Starring in a Disney project has launched many a superstar's career, but is it really
worth the cost?
From Miley Cyrus to Selena Gomez, and Rowan Blanchard to Jake Paul, here are the real
reasons these stars left Disney in the dust.
Mitchel Musso
Mitchel Musso rose to fame as Hannah Montana's BFF, Oliver.
And when the show ended in 2011, Musso got the chance to star in his own Disney XD series,
Pair of Kings.
Though the series received two Emmy noms during Musso's run, the star was dealt an unfortunate
hand that might have gotten him booted from the show.
"Oh my."
According to TMZ in 2011, a 20-year-old Musso fell into the tired cliché of troubled Disney
stars who eventually get slapped with DUIs.
According to E! News, Musso struck a plea deal in 2012, the same year he left Pair of
Kings.
Disney kept Musso around for the animated series Phineas and Ferb, maybe since it's
tough to place a face to the DUI when you're voice acting.
Jake Paul
Most of us know Logan Paul from his infamous apology tour, but being a public nuisance
seems to run in the family.
"I do like dares."
In 2015, Logan's little bro, Jake Paul, landed his breakthrough role on Disney's Bizaardvark,
but two years later, he reportedly got booted from the series for his viral video antics.
In an interview with THR, the star claimed he started to get "angry emails" from Disney's
talent relations division when his content tilted toward the "edgier" side.
It all finally came to a head when KTLA investigated reports of Jake tormenting residents in his
posh Beverly Grove neighborhood by hosting drag races, lighting things on fire, and generally
being a menace to society.
His behavior was so bad neighbors reportedly considered filing a class action lawsuit.
He claims the network allowed him to say they "mutually parted ways" to save some face,
but make no mistake, he was roasted harder than the smoldering furniture in his drained
swimming pool.
"It's gonna be kind of awkward though because, like, I can't say here we go anymore."
"I mean like you can."
"I can but it's just gonna be awkward."
Demi Lovato
Demi Lovato has been open about her struggles with mental illness and addiction, but she
hasn't always approached the issue with such transparency.
During her Camp Rock days, the Disney starlet was hiding her drug usage from the adults
in her life.
In her documentary Simply Complicated, the "Sober" singer revealed that things finally
boiled over when she punched her background dancer while on tour.
"I remember thinking I'm about to beat this b---- up."
Her family and management staged an intervention, and the singer reportedly checked into rehab
following a two-month, cocaine-fueled bender.
The star also revealed that she'd been struggling with self-harm and bulimia, which she developed
as a child after being bullied about her weight.
She told ABC News,
"I was performing concerts on an empty stomach.
I was losing my voice from purging.
I was self-medicating.
I was not taking medication for depression, and I literally was so emotionally whacked
out that I took it out on someone that meant a lot to me."
In 2011, the starlet confirmed to People that she'd be leaving her Disney series Sonny with
a Chance and focusing on music.
Hilary Duff
There are conflicting stories about what exactly led Hilary Duff to leave behind the butterfly-clipped
hair and platform Sketchers of Lizzie McGuire, but the star reportedly walked away from the
franchise because of her paycheck.
Duff's mom-slash-manager, Susan Duff, claimed Disney was trying to "bully" her daughter
into accepting an offer she didn't like, to do a sequel to The Lizzie McGuire Movie.
Susan told Entertainment Weekly,
"We walked away from a sequel.
[Disney] walked away from a franchise."
But despite all that talk about alleged contract disputes, it seems like Duff actually wanted
to move on in order to reconnect with her true identity.
The star admitted she quote, "chose to bow out for a minute" after Lizzie McGuire, telling
Pride Source,
"I was just making records and touring and making movies, and then doing it all over
again…
By the end of it, I was like, 'I'm done.
I don't enjoy this anymore.
I'm not who I wanna be.'"
In 2018, after what seems like a lifetime since the show ended, Duff admitted she'd
actually been in talks to revisit Lizzie McGuire, telling ET,
"She was so important to girls at an important time in their life and if she could be important
to them again at this age, like, I think that would be amazing."
