges eventually wore them down.

Cyrus was the first. Among the problems that came with her rise to fame were attachment to her character, an abusive work schedule, constant media scrutiny and concerns about her body image. Disney High recounts that Disney Channel executives didn’t want her role as Hannah Montana to reinforce the idea that a pop star should be ultra-thin. “They didn’t want to create the image of, ‘This is beauty,’” Spencer says. “They wanted it to be inspirational, not something harmful to children.” However, this led to another problem: Cyrus couldn’t be the role model because, by then, she herself was a volatile teenager.

The puritanical image in which Cyrus had been corseted exploded in 2008 when, at the age of 15, she was on the cover of Vanity Fair with no more than a white sheet covering her breasts. Subsequently, the singer was made to apologize. “My job isn’t to tell your kids how to act or how not to act, because I’m still figuring that out for myself. So to take that away from me is a bit selfish. Your kids are going to make mistakes whether I do or not. That’s just life,” Cyrus said in an interview for Harper’s Bazaar in 2010. And in 2018, via a post on X, she retracted her apology, “I’m not sorry. Fuck you.”

“The concept of the show is that when you’re this character, when you have this alter ego, you’re valuable,” Cyrus told People magazine in 2021. “You’ve got, like, millions of fans, you’re the biggest star in the world, and then the concept was that when I looked like myself, when I didn’t have the wig on anymore, no one cared about me, I wasn’t a star anymore.”

This dichotomy between her character and her product was exploited by Disney, which ended up turning the actress into a round-the-clock product. During the week she filmed Hannah Montana and on weekends she dedicated her time to concerts, TV gigs, press conferences, photo shoots and recording music, among other things. “She was a hamster on a wheel that was spinning nonstop,” Spencer writes.

Selena Gomez’s media harassment

Like her predecessor, Selena Gomez also felt the pressure to be a role model. “That was my job in a way. To be perfect,” she told Vogue, years after her departure from Disney, regarding her role in The Wizards of Waverly Place. But unlike Cyrus, she not only became a massive star thanks to her fictional character, Alex Russo, but because of her relationship with pop phenomenon Justin Bieber.

From 2010, Gomez was hounded by the press. The paparazzi began to appear at her recording locations, on her family vacations and days out, hoping to snap her alone or with Bieber. Her relationship with the singer was under constant public scrutiny, even years after their breakup when a narrative emerged on social media, pitting her against Hailey Bieber, the singer’s current wife. “Too heavy a burden for a teenager to carry,” Spencer writes.

Demi Lovato’s hell

For Demi Lovato, the third star of Disney Channel’s golden age, fame became a nightmare. The actress always dreamed of leaving her native Texas and becoming a movie star, and she did. However, her past experiences — she was bullied in high school, bullied for her weight and pushed toward taking her own life — were relived by her characters in such a way that she was unable to leave them behind. According to Spencer, “She had a hard time building a wall between herself and her characters to protect herself.”

The oppressive schedule, substance abuse, bulimia, self-harm and a traumatic rape she suffered as a teenager plunged her into severe depression. “Any time that you suppress a part of yourself, it’s going to overflow at some point. That’s ultimately what happened to me in a lot of areas in my life,” she stated in her documentary Dancing with the Devil (2021). On weekends she was on tour, and on Mondays she was back on the set of Sonny with a Chance (2009-2011) or Camp Rock (2008). Lovato’s hell during her Disney years culminated with her admission to rehab in 2010. And while the company hoped that she would resume recording and concerts, Lovato cut ties. She had reached a point of no return.

Despite all the problems and the hell of childhood fame, in the Disney Channel shows the characters played by Duff, Raven-Symoné, Cyrus, Gomez and Lovato will always be smiling and carefree, with all their obstacles overcome.

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