Remembering being pit against her “Shake It Up” co-star Zendaya beginning from the age of 12, Bella Throne recounted Wednesday how the two actresses escaped from the Disney Channel set to hash things out one-on-one.
The duo played best friends in the dance series on Disney Channel from 2010 to 2013, but Thorne told Alex Cooper on “Call Her Daddy” that adults around her as well as fans of the show would want the co-stars to compete.
“With women, it’s just, ‘Nope, we have to make you guys all beg for one spot so that we can have the 80 other million ones,’” Thorne said, recalling misogynistic feedback from men. “‘We’re asking you to, like, eat yourselves alive while we have all these spots, but for women, just one of you.’”
“The Duff” actress told Cooper that the feedback became so overwhelming that she and Zendaya “escaped” set to discuss the growing tensions between them.
“It got pretty bad,” she said. “It got to a point where when we were on our ‘Good Luck Charlie’ crossover, we escaped to another set in the middle of live taping, which is really ballsy, badass and rebellious.”
“Escaped is a funny word. We didn’t escape, but we snuck out,” she clarified. “We knew that we had three scenes until we were up again and we were just like, ‘Let’s just go talk.’”
Thorne recalled the conversation “as one of the most genuine, girl-on-girl talks” she has had in her personal and professional career.
“We got into it, hashed it out, and it was so beautiful,” she said. “It was my first experience, woman to woman, girl to girl, where you actually can speak, and you can both be heard about the different things you’ve been experiencing.”
The one-time child star revealed that she’s gearing up for her next project to star, write and direct “Spring Breakers 2.” The original film starred Vanessa Hudgens and Selena Gomez as they were emerging from their Disney Channel, kid-friendly personas.
Thorne said that her version brings the same wild energy at the first, but that the circumstances around it are different, citing 2012 as “an exploitative time.”
“Everyone was going through it,” she said. “At that time, me and Miley and Zendaya and Selena and everybody being compared of who was gonna be that next bad girl … It felt like that was the time, and this time, things are different.”
“What I can say is, it is so Litty, Litty McTiddies. I mean, from start to finish, it’s lit as f–k,” she said. “If you wanted to go to the theater and have fun, you gonna have fun with this movie, that’s for sure. It’s balls to the wall.”
Watch Thorne’s full episode of “Call Her Daddy” above.
