Former Disney Channel child actor claims network hyper sexualized female costars

The Riverdale actor and former star of Disney's "Suite Life of Zack and Cody" said that he has a "very complicated relationship to celebrity culture."

"I started acting when I was so young that I hadn't actually attempted, as an adult, to think about if I really enjoyed performance," Sprouse said. "When I returned, I reminded myself that I do very much love the art of acting. But I still have a very complicated relationship to celebrity culture."

Sprouse explained that becoming a successful child actor can be more traumatic than rewarding, a concept he only realized after gaining more experience in the entertainment industry.

"My brother and I used to get quite a bit of, 'Oh, you made it out! Oh, you're unscathed!’ No," Sprouse asserted. "The young women on the channel we were on [Disney Channel] were so heavily sexualized from such an earlier age than my brother and I that there’s absolutely no way that we could compare our experiences."

Sprouse explained that nearly all former female Disney stars that have gone through "trauma" have all been hypersexualized as a child in Hollywood.

"And every single person going through that trauma has a unique experience. When we talk about child stars going nuts, what we're not actually talking about is how fame is a trauma," he explained. "So I'm violently defensive against people who mock some of the young women who were on the channel when I was younger because I don't feel like [they] adequately comprehend ... the humanity of that experience and what it takes to recover."

Sprouse's comments come at the same time families across the US have been cancelling their vacation plans to Disney theme parks and their subscriptions to Disney Plus after Disney's CEO, Bob Chapek, has opposed a Florida's Parental Rights in Education bill and after it was revealed that Disney recently hosted an all-hands meeting about the bill, in which executives bragged about their "not-at-all-secret gay agenda" and "adding queerness" to children's programming.

On Wednesday evening, hundreds of protesters gathered outside Disney's headquarters at 500 South Buena Vista Street in Burbank, California to protest the corporate giant. Protesters carried signs calling for allowing "kids to be kids" and not sexualizing children.