Demi Lovato Reflects on Child Stardom, Explains Why She 'Wasn't the Nicest Person to Work With' at Times

Demi Lovato is reflecting on the struggles she faced during her childhood and growing up in the spotlight.

The 33-year-old singer visited Keke Palmer‘s podcast Baby, This is Keke Palmer this week and they got very candid and raw about the difficulties they faced being so young in the entertainment industry.

Demi admitted that they weren’t “the nicest person to work with at the time,” speaking to her days on the Disney Channel and shows like Sonny with a Chance.

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She reflects on going to Alcoholics Anonymous and carrying out one of the steps, which is making amends.

“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,’” she shared.

Demi continued, “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.”

Looking back, the “Here All Night” singer says she does have “a lot of compassion” for her younger self, because they “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 says, adding that she does “have that grace and compassion” for her inner child now as an adult.

Demi has previously been open about struggling with an eating disorder and their mental health

Keke, who is also a former child star, said that some of the decisions they made when they were younger were coming from a place of trying to “survive,” a point that Demi agreed with.

“I was 16, 17, like, I don’t know,” Demi explained. “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.’”

The Camp Rock star went on to say, “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.”

During the same podcast, Demi and Keke also reflected on dating much older men when they were teenagers.