Raven-Symoné Confirms 'That's So Raven' Took Steps to Make Her "Look Thinner"
A new book was the first to report on the story.
Raven-Symoné has confirmed that That's So Raven producers took steps to make her "look thinner" on the cult early 2000s Disney Channel show.
The star sat down with E! News to promote her new game show Scrabble, and one of the reporters told her, "There [are] headlines because this new book is saying, you know, you guys did this sort of episode on body positivity, but you were actually CGId thinner. Do you know if that's true?"
The actress replied, "I love that you said CGI. This was before CGI. This was when they would take the film and stretch it. Um, yeah, there were conversations I do remember that, uh, yeah, would make me look thinner."
The book in question is Disney High: The Untold Story of the Rise and Fall of Disney Channel's Tween Empire by Ashley Spencer, an investigation into the world of Disney's famous child stars.
The book recounts the story of an episode on the show's second season, in which Raven tries to lose weight for a runway show, but ends up walking it as she is, with the end result meant as a celebration of body diversity.
But according to sources who spoke to Spencer, a network exec asked that footage of Raven-Symoné be modified to maker her look thinner in those body-positive scenes.
Producer Michael Feldman told Spencer (via E! News), "It was shameful. I don’t know how they could look at themselves and do that. The very thing that she wanted to do a story about was literally done to her. It’s still a shocking thing to me that they were that tone-deaf."
Raven-Symoné participated in fellow former Disney Channel actress Demi Lovato's documentary Child Star.
The publication of Disney High comes amid a wave of other high-profile investigations into the lives of child actors, including the documentary about Nickelodeon, Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV, and Demi Lovato's doc Child Star, which Raven-Symoné participated in.
Asked whether she would let any children of her own follow the path she did, Raven-Symoné told E!, "I would never let my child go into the entertainment industry before the age of 17. Enjoy the anonymity first, and take some classes, and then we can get into it."
