From JoJo Siwa’s Coming Out to Kenan Thompson Getting Conned: Biggest Revelations from Demi Lovato’s Child Star Documentary

Demi Lovato’s new documentary gives a sobering look at what it is like to grow up in the spotlight.

Child Star, the documentary marking the actor/musician’s (who uses she/they pronouns) directorial debut, features a number of jaw-dropping admissions from people across the industry who got their starts as children. Kenan Thompson, Drew Barrymore, Christina Ricci, Raven-Symoné, Alyson Stoner and JoJo Siwa all make bold admissions while discussing growing up as household names.

Here are the biggest revelations from the documentary, now streaming on Hulu.

Demi Lovato was given a ‘suicide petition’ signed by her classmates

Lovato discusses what it was like trying to balance acting with life outside of that, especially when going back to school after filming. It wasn’t long until the rising Disney star started to experience “bullying” from her peers, she says.

“The popular girls would be writing in the bathroom stalls, ‘Demi’s a whore,’ all these nasty things. It got to the point where the end of the day on a Friday, I remember going to lunch and feeling like everyone was staring at me. They had signed a suicide petition saying I should kill myself,” she reveals.

“It was passed around and people signed it. It was so extremely hurtful. And that was part of my motivation to follow my dreams, because I knew it would get me out of Texas. I imagined what it would be like being on Disney Channel. I was like, ‘I’m going to become so famous they can’t escape my name.’ ”

Camp Rock was ‘Disney High’ for the child actors

While Lovato would come to have a difficult relationship with Disney fame, things were good at the beginning. They recall having “so much fun filming Camp Rock.”

“The whole thing was so exciting. We were all just kind of thrown into this Disney machine,” she adds.

“We called it Disney High. We were dating each other and there was people who didn’t like each other and we were all the same age and none of us were in high school, so that was our experience of it.”

Alyson Stoner was the first to confront Demi Lovato about their eating disorder

During the filming of Camp Rock, both Stoner and Lovato were struggling with eating disorders quietly.

“I remember one time you followed me into the bathroom in Camp Rock 1 and I had been purging. You picked up on it because your spidey senses were already in tune with those behaviors, and you followed me in and you talked to me,” Lovato says to Stoner.

“I was really grateful that someone didn’t just shun me, in that moment, or shame me at all. I felt like you were very understanding, but that was definitely a moment I remember being — one, ‘Oh my god, somebody knows. F—.’ But two, I was really grateful that you were there for me.”

Stoner agrees they “felt that support mutually,” adding, “We know what we were dealing with at the surface level was just one part of the story of what we’re going through each day.”

Raven-Symoné knew how much money she was making at age 3

Symoné started acting at 16 months old. By the time she was old enough to understand, “I knew it was work immediately. My parents made sure that I understood that this was a job. I get paid for it. You show up professionally.”

“I knew at 3 how much I was making and I understood it’s a job. If you lose it, you don’t make that money,” Symoné notes.

Of her own family’s handling of her money and fame, Symoné says, “We call it a family business. Everybody has a job within the family business, so nobody likes to say one person’s the breadwinner or not … read through those lines.”

She also touches on how significant it was for her to land the role of Olivia on The Cosby Show.

“The Cosby Show was the number-one television show in America, especially with an African American cast and so influential within the fabric of society. A young girl from Atlanta, Georgia … that’s the dream of so many Black people at that time. From the age of 16 months, I knew that my job was to entertain other people. That’s a mind thing in itself.”

She later continues, “Sometimes the parents’ dreams might bleed into the child’s, and you get so enmeshed. Parents forget that children, young kids, are performing for their parent. They’re performing for their parents’ love and affection and their ‘good job.’ And yes, it’s a lot of money, it’s a lot of money. And money does crazy s—.”

Kenan Thompson was scammed out of the majority of his Nickelodeon earnings

Thompson was one of many child stars who suffered from the mismanagement of his income, he explains, noting that Florida doesn’t have the laws to protect child actors that exist in other states.

