Keke Palmer and Demi Lovato have opened up about their experiences dating significantly older men as teenagers, with both reflecting on how those relationships look very different through adult eyes.
The candid conversation took place on the 3rd March episode of Palmer’s Baby, This is Keke Palmer podcast, where the two former child stars bonded over shared experiences growing up in the spotlight.
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 struck Palmer.
“Girl, damn,” she said. “I’m not smiling at that but that is real. We were trying to find outlets, though, and just a way to process this.”
She went on to describe the unsettling realisation that comes with getting older and understanding what was actually happening at the time.
“The moment when you realise and you get [to] the age of a lot of people that were around you and doing stuff,” she said, “it’s almost a mental break that can happen because you realise, ‘You were taking advantage. Oh, I was being exploited.'”
Both women spoke about how their early careers created a warped sense of maturity that made those relationships feel normal at the time.
“That was very difficult for me because at 15 I’m thinking like, ‘My boyfriend’s older because I’m doing an older job. And I’m doing a bunch of things and this is the way that 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 fellow former child star Hilary Duff for addressing the same experience in her 2025 song Mature, saying, “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 towards her own 2022 song 29, which grapples with the same territory.
“I also wrote a song about that,” 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, though 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 starring on True Jackson, VP. She shares son Leo, three, with ex Darius Jackson. Lovato married Jordan “Jutes” Lutes in May.
