Keke Palmer and Demi Lovato have opened up about their experiences dating significantly older men as teenagers, reflecting on how these relationships look very different through adult eyes.
The candid conversation took place on the March 3 episode of Palmer’s Baby, it’s Keke Palmer podcast, where the two former child stars bonded over shared experiences of growing up in the limelight.
It was Palmer, 32, who kicked things off with a question that stopped the conversation in its tracks. “I’m fifteen, why was my boyfriend 20?” she said, before Lovato, 33, quietly added, “Why was my boyfriend 30?”
The admission visibly hurt Palmer.
“Damn girl,” she said. “I’m not smiling about it, but it’s true. However, we were trying to find outlets and just a way to process this.”
She went on to describe the unsettling realization that comes with growing older and understanding what was actually happening at the time.
“The moment you realize and you get it [to] the age of a lot of people who were around you doing things,” she said, “it’s almost a mental break that can happen because you realize, ‘You took advantage of it. Oh, I was taken advantage of.'”
Both women talked about how their early careers created a warped sense of maturity that made these relationships feel normal at the time.
“It was very difficult for me because as a 15-year-old I think, ‘My girlfriend is older because I’m doing an older job. And I’m doing a lot of things and that’s the way it is,'” Palmer explained.
“And it seemed normal in my mind.” Lovato agreed, noting that it felt especially justified if you were considered “an older soul” or told you were “mature for your age.”
That phrase, “mature for your age,” became a thread running through the conversation.
Palmer praised her former child star Hilary Duff for talking about the same experience in her 2025 song Matureand said, “Yeah, because it’s like, ‘oh s–t, we all had the same damn life.’ You know what I mean, where people kept telling us ‘You’re so mature for your age’.”
Lovato pointed Palmer toward her own song from 2022 29which fight with the same territory.
“I wrote a song about it too,” she said.
“It’s called 29 and when you listen to it, I think you’ll be able to relate to it.”
Lovato has not publicly named who the song is about, although she dated actor Wilmer Valderrama for six years before their split in 2016. Valderrama is now 46.
Palmer has previously spoken about an “inappropriate” relationship with an older man during her time in the lead role True Jackson, VP. She shares three-year-old son Leo with ex Darius Jackson. Lovato married Jordan “Jutes” Lutes in May.
