https://www.nickiswift.com/1149809/bella-thorne-recounts-disturbing-interaction-she-had-with-director-as-a-child-actor/

Bella Thorne hit back after being accused of flirting when she was just 10 years old

Bella Thorne opened up about a seriously disturbing time early on in her acting career, claiming a director accused her of flirting with him while she auditioned for a role at just 10 years old. Speaking to Emily Ratajkowski on the December 27 episode of her "High Low" podcast (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/bella-thorne/id1648732468?i=1000590446973), Thorne admitted she still thinks about the moment a lot. "[I'm] trying to find almost fault in myself. Like, 'What did you do, Bella? What did you do? You made him feel like this,'" she shared, revealing she's now learned she was not to blame for what happened — no matter what she said or did at the time. "You're in a director session, you can't really say or do anything. You do the scene, you say hello and you walk out. There's no time to go sit on your lap or make you uncomfortable," she said. Plenty shared their support for Thorne on social media, with one person writing, "The industry is the worst place any child to grow up in."

Thorne's been extremely candid before about her harrowing experiences growing up, including sharing she was molested for eight years from the time she was 6 years old. "It's pretty hard... everyone thinking they know me and talking about me, but having no idea the type of mistreatment that I was still dealing with at that time," she shared on "BUILD Series" in 2019.

Bella Thorne Claims Disney Channel Almost Fired Her for Being Photographed in a Bikini at Age 14 (https://tvline.com/2022/12/28/bella-thorne-almost-fired-disney-channel-bikini-photo/)

Onetime Disney Channel starlet Bella Thorne says that she was nearly made to bow out of Shake It Up!, due to a choice in beachwear.

As a recent guest on the High Low With EmRata podcast, Thorne recounted instances of being sexualized as a preteen and teen, including an instance where, at age 10, she said a casting agent reported back to her mom, “she’s not moving forward because the director felt like she was flirting with him, and it made him really uncomfortable.”

Thorne later spoke of a photo that nearly ended her run as the co-lead (opposite Zendaya) on the sitcom Shake It Up!

“One time I almost got fired off the Disney Channel (https://www.reddit.com/r/television/comments/zxlnk0/bella_thorne_claims_disney_channel_almost_fired/) because I was 14 and I wore a two-piece on the beach,” Thorne shared. “This stylist that I was hanging out with put this chain on me that’s like a body chain…. There was a fan, they got a photo of me on the beach, I almost got fired.

“It was all over the media, it was viral in that time,” Thorne added, remembering that the critiques were á la “How dare this little girl do this?”

Shake It Up! debuted in November 2010 and ran for three seasons/75 episodes. In addition to Thorne and Zendaya (as CeCe and Rocky), the cast included Roshon Fegan, Adam Irigoyen, Davis Cleveland, Caroline Sunshine and Kenton Duty. Others who passed through the Disney series included Phil Morris (as Rocky’s dad, Dr. Curtis Blue), Tyra Banks (as librarian Ms. Burke), Maggie Wheeler, Cat Deeley, Leslie Jordan, Ben Savage, Loretta Devine, Noah Centineo, Cameron Boyce, Yvette Nicole Brown, Alfonso Ribeiro and future White Lotus breakout Haley Lu Richardson.

Thorne said that while Disney refrained from giving in to “pressure to fire me” from Shake It Up!, her 14-year-old self was prompted to be more careful about what she wears in public. Even when on a beach.

“They were like, ‘Hey, we’re getting a lot of heat for this, everyone’s getting heat for this, because you’re in a bikini on the beach. So, she needs to make sure that she goes out in boy shorts and a loose T-shirt next time she’s at the beach.'”

TVLine has reached out to Disney Channel for comment on Thorne’s anecdote.