0:19 after being released from Cedars-Sinai Medical Center
0:22 in Los Angeles over the weekend.
0:25 Demi: My OD was obviously hard on me,
0:27 but it also had some serious repercussions
0:30 for the people closest to me.
0:33 Demi’s on the news, and also I’m passing through the news.
0:36 There’s all this stuff about me being in photos next to her
0:38 when she was having a hard time.
0:40 I got death threats.
0:42 People showed up at my apartment to threaten my life.
0:44 That was really challenging for her.
0:47 It was challenging for anybody
0:48 that stuck by my side through that period.
0:51– Oh! – Woman: Missed you.
0:58 – You look so beautiful. – Aww, my little naked-faced baby.
1:01 – How are you? – Good.
1:04 – Are you ready for this? – I think so.
1:06 – Like I said, clear your name. – Yeah. Yeah.
1:09 Don’t be afraid of saying anything.
1:12 – You okay? – Yeah. Thank you.
1:14 And I just want the truth to be told because you deserve that.
1:19 Thanks. Thank you. I love you. I love you.
1:22 Why I’m not crying is because if I start, I won’t stop.
1:25 – I tried really hard. – And you already have your makeup on.
1:27 – Dani interview, take one. Mark. – Okay.
1:33 Man: So when I called you about doing this,
1:36 you were incredibly nervous.
1:38 Why were you so nervous to sit down here?
1:42 It was having to relive it.
1:50 Having to go back in my phone and, you know,
1:53 look at the screenshots from her fans
1:56 just telling me to die and kill myself.
1:58 I would say, like, maybe 4 to 5,000 a day.
2:02 She was a part of my professional team.
2:05 She was my choreographer, and she also happened to be a good friend of mine.
2:09 It was awful to see what happened to Dani
2:12 after people thinking she had something to do with that night.
2:15 My fans are amazing. They’re very passionate.
2:18 But they’re a little out of line sometimes
2:20 because they want what’s best for me
2:23 but don’t always have all the information.
2:25 Dani: The people who know me, it was laughable to them.
2:28 Like, “Oh, my God, if you only knew this girl at Homecoming.
2:30 She was the one pouring people’s Red Bull vodkas
2:32 out in the bus, didn’t want to get in trouble.
2:34 They were like, “How on Earth are you the girl that gets blamed for this?”
2:38 And it was laughable for a day or two,
2:42 not thinking that it would stick.
2:44 And then once it continued for days,
2:45 weeks, months, a year,
2:48 it was the hardest thing I’ve ever–
2:50 I’ve ever had to deal with my whole life.
2:55 When everything started to unfold,
2:58 I was in the hospital with her watching–
3:01 just looking at her laying there.
3:06 I just wanted her to live.
3:07 And I remember one night my mother sat me down
3:09 and screamed at me and she said,
3:11 “I cannot watch my little girl take the fall
3:14 for someone that did something like this.”
3:16 And I just remember looking at her just like, “It’s gonna be fine.”
3:19 And then it wasn’t. I lost all my teaching jobs.
3:23 No one wanted to bring their kid to an apparent heroin dealer teacher.
3:28 I lost any artists that I was working with.
3:30 They didn’t want to deal with the drama.
3:32 I would go to studios, I would have TMZ
3:34 following me to the studio.
3:35 I had to rethink my whole future
3:37 all because of someone else’s decision,
3:40 and that was terrifying.
3:42 I feel terrible that it’s taken this long to get her story out,
3:45 but it’s taken me a while to come to terms and process with that night
3:50 of what happened and be ready to talk about it.
3:53 I get why after the OD I was so focused on myself,
3:57 but unfortunately to took me too long to realize
4:00 how my choices affected the people I really care about who had stuck by me.
4:04 I’m just glad that she got the chance
4:06 to talk today and clear her name
4:08 ’cause she wasn’t involved in all of that.
4:10 – I have “The Today Show” in less than an hour. – Go. Go, please.
4:13 Go do it. Shut up. Your face takes two seconds to beat in.
4:17 – I love you, but no. – I love you. Thank you.
4:20 – Demi: Bye, Anna! – Bye.
4:22 I feel a lot better. Feel like I just got a pep talk from my mom.
4:25 Like, “Honey, you’re gonna do great.”
4:30 ♪ Hopeless insanity ♪
4:34 ♪ I told you I was okay, but I was lying ♪
4:42 Man: Who are you and what do you do for Demi?
4:44 I’m Demi’s head of security and chief of staff.
4:47 But I’m gonna interject, because he’s so much more than that.
4:51 Max is someone that protects me like I’m his own daughter.
4:56 I’m grateful that you’re sitting next to me today,
4:58 and it’s just really hitting me like a ( bleep ) ton of bricks.
