Your dad was a sheriff, and your mom was an emergency-room nurse. Did that rub off on you, those very intense jobs that deal with life-or-death matters? Yeah. I love my mom. She made me think I was going to die with every left turn that I took. Her fear of life and what would happen when we walked out — she’ll even say it herself, she’s very fear-based, which is totally understandable considering the job and the horrific phone calls she’s had to make or things that she’s had to see. She has unbelievable stories, but I wouldn’t want to go outside for weeks. I had to go to school, and I’d beg her, “Please don’t make me go,” because I thought that I was going to walk out and get hit by a car instantly, or I was going to trip and fall and bang all my teeth out. I just didn’t know what was going to happen. I definitely was and still am, to a certain point, paranoid. I’m just very cautious of my surroundings and the people around me.
Your first lead came when you landed the Disney show “Stuck in the Middle,” and then you were a voice actor in the animated Disney show “Elena of Avalor” — Disney’s first Latina princess. You played her younger sister, who is also a princess. Do you remember the significance of being part of that show? Most definitely. When I initially was trying to convince my parents to let me act, I remember crying one night at the dinner table and saying: “Oh, man, I can do it. I know I can do it. If you let me do it, I swear to you, I will end up on the Disney Channel.” So that was a huge marker of success for me when I was really young, because I had met my promise. I completed my task. Then with “Elena of Avalor,” Disney actually flew me out to Orlando to Disney World to promote the Disney princess in the park. And I remember almost being brought to tears, and my mom was definitely crying because we saw Elena walk through the park for the first time, and there were girls of all different ages and colors dressed in her outfit, and that, to us, was such a glorious moment because it was all I wanted growing up — somebody I could relate to.
Your parents were very supportive, but they weren’t like stage parents, right? At all.
What was the dynamic, especially around other families who really wanted their kids to become stars? When I first started auditioning, we’d spend hours in these casting offices, and we met so many strange and intense personalities. It could be stage parents, it could be producers that really made me fearful of other people for a while, and I think that’s when I started to become more introverted. It was such a joy to be able to get back in the car at the end of the day and do my homework, because I was still going to public school at the time, and listen to my mom talk and catch up with my siblings at home.
What do you mean when you said it made you afraid of other people? We were so brand-new to everything, and some of these people had been in it for years, or every kid in that family was an actor, or all of these people had advice and experience and lessons, and I didn’t know anything about Hollywood. I didn’t know anyone, and I wanted to be able to do things at my own pace and in my own style, but you didn’t know if people were saying things to help you or to hurt you. And not even on that show, just speaking about my career as a child overall, there were definitely a few moments where you realized, Oh, maybe that person didn’t have my best interests, or maybe they didn’t want to be as supportive of me as they said, and that’s a hard lesson to learn so young, and especially hard when you have adults or people who should know better addressing you in a way that is potentially harmful to somebody whose brain is still growing and developing.
Read More: Childhood Stardom Is Rough. Jenna Ortega Is Still Recovering.
