Former Disney Star Reveals Girls Who Looked “Sexually Active” Were Fired From Popular Show
“Who’s the leader of the club that’s made for you and me? M-I-C-K-E-Y M-O-U-S-E!”
Almost every Disney fan knows that the above lyrics are part of the theme song to The Mickey Mouse Club, a popular show that ran intermittently for decades on The Disney Channel. Over the years, the young boys and girls who appeared on the show have become household names.
This is especially true for those who starred in the All-New Mickey Mouse Club, which aired from 1989 through 1996 — although the name changed to MMC in 1993. Here are just some of the names that you might recognize — Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, JC Chasez, Justin Timberlake, Ryan Gosling, and Keri Russell.
For many Disney fans, young and old, being a Mouseketeer sounds like a dream come true. However, it wasn’t all rainbows and sunshine. And one actress is opening up about just how cutthroat being on the Disney show was.
Related: Former Disney Mouseketeer, Britney Spears, Tells All In New Book
The Americans star Keri Russell first appeared on the All-New Mickey Mouse Club in 1991 when she was 15 years old. She left the show two years later when she was 17.
Recently, Russell appeared on the podcast Dinner’s On Me, hosted by Modern Family star Jesse Tyler Ferguson. On the show, Ferguson asked the actress if there was a cutoff age when the kids on the All-New Mickey Mouse Club were considered too old.
Related: Former Mouseketeer, Mickey Rooney Jr., Dead at 77
Her answer was not one that was expected. According to Russell, boys could stay on the show after they reached 17 years old, but the girls on the show were removed when they “looked sexually active.”
“It’s usually girls who look like they were sexually active, which probably I was one of the first. They’re like, ‘She’s out. Oh, she is out. That one is gone.’ Meanwhile, the boys stayed till they were, like, 19. I was like, ‘By the way, I had sex with that person, so I know that they’ve had sex.’ For real.”
She did not reveal who she had been intimate with, but she did say that Disney definitely had a double standard. She said that when she was let go from the show, she had the body of a “12-year-old boy.” She said that Disney appeared to get “nervous” when girls got to the age where they might start having sex, but they were not concerned about the boys.
This is not the first time Russell has spoken about her time on the Disney Channel show. In a 2023 interview with W Magazine, Russell said that she was lucky to get out alive. She also admitted that she was the “least talented” person there and had no idea why Disney decided to cast her.
However, her time on the show was the beginning of a very successful career. In 1998, she scored the role she is most well known for, Felicity Porter, in Felicity. She has also starred in Mission: Impossible III (2006), Waitress (2007), The Americans on FX, Star Wars: Episode IX- The Rise of Skywalker (2019), and The Diplomat on Netflix.
What do you think of Disney’s double-standard when it came to young women on the Mickey Mouse Club? Let us know in the comments!