Rowan Blanchard
Let's be real for a minute: We were all crushed when Disney cancelled Girl Meets World.
"You had to know this was going to happen.
A lot of things are going to happen."
Unfortunately, it looks like the series fell victim to shrinking ratings.
According to Forbes, it lost around 3.6 million viewers between the Season 1 premiere and
Season 3.
Fortunately, Girl Meets World brought us Rowan Blanchard, one of the most radical Disney
Channel stars to ever grace the network.
Despite her young age, the actress regularly promoted the idea of intersectional feminism,
rallied for the Me Too movement, and openly discussed her queer identity.
"And I feel like my thoughts and my opinions have always been open, and they've always
been allowed, and I definitely want to encourage other teens to do the same."
Blanchard separated from Disney following the cancellation of Girl Meets World in 2017,
telling W Magazine that she felt controlled by "a corporation" throughout her career.
Though she never specifically mentioned Disney by name, judging by her acting history and
the length of the show's run, we can guess that she was referring to an entity with two
big, round ears.
She said,
"I worked for a corporation for four years that is known for silencing and crafting your
voice, so with that I just had to very much stand my ground and separate myself, which
I think I did.
It's nice now because now people don't really recognize me from the show, they recognize
me from my activism, which has been very comforting."
Jake T. Austin
Jake T. Austin was once a well-oiled cog in the Disney-ABC machine.
He rose to fame alongside Selena Gomez in The Wizards of Waverly Place, then moved on
with the coming of age drama The Fosters on ABC Family, then Freeform.
"I'm on the phone, on the phone at my house, 'Jake, you're going back to California.'
Yessssss."
At first, it seemed Austin must have truly had magical powers to escape his Disney Channel
show without making headlines for bad behavior, but his time would come a few months after
the 2013 special, The Wizards Return: Alex vs. Alex.
According to TMZ, the then-18-year-old Austin was arrested for a DUI in October of that
year.
And a month later, he was involved in a four-car hit-and-run.
TMZ reported that witnesses saw the actor drive into three parked cars, toss a bottle
of Ciroc out of his car, then Uber away from the scene.
However, a judge decided he reported the accident to police "within a reasonable time" and let
him off the hook.
Then there were the 2014 Teen Choice awards where, as TMZ reported, Austin went, quote,
"full Lohan."
The star allegedly threw a tantrum backstage, pulled the "don't you know who I am?"
card, and lobbed an empty shoe box at a female staffer.
Despite racking up some majorly bad press, Austin claimed he was the one who walked away
from The Fosters.
In a tweet, he said the network reduced his role during Season 3, so he quit to pursue
other opportunities.
Miley Cyrus
Miley Cyrus landed on the radar in what might just be the golden age of Disney stardom,
a tabloid-driven era where purity rings and brief encounters with salvia reigned supreme.
"So uh, you and Miley are pretty close, huh?"
"You have no idea."
The young actress quickly went from pretend, secret pop star to highly public, actual pop
star faster than she could change her wig.
But mounting pressure may have led to her quitting the show in 2010.
Cyrus has admitted that playing Hannah Montana wasn't easy.
She was subject to 12-hour workdays while filming, which prompted her mother to suggest
bringing in lights to ward off seasonal affective disorder.
And the young actress claims she was done up to look so unlike herself, that it may
have led to her body dysmorphia.
"I think now that I'm older, now, I realized that's a lot to put on a kid."
She also began to suffer from intense anxiety, telling Marie Claire,
"I would have anxiety attacks.
I'd get hot flashes, feel like I was about to pass out or throw up…
Then the anxiety started coming from anxiety…
You get in this hole that seems like you're never going to be able to get out of."
Cyrus did eventually put her Disney days behind her.
Her dad, Billy Ray Cyrus, told Access Hollywood that Miley forged on with Hannah Montana through
Season 4 because she wanted the series to have an "official ending."
She retired from acting in 2013 to pursue music full-time, and she's mostly stuck to
that plan.
