Selena Gomez, Miley Cyrus and Disney Channel's Glory Days
Looking back at peak tween television. (Cue the drama!) Plus: Elizabeth Olsen on "His Three Daughters."
I’ll never forget the moment when Selena Gomez, then 16 years old, showed up at The AP’s New York City newsroom. Selena was promoting her Disney Channel movie The Princess Protection Program, and my editor had assigned me to interview her. I never watched The Disney Channel and barely knew who she was.
As an entertainment journalist, I’d spent a lot of time covering the sagas of Lindsay Lohan and Britney Spears; I half-expected Selena to exhibit a fun-loving fragility like those TMZ fixtures. Instead, she projected the poise of a polished, middle-aged woman running for elected office. She did not force smiles. She did not perform for me or try to get me to like her. She did not say anything especially interesting. But she spoke politely and with intelligence about her work and her life while a small entourage hovered nearby.
Reader, I was impressed. And humbled! She acted so old for her age. (Was that normal? Ten years out of high school, I’d forgotten what it felt like to be that young. I did not recall me or my classmates ever speaking in perfect soundbites.)
At the time, Selena shouldered grown-up responsibilities: namely, her important role within the Disney Channel’s star system. She was the public face of the series Wizards of Waverly Place and encouraged to play The Good Girl in media interviews, lest she offend Disney and its wholesome values. She understood how to talk to journalists and (mostly) avoid the tabloid coverage that besmirched Lohan’s reputation.
The Disney Channel guarded its stars like a fortress, keeping Selena and Miley Cyrus and Zac Efron and Raven-Symoné and Hilary Duff on a tight leash. The teens learned that if they messed up in public, there’d be consequences. And despite the power of their individual brands, none was allowed to outshine The Mouse. Some Disney kids, like Demi Lovato and Shia LaBeouf, lacked the foundations to handle fame and crumbled under the weight of it all. But Selena has prospered. Miley, too.
Their formative experiences inside the bubble of the world’s biggest entertainment company have remained shrouded in mystery — until now. Ashley Spencer’s debut book, Disney High: The Untold Story of the Rise and Fall of Disney Channel’s Tween Empire, masterfully documents how a G-rated cable channel managed to capture the cultural zeitgeist in the 2000s, thanks in no small part to its stable of youthful talent. How did its TV princesses and princes survive the spotlight? I spoke with Ashley to find out.
First things first, why did you decide to write Disney High?
I couldn't believe no one had done it. No one had done anything on Disney Channel beyond [writing] articles over the years. Those were mostly business articles at the time when things were happening. No one had really done in-depth analysis. I did a Lizzie McGuire article for Vice in early 2021 for [the show’s 20th anniversary]. But even then, that was the most in-depth anyone had ever looked at Lizzie McGuire.
I love Hilary Duff. The Disney Channel really shifted course when it cast her as Lizzie McGuire, a quirky 13-year-old. Crucially, Hilary was not a 20-year-old playing 13; she and her alter ego were the same age. Imagine that!
What she had that made her so special is she was relatable. She was obviously a very photogenic, talented kid. But she also felt like someone you could be friends with. She seemed really nice. She didn't seem like a scary, mean girl. She felt like someone who — if I ran into her on the street and I'm just a random, 12-year-old from Middle America and I complimented her shoes — would give me a big hug and then we could become friends.
Rich Ross, the former president of Disney Channel, said [he] wanted to cast kids who looked like they could be your classmates. Like people you went to school with. And who felt real.
Authenticity was another big thing. Hilary grew up in Texas. She had been acting before. She had a few roles, but she was not super-polished. I mean, she had filmed a pilot for a Michael Chiklis sitcom just before Lizzie, but [that show] recast her after the pilot because it just wasn't working. She wasn’t the go-to child star of Hollywood that they're plopping into another vehicle. Retaining that rawness and that realness is really what set her apart.
Hilary was born into an affluent nuclear family who did not seemingly view their daughter as a ticket to financial stability. Hilary’s fellow Texan, Selena Gomez, came from more humble beginnings. Her mother, Mandy, had her when she was 16 and worked three jobs to support her. With refreshing nuance, your book makes clear that Mandy’s No. 1 priority is Selena — not benefitting from her paychecks.
An easy correlation that people make is, “Well, if you come from a wealthier family or if your family is well-off, you're better set up for success as a child in Hollywood.” And to a large degree, that is true. Because then, as a parent, you’re not relying on your child's income to supplement your lifestyle. You’re able to maintain those traditional parent-kid dynamics in a way that becomes really muddled, really quickly when your whole life is dependent on your child's success. And if your child is no longer working, your life is going to be detrimentally affected.
