Bella Thorne has claimed that she was ‘almost fired’ by the Disney Channel aged 14 after attracting backlash for wearing a bikini on the beach.
The former child star was Zendaya’s co-star on Shake It Up! from 2010 and 2013, as well as guesting on other popular shows like Good Luck Charlie and Phineas and Ferb.
However, the 25-year-old actress alleged that her career was almost derailed somewhere around 2011 or 2012 when she was pictured wearing a two-piece in a fan photo at the age of 14.
Recalling how the picture went ‘viral’, Bella, who split from her fiancé in June, said that she had been called ‘disgusting’ in a critical reaction.
‘One time I almost got fired off the Disney Channel because I was 14, and I wore a two-piece on the beach,’ the actress recalled in a new interview with some bewilderment.
‘This stylist that I was hanging out with put this chain on me that’s, like, a body chain. I don’t know? I don’t care. There was a fan, they got a photo of me on the beach. I almost got fired. It was all over the media, it was literally viral in that time. It was, “How dare this little girl do this? This is so disgusting”,’ she said.
Bella then shared on Emily Ratajkowski’s High Low podcast that people were ‘putting Disney under pressure to fire me’ after ‘sexualising’ her for wearing a bikini – but the studio chose not to.
However, she was given advice over how she should dress in the future.
‘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 a beach, so she needs to make sure she goes out in boy shorts and a loose T-shirt next time she’s at the beach”,’ the American Horror Stories actress added.
Elsewhere in the interview, when considering her career low points, Bella remembered going for an audition when she was a young girl and getting ‘feedback’ from the director afterwards that accused her of ‘flirting’ with him, aged just 10.
The director, who she didn’t name, said he was made to feel ‘uncomfortable’ by her, but Bella slammed his feedback, calling it ‘so insane’ and questioning: ‘Why ever would you think that?’
Bella has previously spoken about past traumas in her childhood and how she believes it contributes to the anxiety she experiences as an adult.
Earlier this year the actress and model appeared on Bill Maher’s podcast, where the 66-year-old was criticised as he insisted she had nothing to be anxious about as her generation ‘knows nothing’ about what’s ‘going on in the world’ and ‘everybody wants to be you.’
To which she responded: ‘I think that’s a very narrow kind of mindset in the way of trauma.
‘Everyone really has their trauma. What’s happening in Ukraine is unspeakable – that is something else.
‘But as far as trauma for every human being, I lost my dad when I was eight. I was molested growing up.’
She went on: ‘I went through s**t, everybody goes through s**t… any time we look at someone and go, “They have it all, they must be so f**king happy, you have nothing to complain about,” they’re still with their therapist every day, and they might have PSTD nightmares… that haunt their dreams”.’
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