Selena Gomez
The former Wizards of Waverly Place star, Selena Gomez, reportedly left her Disney days
behind her so she could be herself, telling the New York Times,
"I was being held to this expectation of being the good girl.
I knew deep down that this wasn't what I wanted to do, being exhausted of forcing something
that wasn't right."
So instead, Gomez essentially blew up her life, but in the good way that makes spectacular
fireworks.
According to Refinery29, the starlet broke away from Disney, signed a contract with Interscope,
fired her mom as her manager, and called it quits with then-boyfriend Justin Bieber.
The result was Revival, a deeply cathartic record she executive produced on her own terms.
"Revival is my fifth record, and it's been a whirlwind.
It's the first time I've had full control over everything, and I was really able to
discover a lot about myself."
She told TIME,
"This record is me feeling like I can breathe…
Working with Disney, I had a certain amount of respect for my image…
I just don't care about the noise anymore.
It made me depressed, it made me not want to get out of my house, and it made me not
want to talk to people and trust people.
That's not how I want to live my life."
Adrienne Bailon
Adrienne Bailon is better known today for getting Rob Kardashian's name tattooed on
her bum than she is for her time with Disney.
"I have my ex boyfriend's name on my butt, on my bottom, not my favorite tattoo, and
that's the one I definitely wanna get removed."
Her run with Disney's girl group, The Cheetah Girls, ended in scandal when her laptop, which
was apparently chock full of racy photos, was stolen at JFK Airport.
The pics were subsequently leaked online, but according to her former publicist Jonathan
Jaxson, the whole thing was a hoax, and Bailon had allegedly leaked the photos herself.
Bailon never confirmed this and claimed to be taking legal action against the supposed
thieves.
Jaxson wrote in his tell-all,
"After they saw the evidence, she was released from her Disney contract.
And her musical group, Cheetah Girls, was promptly removed from the Macy's Thanksgiving
Day Parade because of the scandal."
Bella Thorne
Bella Thorne never exactly confirmed the reason she left Disney, but her show, Shake It Up,
was cancelled in 2013 despite being the Number 1 series in two demographics.
Though Deadline claims the move was nothing out of the ordinary, it seems like Thorne
might have been fed up with taking orders from the Mouse.
Her body of work, which had previously included a recurring role on the HBO series Big Love,
didn't really fit in with her Disney Channel image.
And she supposedly almost got fired when someone took a picture of her wearing a bikini, which
her mom had picked it out.
Thorne told the YouTube series Under The Influence of her former employer,
"They said, 'You're lucky that Bella has such a fan base that we can't afford to fire her
at this moment in time.
But if she does one more other thing, we will.'"
The actress also revealed to Nylon that she would even talk with a higher voice in order
to appeal to Disney's demographics.
According to Under the Influence, Thorne reached a point when she was quote, "unwilling to
adhere to the Disney machine."
Steve Whitmire
You might not recognize Steve Whitmire's face, but you'll recognize his voice.
"Ah, hi ho it's Kermit the Frog here."
For 27 years, Whitmire was the man behind Kermit the Frog.
Whitmire was reportedly asked to take over the role of the famed frog in 1990, following
Jim Henson's death.
He seemed to outlast the franchise's jump to Disney in 2004, but he told THR he was
fired in 2016 over a union disagreement and "unwanted notes" on the ABC Muppets reboot.
"I had had no advanced warning on that.
You know, nothing had ever been framed to me as a career breaking problem."
The note in question reportedly involved an episode where Kermit lies to his nephew about
his breakup with Miss Piggy.
Whitmire told THR,
"I don't think Kermit would lie to him…
Kermit is too compassionate to lie to him to spare his feelings.
We have been doing these characters for a long, long time, and we know them better than
anybody.
I thought I was aiding to keep it on track."
But beyond character disagreements and union contracts, Disney claimed Whitmire was fired
for quote, "unacceptable business conduct" and an "overly hostile and unproductive" communication
style.
"Well, y'know, Piggy and I had a great relationship for many many years, and we sorta wanted different
things."
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