Who knew? Demi Lovato had a crush on Barney when she was an 8-year-old child actress on the purple dinosaur’s beloved show — but there’s a good reason. According to Lovato, now 23, the man who wore the costume on Barney & Friends was “jacked.”
“Barney was actually very attractive inside the suit!” Lovato told Late Show host Stephen Colbert on Thursday, June 16. “I’ve always gone for older guys, so even when I was younger, I thought the guy in the suit was hot.”
The “Confident” singer explained that Barney’s portrayer was in good shape by necessity “because the suit was, like, 100 pounds.”
Lovato starred on the children’s program alongside pal Selena Gomez, and in 2013 revealed to Cosmopolitan that although she was “so grateful to be on TV” she “was also really struggling.”
“Even before Barney, I was suicidal. I was 7,” she confessed to the mag of her troubled past. “With Barney, I guess subliminally, I did have a relationship with this figure that was saving my life in a way.”
During her interview with Colbert on Thursday, her tourmate Nick Jonas joined her and praised her for never having a “child star meltdown.”
“Well, I went to rehab, so …,” Lovato corrected him, laughing.
The former child star, who recently split from longtime boyfriend Wilmer Valderrama, sought treatment at a rehab facility in 2010 for emotional and physical issues. During a 2013 interview with Fitness magazine, Lovato revealed that she almost checked back into rehab for an eating disorder.
“I was obsessing over food and terrified of it at the same time. Wilmer noticed and called me out on it, which was a relief,” she shared of her then-boyfriend. “I was done being afraid of food and so tired of overeating and not knowing why I did it.”
As Us Weekly previously reported, Lovato and Valderrama called it quits earlier this month after six years of dating.