By all the accounts of the people that I spoke to, [Mandy] was very nurturing and looked out for Selena, but not in a “I'm doing this because this is making my life better way.” It was more, “I know Selena really wants to do this and I'm going to make sure she's getting her fair cut of things. I'm gonna make sure she's getting recognized as much as these other girls.”
Let’s talk about Hannah Montana. I had assumed that Disney took one look at Miley and said, “That’s our girl!” But that was not how it happened. Disney was on the fence about casting her and took its time to do so. Why?
Miley was too young. She was too little, they felt. But the casting directors — they're the ones who really saw the potential in Miley. They really pushed for the network executives to give her another chance.
They said, “Let’s have Miley send in another tape. She’s a year older now. She's a little taller. She does not look like such a young child. She looks more like a tween.” And it was that same thing with Hillary Duff: She just had this It Factor. Miley was a very talented singer. That was obvious to everyone right away. She had the vocal talent that some of the other actresses they were seeing didn't have. They said, “We can work with that. We can mold her into the sitcom actor that we want her to be.”
Blurring the lines between reality and fiction, Billy Ray Cyrus played his daughter’s character’s dad on Hannah Montana. Meta!
At that time, [Miley and Billy Ray] were very close. People described their relationship as more like friends or siblings than father and daughter, because he was like a big kid. Tish [Cyrus, Miley’s momager] was really the one parenting that whole household. Billy Ray also had dreams of fame and success and had a huge moment in the spotlight with “Achy Breaky Heart” in the early ’90s. He got a taste of that. I mean, Dolly Parton is Miley's godmother because she and Billy Ray were friends and Billy Ray was in one of her music videos and toured with her.
Hannah Montana was a phenomenon, and suddenly Miley was everywhere. It’s fascinating to read your reporting on Billy Ray’s struggle to come to terms with the fact that Miley had outshined him. It got to a point where he was suspected of drinking in his dressing room.
Billy Ray really wanted to be part of that [A-list] world and wanted to be successful. It’s probably a very difficult thing when your child — while you're happy for them and their success — has, at 13, far surpassed the level that you were able to achieve. And you’re staring that in the face every day. And also, you're on a kid's TV show. It's not the way he saw his life going, I think, initially.
Two years after the series’ 2006 debut, Miley posed for the cover of Vanity Fair. The portrait by Annie Leibovitz ignited scandal. The 15-year-old was draped in a blanket, her bare back exposed. (Last year, Miley praised the photoshoot as a “brilliant” move that helped distinguish her from her teeny-bopper persona.) Internally, how did Disney respond to its most popular ambassador — a role model to millions — looking like, well, Lolita?
Disney Channel was not aware that this shoot was happening. This was all uncharted territory. Miley Cyrus was really the first Disney Channel star who became this big and this powerful that she's getting these opportunities — and they're not orchestrated by Disney. Vanity Fair is coming to her personal management, giving her an Annie Leibovitz photoshoot at 15. That just never happened before.
And so, the issue comes out, Disney puts out a lot of statements. Miley apologizes, there's a whole public thing. I spoke to people who were on the corporate side and in these weekly meetings. Surprisingly, they said that the immediate reaction [among] the team members was, “You know, kids make mistakes. If we wanted to have perfect kids, we would just do animated work and only have animated characters. But these are real kids dealing with real things and growing up, so basically, have a little grace.”
However, behind the scenes, you also have Rich Ross, who was the network president, and Anne Sweeney, who was the head of Disney’s television group, hopping on a plane and flying immediately to Nashville, where the Cyruses were filming the Hannah Montana movie. And they had a very tense discussion with them. Basically, “You’ve crossed a line because this is something that's not in line with what Disney Channel viewers are used to seeing. This is putting Miley Cyrus in a different light than she had been seen in before.” While there was a lot of compassion, there was also the understanding that this is not OK from a brand perspective.
Meanwhile, the network’s High School Musical movies exceeded expectations, turning Zac Efron and Vanessa Hudgens into household names. Those two famously developed a showmance and dated offscreen as well as on. Your book has vivid scenes of them falling in puppy-love and bickering in between takes — the stuff of great teenage dramas. Also, Ashley Tisdale and Lucas Grabeel, who played siblings in High School Musical, hated each other. Over at Lizzie Maguire, Hilary Duff — then an aspiring pop star — felt slighted when costar Lalaine was given the opportunity to sing on the show. And on Hannah Montana, Miley and Emily Osment were like oil and water — one wild, the other straightlaced. They all jostled for attention. What do these stories reveal about making teen television?
What you have to remember, with these kids and their drama, is that these are not self-selected friend groups. They are thrown into this environment because they have good on-screen chemistry. They're strangers who are put together and around each other all day, every day, often for years. And oftentimes, friendships do develop and they're compatible. They have similar interests.
