Opening up. Demi Lovato joined the casts of Sonny With a Chance and So Random! for a virtual reunion on Saturday, April 25, and was very honest about her struggles that she’s faced.
“I went to rehab — several times,” the singer, 27, said when her former costar Allisyn Ashley Arm asked what everyone has been up to since Sonny With a Chance ended in 2011. The two-time Grammy nominee then explained that Tiffany Thornton, who was also part of the Zoom reunion, was a big help to her when she went away.
“When I went away to treatment for the first time, you were my biggest inspiration coming out of it because you dealt with all of those pressures of being a woman on TV,” Lovato told Thornton, 34, who starred as Tawni Hart in both Sonny With a Chance and the spinoff, So Random. “I looked at that as, ‘I wish I had that so bad.’ Yes, I probably was happier in my head with whatever I looked like at the time. But I’m so much happier now with the mentality that you have. I look back now and I’m like, ‘Man, it’s a shame that we wasted any energy on what we wore on set.'”
The “I Love Me” singer, who was joined by Thornton, Arm, Doug Brochu, Sterling Knight, Audrey Whitby, Matthew Scott Montgomery, Shayne Topp and Damien Haas for the reunion, starred as Sonny Munroe on the Disney Channel series from 2009 to 2011.
Lovato, who was only 19 when she exited the show after two seasons, revealed she “wasn’t sleeping and was so miserable and angry too because I felt like I was being overworked” during the series. “When I left, you don’t expect your show to go on without you, but it did. But I couldn’t have been happier for everybody,” she added. “I just wasn’t in a period of time when I was ready to be on camera again. I could not go back into that environment and there were other things that factored into it.”
Thornton later pointed out that the Camp Rock alum’s dressing room was “98 degrees everyday,” to which Lovato responded, “I had an eating disorder and I was underweight and freezing!”
She continued: “I would have people over for meetings on my lunch breaks because that’s how much I worked. People would come in and I’d be covered in a blanket and people would say, ‘Why is it 80 degrees in here?’ I would be like, ‘Because I’m freezing.’ They would be like, ‘Oh my god, what’s wrong with you?'”
Although the cast admitted they all miss each other, Lovato explained she doesn’t want to revisit the series because she “went through so much” while on set.
“I would rather just start a whole new project with all of you,” she told the group. “I had the best time with you guys and when I think about the show, I miss you guys. And I miss spending time with you and joking and going to Kitchen 24 on our lunch breaks! If we were ever to do anything, I think we should just do a whole new thing.”
