On March 10, Raven-Symoné appeared on the Stepping Into the Shade Room podcast and laid out her Disney Channel Mount Rushmore… Herself, Hilary Duff, Shia LaBeouf, and the late Lee Thompson Young. Lee Thompson Young starred in The Famous Jett Jackson from 1998 to 2001 and died in 2013.
Raven said he deserved to be on there because he had the first Black-led show on Disney Channel.
She also made clear that Miley Cyrus, despite Hannah Montana being one of the biggest shows the network ever aired, did not make her list. “No, not Miley. I love you, Miley, but not Miley. She came after.”
That answer circulated for a week. Then Demi Lovato sat down on the Chicks in the Office podcast on March 18 and got asked about it.
She agreed with most of it. “It would definitely be Raven, Hilary. Honestly, I agreed with her answers. Hers definitely resonated.”
Then co-host Fran Mariano reminded her that Shia LaBeouf was also on the list. Lovato’s response: “I’m OK on that one. We can pass.” She didn’t elaborate.
What Happened With Shia LaBeouf and Demi Lovato?
On February 17, LaBeouf was arrested in New Orleans during Mardi Gras after allegedly assaulting multiple people outside a bar on Royal Street near the French Quarter.
According to police, he was removed from the bar, came back, and punched a victim with closed fists.
He then punched a second person and dislocated his nose before bystanders held him down until police arrived.
He was charged with two counts of battery. A third count was added days later when a new warrant was issued.
At a February 26 court hearing, Orleans Parish Criminal Court Judge Simone Levine raised his bond to $100,000, ordered him to submit to weekly drug tests, including one on the spot in the courthouse, and ordered him back into drug and alcohol rehabilitation.
The judge also admonished LaBeouf for allegedly yelling homophobic slurs at victims during the assault.
One of those victims, a local entertainer named Jeffrey Damnit, told the Associated Press that LaBeouf had targeted him because he wore makeup and eyeliner.
“This guy wants me to be dead because I wear makeup,” he said.
After being released from the hearing, LaBeouf gave an interview to YouTube channel Channel 5 with Andrew Callaghan.
He said his behavior was wrong but he wasn’t interested in rehab. “I’m just not into it, bro,” he said. “I don’t think my answers are there.”
He also said he didn’t think alcohol was the real issue. “I think I have a small man complex. I think it’s something that has to do with anger and ego more than my drinking.”
A judge had just ordered him into treatment. He went on YouTube to say he wasn’t going.
This wasn’t LaBeouf’s first run-in. He was arrested in 2014 for disorderly conduct, harassment, and criminal trespass at a Broadway performance of Cabaret and sought treatment for alcoholism afterward.
In 2017, he was arrested in Savannah, Georgia, for public intoxication and disorderly conduct, and bodycam footage from that arrest captured him making racial outbursts at the officers.
He pleaded no contest, was sentenced to probation, and ordered into anger management and substance abuse treatment.
His ex-girlfriend FKA Twigs filed a lawsuit against him in 2020 alleging sexual battery, assault, and emotional abuse. That case was settled in July 2025.
That is what Raven-Symoné put on the Disney Channel Mount Rushmore. And that is what Demi Lovato passed on.
Demi Lovato’s Actual Disney Channel List
Lovato didn’t just decline to include LaBeouf. She had a real argument about how the whole conversation should work.
Her position is that Disney Channel had distinct generations and you can’t put all of them on a single Mount Rushmore.
The foundational names, Raven and Hilary Duff, were the ones who actually built the network into what it became.
She drew a line between those two and the Mickey Mouse Club generation that technically appeared on Disney before them.
“They were on Disney, but they didn’t transform Disney Channel into what it is,” she said of the Mickey Mouse Club era, which included Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, and Justin Timberlake. “I think Raven really did that. Hilary really did that.”
For her own generation, Lovato’s Mount Rushmore would be Jonas Brothers, Miley Cyrus, Selena Gomez, and, she added with some awareness of how it sounded, “hopefully me.”
When the hosts pushed her on which Jonas Brother specifically would make the list, she didn’t go there. She and Joe Jonas dated during those years, so that was probably the right call.
She also said there was a third generation after hers, the Zendaya and Sabrina Carpenter wave, that would have its own separate list entirely.
The framework makes sense. Raven and Hilary Duff turned Disney Channel into a cultural institution.
Miley, Selena, Demi, and the Jonas Brothers rode that institution to global fame. And then the generation after them used it as a launching pad for careers that have outpaced almost everyone who came before.
Olivia Rodrigo had a number one album before most people remembered she had been on a Disney show.
The Even Stevens Problem
Raven’s inclusion of LaBeouf was always going to be the debated pick. Even Stevens ran from 2000 to 2003 and was one of the genuinely great things Disney Channel produced.
LaBeouf played Louis Stevens with a kind of loose, physical comedy that was hard to fake and harder to teach.
The show was good because of him, and when it ended, it looked like the beginning of something rather than the end of it.
The Transformers years bore that out, at least for a while. He was in three of the biggest movies on the planet. He was everywhere.
Then the years after that were what they were. The 2014 arrest. The 2017 arrest. The FKA Twigs lawsuit settled last summer.
Now three battery counts in New Orleans, a judge ordering rehab, homophobic slurs caught on multiple videos, and a YouTube interview where he explained to the world that he just wasn’t into going to treatment.
Raven still put him on her list. That is her call to make, and she made it. Demi Lovato had five words.
“We can pass.”
