Raven-Symoné has warned that showbiz bosses will try to “milk” the “light” out of young performers.
The 38-year-old — born Raven-Symoné Christina Pearman — shot to fame playing Olivia Kendall on “The Cosby Show” and went on to release a string of albums, with her first record coming out when she was 7.
“People are going to milk all of that light out of you because, ‘You’re young and you still have energy.’ But you do not. You’re still human,” Symoné told Demi Lovato, 32, on the singer’s documentary, Child Star, during a discussion about their grueling work schedules.
“I knew it was work immediately. My parents made sure that I understood that this was a job. I get paid for it. You show up professionally. I knew at 3 how much I was making, and I understood it’s a job. If you lose it, you don’t make that money,” Symoné added about her family making it clear she had to work for a living from an early age.
“We call it a family business. Everybody has a job within the family business, so nobody likes to say one person’s the breadwinner or not … read through those lines.”
“[Many] children — young kids — are performing for their parent. They’re performing for their parents’ love and affection and their, ‘Good job!’ And yes, it’s a lot of money — it’s a lot of money. And money does crazy s—,” she added.
“I didn’t know you could take time off because no one told me. At one point, I played 70 shows in 90 days. I was going to have two nights off and then when push came to shove, they were like, ‘We need those two days of rehearsals for the movie,’ ” Lovato told Symoné about her experience of the showbiz grind.
But Symoné stressed how lucky she was to be part of history by appearing in “The Cosby Show.”
“ ‘The Cosby Show’ was the No. 1 television show in America, especially with an African American cast and so influential within the fabric of society. [For] a young girl from Atlanta, Georgia … that’s the dream of so many Black people at that time. From the age of 16 months, I knew that my job was to entertain other people. That’s a mind thing in itself,” she said.