5:02 Man: Most business managers don’t play a vital role
5:05 in the story of a pop star’s life.
5:06 Why is Glenn Nordlinger so important in your life?
5:09 Oh, God. That’s another one that’s just never left me.
5:13 Max: And he was there from the start.
5:15 He was there before me.
5:16 Yeah, he was there since I was 15.
5:19 You really figure out who is there for you
5:25 when the world falls out from under your feet.
5:30 Glenn: During the 2018 tour,
5:33 she was in a very bad way.
5:36 These were stressful days where you went to bed at night
5:39 with your phone ringer on loud.
5:43 I would get daily updates from Max
5:45 and we were starting to formulate a plan
5:48 of how to help her when the OD happened.
5:51 Glenn was just right there straight away.
5:54 He was, “How do I help? What do we need to do?”
5:56 And we need to bring in good people around to help her,
6:00 irrespective of the cost.
6:02 And this is where years of putting aside money
6:05 and being responsible with her money really paid off.
6:09 The first time I met her, we were sitting in a room
6:13 and she was saying that she didn’t want to be there.
6:16 And I said, you know, “How old are you?”
6:18 And she told me how old she was and I said,
6:20 “Who’s paying for you to be here right now?”
6:22 And she just looked around. She’s like, “I am.”
6:24 “Well, then you don’t have to be here. You can go.”
6:27 So, I think initially it was difficult for her.
6:30 And as time has gone on,
6:32 I think that has been one of the most important things of,
6:34 “Okay, what are the choices that I want to make?”
6:37 Glenn: When I went out to visit her,
6:39 it was just, you know, “What do you want to do?”
6:41 She said, “I love music,
6:43 I want to get back into it,
6:44 but I want new management.”
6:47 I got reached out to by her business manager after the overdose.
6:52 He told me the only person she wanted to meet with was us.
6:55 And I wanted to make sure that, you know,
6:57 with everything she’d gone through, I honored that,
6:59 but I had every intention of telling her no.
7:01 I felt overwhelmed at the time.
7:03 We had a plan for not only how we were going to say no,
7:05 but who we were going to recommend.
7:08 And once she started talking and pouring out her heart and soul,
7:12 we realized that absolutely we need to manage her.
7:15 She didn’t need a manager. She needed a friend.
7:17 She needed someone who knew what to do,
7:18 but also didn’t need her to work.
7:20 Why was it so important to you
7:22 to land Scooter as a manager at that moment in time?
7:25 I am an artist who just overdosed on heroin.
7:32 Like, I’m kind of a liability.
7:34 I don’t know if people are gonna want to work with me.
7:37 It was scary for me, but I didn’t feel intimidated at all.
7:41 He made me feel really safe.
7:43 Scooter: I wanted to know the real story of what happened,
7:45 what treatments worked in the past
7:47 and what treatments didn’t work.
7:49 I wanted to know who her support system was,
7:51where she was in her recovery process,
7:54 and if she had an understanding of that it’s constant.
7:57 From the moment I found out she overdosed
7:59 through her entire stay in the hospital,
8:03 the only thing I cared about was her getting better.
8:06 I knew that it didn’t matter what happened to her that night
8:10 or who she got these drugs from.
8:12 I knew– I could tell by her face
8:19 that she was never gonna be around those people again.
8:27 I wish I could say the last night that I ever touched heroin
8:30 was the night of my overdose, but it wasn’t.
8:34 She called and said, “Hey, I’ve relapsed and I need help.”
8:38 It was the same guy, I think,
8:40 and Sirah and I were not thrilled about that.
8:44 Her decision to me to do it again,
8:46 when people are in the throes of addiction, nothing shocks me.
8:54 a week-long intensive trauma retreat.
8:59 The night that I came back from that retreat, I called him.
9:04 I wanted to rewrite his choice
9:15 I wanted it now to be my choice.
9:17 And he also had something that I wanted, which were drugs.
9:20 And, yeah, I ended up getting high.
9:25 I thought, how did I pick up the same drugs
9:29 that put me in the hospital?
9:32 I was, like, mortified at my decisions.
9:36 Any time that it’s this, like, “How could you do this?”
9:41 It’s coming from a place of, “I want this person to be okay.
9:43 How could you do this again? How could you put yourself in this position?”
9:46 As opposed to, “Oh, my gosh.
9:48 You must have been in so much pain
9:50 to put yourself in that position again.”
9:53 I called him back and I said,
9:58 “No, I’m gonna ( bleep ) you.”
10:00 And it didn’t fix anything. It didn’t take anything away.
10:05 It just made me feel worse, but that for some reason
10:08 was my way of taking the power back.
