Keke Palmer and Demi Lovato have spoken openly about their experiences dating significantly older men as teenagers, and both reflected on how those relationships look very different through adult eyes.
The candid conversation took place on the March 3 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 started the conversation 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 impressed Palmer.
“Girl, damn it,” he said. “I’m not smiling about it, but it’s real. However, we were trying to find ways out and just a way to process this.”
He went on to describe the unsettling realization that comes with growing older and understanding what was really happening at the time.
“The moment you realize and get [to] “The age of a lot of people who were around you and doing things,” she said, “it’s almost a mental break that can happen because you realize, ‘You were being taken advantage of.’ Oh, I was being taken advantage of.”
Both women talked about how their early careers created a twisted sense of maturity that made those relationships seem normal at the time.
“That was really hard for me because at 15 I was like, ‘My boyfriend is older because I’m doing an older job. And I’m doing a lot of stuff and that’s just the way it is,'” Palmer explained.
“And in my mind it seemed normal.” Lovato agreed, noting that he felt especially justified if you were considered “an old soul” or told you were “mature for your age.”
That phrase, “mature for your age,” became the guiding thread of the conversation.
Palmer praised former child star Hilary Duff for addressing the same experience in her 2025 song. Ripesaying, “Yeah, because it’s like ‘oh shit, we all had the same damn life.'” You know what I mean, when people kept telling us ‘You’re very mature for your age.'”
Lovato pointed Palmer toward her own 2022 song 29that fights for the same territory.
“I also wrote a song about it,” he said.
“Is called 29 And when you hear 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 splitting in 2016. Valderrama is now 46 years old.
Palmer has previously spoken out about an “inappropriate” relationship with an older man during her time in True Jackson, Vice President. She shares her three-year-old son Leo with her ex Darius Jackson. Lovato married Jordan “Jutes” Lutes in May.