But you also see a lot of situations where they just don’t [get along]. It's a strange dynamic because you can't just drift apart and separate yourself; you have to keep seeing this person every day. Fans and people expect you to be best friends if you're playing best friends on a show — that’s probably a very hard and confusing thing for kids to deal with. I tried to be really careful in the book. And whenever I talked about any of the drama or the tension with the kids, I wanted it to be in the way that it was relating to these shows and the business side of it. There were a lot of stories where people would just tell me some sort of petty drama or disagreement — you know, basically a 12-year-old acting like a 12-year-old. And I didn't really see the relevance of putting that kind of stuff in. I did see the relevance if [the drama was] affecting a billion-dollar corporation and it showcased the pressures these kids were under in this very strange world they existed in.
Is there a perception that Disney Channel exploited their adolescent actors? You present a more nuanced account. How did Disney equip The Class of the 2000s for long-term success? How did it fail them?
I think it's very rare that you're going to have an individual who says, “Yes. My goal was to make sure these kids were as miserable as possible and that we got every cent out of them.”
When you talk about Disney exploiting kids — or the question of, “Does Disney exploit kids?” — I think the bigger question comes down to [the presence of] kids in the industry at all. And child performers in Hollywood in general. It’s not normal in the 21st century to be a working professional when you're 14 and younger. It's one of the only industries in which you can do that. The others are having a newspaper route or working at a business that's entirely owned by your family. [Disney Channel productions were] incredibly strange circumstance to put kids in to begin with. The question is: Is it ethical to have kids working at all?
As far as Disney themselves, something that — for better or worse — is a through-line for [the company] is the values of the Disney brand that everyone was beholden to. You have that guiding every decision they make. They’re also hyper-conscious of anything affecting that brand, whether that's the behavior of a star or bad behavior on set by a producer or an adult.
I had heard again and again from adults — producers and writers, No. 1. — about Disney being so heavy-handed. Standards and Practices was so involved about [the writers’ rooms] crossing a line. [Cast and crew members recalled], “We couldn't say these jokes. We couldn't have anything that looked like innuendo.” There was this culture of fear. Someone referred to it as, “Anyone at any level is disposable.” You're never bigger than the brand — even if you are the showrunner making an incredible hit for the network bigger than anything they've seen before.
This interview has edited and condensed for clarity. You can buy Disney High here and check out Ashley’s Substack, Back Here, right here.
ERIN ON THE STREET
Last week, I spoke with Elizabeth Olsen at an SFFILM screening of His Three Daughters in the Presidio. The movie, now streaming on Netflix, is a real gem. It follows estranged siblings Christina (Olsen), Katie (Carrie Coon) and Rachel (Natasha Lyonne) as they reunite to say goodbye to their dying father (Jay O. Sanders). The story is bittersweet, small but universal in its depiction of grief; the performances are titanic. As Christina, a gentle California mom, Olsen holds her own against Coon’s high-strung intensity. Her character is almost painfully earnest. And meek. And easily written off.
Or so we think! In a family drama filled with surprises, Christina reveals that not all heroes are made of steel. Some wear their hearts on their sleeves.
“I really do believe that she tries to make herself as small as possible, so small that she ended up being the only sister to leave New York and go out West,” Olsen, looking chic in an LBD (probably The Row), told me of her role. “What’s beautiful about her experience in the film is she actually has a lot to give and share in a very quiet way that's her own. And that shows itself throughout.”
As for filming alongside Coon and Lyonne, she revealed, “We became pretty boundary-less with one another very quickly. We became fully involved in each other's personal lives and never wanted to really be [still] for any reason. We just would find a corner and laugh. Anytime [director] Azazel [Jacobs] would find us, we would just be kind of entangled in each other's limbs. There’s something so freeing about making a project like this. It was so quiet. There was no one else we were making it for besides ourselves.”
END CREDITS
I loved Chloe Malle’s juicy interview with Philippine Leroy-Beaulieu, a.k.a. Sylvie from Emily in Paris.
I am cracking up at Sylvanian Drama’s recap of the season four finale.
Emily Henry cast Alfie — I mean, Lucien Laviscount — in the upcoming adaptation of her novel People We Meet on Vacation. I CANNOT WAIT.
Lana Schwartz gives Kit Keller the hero treatment she deserves.
Elizabeth Held recommends books for fan-favorite TV characters. This is a fun read! It inspires me to do the same for the next edition of You’ve Got Mail: The Newsletter, but with a rom-com twist. Got a reading rec for Kathleen Kelly? Let me know and I’ll give you a credit.
Yours in “Meg Ryan Fall,”
Erin
thank you for the shout out!! <3
"she projected the poise of a polished, middle-aged woman running for elected office" ... omg this is so accurate for young Selena.