10:11 All it did was bring me back to my knees
10:14 of begging to God for help.
10:17 How do we help you create a life
10:20 where to have a sense of autonomy
10:23 does not mean putting yourself in these harmful situations?
10:26 That being able to, you know, abuse your abuser
10:30 is not where the healing is going to come from?
10:32 Man: I know that sexual trauma has been the hardest part for you to talk about.
10:35 Was there a specific reason
10:38 that you didn’t come forward sooner?
10:40 Honestly, ever since I watched
10:44 Rihanna and her pictures get leaked
10:46 after the Chris Brown incident,
10:48 I was very uncomfortable with even more of my story
10:50 playing out in the press,
10:52 and then also people maybe not believing me.
10:54 Charles: You know, it’s easy from the outside to say,
10:56 “How could someone like Demi Lovato not have a sense of agency, right?”
10:59 Having grown up and started at such a young age
11:02 where she wasn’t able to develop that sense of agency,
11:05 the more that people tried to control her behavior,
11:08 the more it’s like, “Well, where do I have a sense of control?
11:11 Where can I make choices?”
11:13 Demi: And I know what I’m about to say
11:16 is going to shock people, too.
11:18 But when I was a teenager,
11:19 I was in a very similar situation.
11:22 I lost my virginity in a rape.
11:27 I called that person back a month later
11:33 and tried to make it right by being in control,
11:37 and all it did was just make me feel worse.
11:39 Woman: So you actually filmed the first “Camp Rock” two years ago.
11:42 – Dem: Yes. – Now you’re filming this one.
11:45 What do you think has been the biggest change in you from two years ago?
11:47 I’ve become more aware of just life and people
11:53 and the way that, you know, the business works.
11:55 And that’s definitely for the better.
11:58 I think that I’m able to protect myself a little more.
12:01 But also I’m able to still learn more and teach other people,
12:06 so it’s been awesome.
12:08 Both times were textbook trauma reenactments,
12:12 and I really beat myself up for years,
12:14 which is also why I had a really hard time
12:16 coming to terms with the fact
12:18 that it was a rape when it happened.
12:19 We were hooking up, but I said,
12:21 “Hey, this is not going any further.
12:23 I’m a virgin, and I don’t want to lose it this way.”
12:26 And that didn’t matter to them. They did it anyways.
12:29 And I internalized it, and I told myself it was my fault
12:32 because I still went in the room with him.
12:35 I still hooked up with him.
12:36 Here was the thing.
12:38 I was a part of that Disney crowd
12:40 that publicly said they were waiting till marriage.
12:43 I didn’t have the romantic first time with anybody.
12:46 That was not it for me, and that sucked.
12:49 And then I had to see this person all the time.
12:52 And so I stopped eating and, you know, coped in other ways–
12:57 cutting, throwing up, whatever.
12:59 My bulimia got so bad that I started throwing up blood for the first time.
13:04 I’m coming forward about what happened to me
13:05 because everyone that it happens to
13:08 should absolutely speak their voice
13:11 if they can and feel comfortable doing so.
13:14 You wrote most of your songs. You’re 16.
13:16 Where does your inspiration come from?
13:18 Believe it or not, being 16, I’ve been through a lot, so…
13:22 Come on. How much heartbreak can you have at 16?
13:27 You know, women are typically more oppressed than men,
13:31 especially at 15 years old.
13:34 And especially as a little child star role model, you know?
13:38 Who’s supposed to be perfect. Who had a promise ring.
13:41 So, what, I’m supposed to come out to the public
13:43 after saying I have a promise ring?
13:46 Six months later, I’m supposed to say,
13:48 “Well, actually, I had sex, even though it was rape.”
13:52 Some people aren’t going to see it that way.
13:54 Or at least the Christian Southern girl
13:56 inside of me didn’t see it that way
13:58 because sex was not normalized as a child or in the South.
14:02 And you know what? ( bleep ) it.
14:04 I’m just gonna say it.
14:06 My #MeToo story is me telling somebody
14:09 that someone did this to me
14:11 and they never got in trouble for it.
14:13 They never got taken out of the movie they were in.
14:16 But I’ve just kept it quiet
14:17 because I’ve always had something to say,
14:19 and it’s like, I don’t know, I’m tired of opening my mouth.
14:22 So, there’s the tea.
14:31 After everything that happened with the OD, you know,
14:33 I think she felt so horribly guilty
14:35 and disappointed in herself
14:38 that she had let herself go back to that place again despite everything.
14:41 She was like, “I have to tell Scooter.”
14:43 Demi: I was in negotiations.
14:45 I met with him and I said, “Hey, look.
