Last month, Demi Lovato revealed her harrowing experiences with her overdose and sexual assault.
Tragically, this was not her first experience with a sexual predator.
When she was just 15, Demi was raped while filming Camp Rock.
Right now, fans are furious over the way that Chris Harrison interviewed her … and they’re right to be.
Chris Harrison has been in hot water lately.
First, he stepped back from his role on this historic season of The Bachelor after making dismissive, alarming comments defending racism.
Then, members of the Bachelor Fam who had met him behind the scenes came forward sharing that, frankly, they weren’t surprised.
But none of that is why Demi’s fans are fixing their ire upon him.
(Well, there’s plenty of overlap between Demi’s fans and the Bachelor franchise, but you get what we mean)
What has people fuming with Chris now is an old interview, from when Demi was just a teenager.
In the clip, which played during a montage of painful moments in Demi’s documentary, Chris interviewed her.
“You wrote most of your songs… you’re 16, where does your inspiration come from?” Chris asked her.
Demi answered honestly: “Believe it or not, being 16, I’ve been through a lot.”
But Chris took on the dismissive attitude that he has gotten him into trouble recently.
“Come on, how much heartbreak can you have at 16?” he challenged.
“A lot,” Demi replied, before deflecting the conversation with an uncomfortable laugh.
Chris of course did not know that Demi had been sexually assaulted just months earlier.
He also did not know that Demi had internalized the assault and taken up self-harm such as cutting and bulimia to cope.
But it doesn’t take any of that knowledge to treat the person you’re interviewing like a human being instead of invalidating their experiences.
Fans are livid. And maybe that’s an understatement.
“The fact that Chris Harrison was shown in Demi’s doc gaslighting yet another woman in an interview is not lost on me!” wrote one.
Another tweeted: “It’s on Chris that she answered his question and then he laughed at her.”
That same comment continued: “which definitely invalidates her lived experience of being sexually assaulted.”
That fan then remarked: “which is similar to the way he invalidated Rachel Lindsay’s experience of racism.”
“Cant escape. episode 3 of demi’s documentary has an old interview with CHRIS HARRISON,” a fan of The Bachelor and of Demi tweeted.
That double-fan joked: “He said imma make it on your screen one way or another, even if i gotta time travel.”
“That clip of Chris Harrison… It pisses me off how interviewers can minimize the life experiences of women and especially young women,” a fan expressed.
“‘How much could you have been through at your age’ when basically no one knew she had been raped,” that same tweet continued.
That fan on Twitter lamented: “Her FIRST TIME was rape.”
The Twitter user concluded: “By someone who was also working on Camp Rock like.”
To say that it’s not a good look for Chris Harrison is a massive understatement. Everyone failed Demi.
It’s a good idea for all of us to keep in mind that others may have traumas that we know nothing about.
But for a professional interviewer … that’s not just part of being a good person, it’s part of their job.
Demi worked on this for months, and didn’t just drop this to embarrass Chris. This is clearly just part of his pattern.
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