Rowan Blanchard never wanted to be a Disney star

OHMYGOSSIP — Rowan Blanchard was adamant she was never going to be a Disney star when she was younger.
The 16-year-old actress may be known for portraying Riley Matthews in the entertainment conglomerate’s show ‘Girl Meets World’ but she always felt she would never be taken “seriously” in her career if she made her name working for the media giant.
Speaking to Net-A-Porter’s The Edit magazine, she said: “My agent sent over ‘Girl Meets World’. I was like, ‘I will not do Disney ever in my life.’ I watched Disney, but I thought that if you wanted to be a serious film actress then you couldn’t be a Disney actress.”
And Rowan admitted her experiences have reaffirmed her initial suspicions as she believes she’s had to “work harder” than her peers to gain credibility.
She added: “Which is partially true – I do have to work harder to be taken seriously.”
The teen star – who began acting at the age of just five – “still loves” her job, but she has noticed the “not so beautiful” side of the industry.
She explained: “I still love [acting]. As you get older, you start to see that side of the [film] industry that’s not so beautiful and kind of objectifying.”
However, Rowan believes she is in “control” of her career because she isn’t afraid to speak up when she doesn’t agree with something.
She explained: “But I feel somewhat in control, and I think that’s because I practiced really hard in using my voice on ‘Girl Meets World’. So, when I’m on a set today and I don’t want to do something, I say it.
“When I started discovering activism, I think it made [‘Girl Meets World’] that much better, because we were really getting into these topics, having conversations … If I didn’t like something I would talk to [the writers] about it. It was nice to feel heard and to be respected in a way that I didn’t necessarily feel on a lot of sets that I’d worked on previously.
“When you’re a teenager, you feel like nobody listens to your voice, what you say doesn’t matter, nobody will ever understand what you’re feeling. [On the internet] I felt, for the first time, that people understood.”

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