Zendaya and Bella Thorne were forced to face off when they were child actresses at Disney. “Things got bad”

If you go see a movie at the cinema right now, there’s a very high chance you’ll end up running into Zendaya, because she appears in both Spider-Man: Brand New Day and The Odyssey. What’s more: we’ll also be seeing her soon in Dune 3, after being amazed by her role in The Drama this year. Bella Thorne, her former Disney Channel co-star, hasn’t been so lucky, but at least nobody pits them against each other in a nasty way anymore. Mental health always matters more than money.

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Enemies by design

It’s worth remembering that the two of them starred in the same show: it was Shake It Up, which ran for 75 episodes between 2010 and 2013, and where, as you’d expect, they picked up teenage fans by the truckload. But of course, the directors wanted blood, as Thorne says: “With women it’s like: ‘We have to make all of you beg for a spot… if you’re capable of tearing each other apart and fighting each other as fiercely as we’re asking you to and devouring each other alive while we have all these spots, but for women, there’s only one…”.

Imagine that, just into your teens, they pit you against a friend out of nowhere: “The patriarchy has been doing it since the beginning of time. Looking back, we were 12 years old! What’s wrong with you? We’re supposed to be best friends. We play the part of best friends. It got pretty ugly”.

At least we can take comfort in the fact that they didn’t play along: “It got to a point where, when we were doing our crossover with Good Luck Charlie, we snuck off to another set in the middle of a live taping, which is ballsy and rebellious. We ran off. We knew we had three scenes left before it was our turn again and we went to talk. We got into it, we shook it off, and it was beautiful“.

Luckily, although in season 1 they were forced to compete with each other, afterward they learned to be good friends. But of course, the more we know about the Disney Channel shows of that era, the more terrifying it seems. Nothing to do with the wands, the Mickey Mouse ears, and the ear-to-ear smiles.