14:48 I need to come clean about some stuff.”
14:51 You know, Demi, I knew she had her ups and downs,
14:54 but after the overdose and the speech that she gave me
14:57 and the things that she said,
14:59 I thought there was no chance of a relapse.
15:01 Two weeks in, she tells me that she relapsed.
15:07 I was expecting him to say, “I’m leaving.”
15:09 Like, “I’m not signing you. I’m sorry.”
15:11 But instead, he was like, “I’m afraid that–
15:17 that you are going to end up in the wrong hands.
15:20 I’m here to support you,
15:23 and I want to help you through this, not punish you.”
15:26 And that’s a very different conversation, right?
15:29 Than the conversation that says, “Hey, your sober companion
15:31 just told me that you were in the bathroom for a long time.
15:33 I’m gonna drug test you, and when it comes back positive,
I’m gonna take away your phone
and make you go back to residential
and make all these choices for you.”
I don’t know if Demi made the decision
to go sober when she was 18.
That was really kind of the ultimatum that her team gave her.
“Get sober, otherwise we won’t be working with you.”
I never want to say that the control
placed on me was entirely wrong.
Some of it came from a place of love.
I just think that by the end of it,
I didn’t get the help that I needed.
Man: You ever think about giving up on her?
No. That thought’s never–
that’s never crossed my mind.
I couldn’t. And, no. Not once.
Did I ever want to give up on her? Uh, no.
Did I want to bash her ( bleep ) head in with a brick?
Yeah. Absolutely, I’ve thought about giving up.
There have been a couple times where I thought
if that’s how she wants to go out,
then God damn it, let her go out that way.
But I don’t think you truly ever
really give up on someone like that.
I think there’s always a part of you
that hopes they’re gonna get back on the horse
and they’re gonna figure it out.
When you’re dealing with addiction,
it’s not something that just gets cured one day.
It’s a constant battle. You’re in it with somebody.
So, when she said it to me and I saw how scared she was,
it was just a very real, easy answer.
As long as you tell me the truth, we’ll work through it.
Demi: I have just always had that mentality
of if there’s a problem, let’s find a solution.
Even if I was not related to Demi,
she would be one of my biggest role models.
I remember, um, we took this walk
around the hospital floor.
She was in her hospital gown
and she had IVs and stuff on her hands.
But I didn’t see a hospital gown. I saw a robe.
“Damn, this girl’s going for the belt.”
I remember being in my hospital bed and thinking,
“All right, how do I fix this?
How do I get back to doing what I love,
Demi is an honest songwriter.
A lot of people are nervous about telling everything.
Demi thrives on using her music in a cathartic way.
I feel like with “Anyone,”
I knew that was a song that I wanted to release
coming out of all of this
because I thought if I ever make it back to the stage,
I want to sing this song.
Sirah: Watching her perform “Anyone” at the Grammys
after, like, dying, I was like, “Go off, bitch.
This is such a big moment for all of us.”
Demi: When I listened to the lyrics, I definitely thought
it was foreshadowing my overdose.
I recorded it days before,
and the lyrics were everything that I was feeling,
you know, in the hospital.
From a fan’s perspective,
she went away for a while, she performed.
But to go from a hospital bed to that total rebuild,
not something that people often get the opportunity to do.
I feel like sometimes because of what happens in her personal life,
we forget that she is legitimately, like,
the most incredible singer.
The fact that she’s given her voice a rest
– Her voice is just like– – A new level.
I remember you calling me to tell me you were gonna do the National Anthem.
– Yeah. – Eddie: Just to be there and hear her voice
is moving in itself because there was a point
where I didn’t know if I would ever see that ever again.
My dad was like, “That performance made me so proud to be an American.”
Matthew: It was just like, Grammys, bam!
One of the best performances at the Grammys of all time.
– Literally. – She’s crying at the beginning.
She’s got to start over. Standing ovation.
We’re losing our minds. Nah, she’s not done yet.
National Anthem. One of the best ever. Losing our mind.
Drop dead gorgeous. Perfect. New single. Album’s coming out.
– And then it was all downhill from there. – From there.
Breaking news tonight on several fronts
on the coronavirus pandemic.
Broadway going dark. Hollywood shutting down.
The NBA delaying their seasons. Tom Hanks infected.
When quarantine happened,
she said, “Mom, I’m bringing stuff
and I’m gonna come over and quarantine with you.”
But I did meet this guy and, uh,
I can’t imagine quarantine without him, so…
Okay, we’re going to be quarantining
with my daughter’s boyfriend.
– I’d never even met him. – Oh, my God.
I just invited somebody that I don’t really know that well
Wasn’t the most responsible thing I’ve ever done.
Amy Lins
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