Onetime Disney Channel starlet Bella Thorne says that she was practically made to bow out of Shake It Up!, resulting from a alternative in beachwear.
As a latest visitor on the High Low With EmRata podcast, Thorne recounted cases of being sexualized as a preteen and teenage, together with an occasion the place, at age 10, she mentioned a casting agent reported again to her mother, “she’s not moving forward because the director felt like she was flirting with him, and it made him really uncomfortable.”
Thorne later spoke of a photograph that almost ended her run because the co-lead (reverse Zendaya) on the sitcom Shake It Up!
“One time I almost got fired off the Disney Channel because I was 14 and I wore a two-piece on the beach,” Thorne shared. “This stylist that I used to be hanging out with put this chain on me that’s like a physique chain…. There was a fan, they obtained a photograph of me on the seaside, I virtually obtained fired.
“It was all over the media, it was viral in that time,” Thorne added, remembering that the critiques had been á la “How dare this little girl do this?”
(*14*)‘Shake It Up!” (Everett Collection)
Shake It Up! debuted in November 2010 and ran for three seasons/75 episodes. In addition to Thorne and Zendaya (as CeCe and Rocky), the forged included Roshon Fegan, Adam Irigoyen, Davis Cleveland, Caroline Sunshine and Kenton Duty. Others who handed via the Disney collection included Phil Morris (as Rocky’s dad, Dr. Curtis Blue), Tyra Banks (as librarian Ms. Burke), Maggie Wheeler, Cat Deeley, Leslie Jordan, Ben Savage, Loretta Devine, Noah Centineo, Cameron Boyce, Yvette Nicole Brown, Alfonso Ribeiro and future White Lotus breakout Haley Lu Richardson.
Thorne mentioned that whereas Disney shunned giving in to “pressure to fire me” from Shake It Up!, her 14-year-old self was prompted to be extra cautious about what she wears in public. Even when on a seaside.
“They were like, ‘Hey, we’re getting a lot of heat for this, everyone’s getting heat for this, because you’re in a bikini on the beach. So, she needs to make sure that she goes out in boy shorts and a loose T-shirt next time she’s at the beach.’”
TVLine has reached out to Disney Channel for touch upon Thorne’s anecdote.
Thorne’s post-Shake it Up! TV credit have included Famous in Love, Scream: The TV Series, Paradise City and an August 2022 episode of American Horror Stories.
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