“My mom met this dude somewhere through the community — either like church or neighborhood s—, through a book club or something, who claimed to be a good kind of tax accountant, will get you out of your tax problems for the cheap. He was basically a con artist and like ran away with my entire, my biggest earnings up until that point,” he reveals.

“By the time that was discovered, that was toward the end of that Nickelodeon tenure and the end of the job-to-job existence I had up until that point, and it was devastating because I discovered it in front of others. I went to go buy a house in Atlanta, like my first home kind of s—, and he didn’t show up with the f—— check. I’m with the real estate people at the office waiting to sign this paperwork, and he doesn’t bring the check … It’s crazy going from rags to riches and back to rags. It’s a mother——.”

Demi Lovato felt they were ‘gross’ about being ‘unhappy’ living the dream

Lovato always felt grateful for their fame, but they also struggled with being successful and the fandom that comes with it.

“There was one time where I was on my tour bus and I looked out the window there were fans chasing my tour bus, and they were screaming and they were so excited my bus was showing up to the venue. I was just crying, could not stop crying,” they recall.

“Why am I living my dream and doing what I love and have these opportunities in front of me, but I’m so f—— unhappy? I would always feel so gross about myself. I knew that being on Disney Channel, I was in a coveted position that millions of people would trade me in a heartbeat and I felt like I was taking it for granted. But really, I was just a teenager that was struggling.”

Demi Lovato, Raven-Symoné and Alyson Stoner all have dealt with ‘disassociation’ from their work and experiences

Stoner says that they “went straight to treating [dancing] like it was work” when they started at the age of 3.

“I think I was kind of disassociated throughout the whole journey. On the outside, you look like everything’s okay, and years later, you can’t remember a thing,” they share.

Symoné agrees, noting her memories of working on The Cosby Show are “disappearing every single day.”

“If you would have asked me that when I was 13, I would have said I remember what the floor looked like and I remember the smells, but even that would be recall from a recall. Nothing is a pure memory right now.”

Lovato then admits they didn’t remember Symoné guest-starring on their Disney show Sonny with a Chance.

“When we first got on the phone to talk about this project, I said, ‘I watched you on That’s So Raven, you’re such an inspiration.’ And you were like, ‘Bitch I was on  your show,’” Lovato says, to which both laugh.

“And I was like, ‘Oh my God, she was.’ But it was part of my disassociation that I don’t even remember so much of my show that I was on, but I do remember how difficult I was to work with because I was in so much pain and I was hurting.”

JoJo Siwa was asked to tell retailers she wasn’t ‘crazy’ after coming out

Siwa explains that at the height of her Nickelodeon fame, she was under an “umbrella deal” where “they owned all the rights to everything, except for social media.”

This would become an issue when she later used social media — which Nickelodeon still sought approval over — as the vehicle in which she would publicly come out.

“When I was 17, it just became something that I didn’t want to be a part of at all anymore. I would do anything to break away or get out of it. People would always ask me, ‘Are you gay?’ and I would be like, ‘I don’t think I’m anything,’ ” she recalls.

“I was on Facetime with my girlfriend, and I did a video singing ‘Born This Way,’ and was like, ‘I think I want to put this on my Reels Story,’ because it was just my close friends.”

The video went public overnight, and Siwa woke up in a totally different world.

“I didn’t realize that no child star as still a child star had ever come out before. The president of the network called me and was like, ‘What are we gonna tell the kids?’ I was like, ‘What do you mean?’ ”

The executive then explained Siwa would have to sit on a call with “every retailer” and “tell them you’re not going crazy.” And while she complied, “Everything after I came out changed.”

“The way they communicated with me changed. The way they worked with me changed. The way they developed my work changed. Everything changed.”

In a statement to PEOPLE, a representative from Nickelodeon shared, “We are unaware of the incident JoJo is referencing and she was certainly not blackballed by Nickelodeon. We have valued and supported JoJo throughout our incredibly successful partnership, which included a JoJo-themed Pride collection at a major national retailer among our many collaborations together. We continue to cheer her on and wish her nothing but the best.”

Nickelodeon SpokespersonChild Star is now streaming on Hulu.