Lili Reinhart Talks Demi Lovato Inspiration, Mental Health

For context, Lili has long been open about struggling with depression and facing issues related to body image. She also hasn’t shied away from calling out other celebs — take when she criticized Kim Kardashian’s Met Gala weight loss and wrote on Instagram, “Please stop supporting these stupid, harmful celebrities whose entire image revolves around their bodies.”

“Sometimes I do feel like a little bit of the black sheep speaking out,” Lili told IndieWire. That being said, she understands how swift volumes of attention online can put people off.

“There’s no guidebook here, no one teaches you how to wake up to 20,000 tweets telling you that you should kill yourself or you should get a nose job or that you’re fat. Whatever the case may be, you just don’t sign up for that and no one actually teaches you how to handle that, you’re just expected to. There’s nothing more horrifying than seeing your name trend on Twitter, I’ll tell you that.”

“When someone is talking about disordered eating or promoting unhealthy habits, that’s where I have to step in,” she continued. “I’m thinking, ‘You’re harming me and you’re triggering me, which means you must be triggering millions of other people who are hearing what you say.’ It gets me in hot water, but I guess I’d rather be in hot water than just be someone who doesn’t stand for anything.”

“If I have to become someone who maybe has an ‘annoying’ reputation, cool, so be it,” she continued. “I don’t really walk around thinking, ‘Oh, I have to be such a role model.’”

“I’m just thinking of when I was 15, when I was even 12, the only person I heard speaking about their mental health was Demi Lovato, and I was like, ‘Wow, that’s so cool and interesting to hear this person who has a television show and hit records and clearly has money and glamour, and yet they’re speaking about bipolar disorder.’”

“I just thought that was so profound, and I would hope that young men and women today can at least have a couple more examples of that and just see behind the bullshit, because it’s all bullshit,” she added.