You remember it — running to grab the television remote every morning and afternoon just to see that little Disney Channel logo in the corner of the screen. Hannah Montana, Wizards of Waverly Place, Suite Life of Zack and Cody— these shows and characters made a place in our childhood hearts and memories...and who knew those child actors were actually growing up with us! Disney Channel icon, Christy Carlson Romano revisits her experiences as a child star, one podcast episode at a time.
The Kim Possible and Even Stevens actor divulged on her latest endeavors after launching PodCo, a podcast company bringing you behind-the-scenes content from the most notable Disney stars. Romano's current podcast portfolio includes Vulnerable, Even More Stevens, and her newest revelation, Big Name B-tches, with That’s So Raven actress Annaleise Van der Pol. As a mom on-the-go and a successful entrepreneur, the Cadet Kelly star juggles a lot between the pods and her latest partnership with Emergen-C.
“I used to take the powder in water when I was on set on Even Stevens. A medic would bring me a bottle of water, and I would take it every day, and it would be such a little moment with him where he's like, "Hey, here's something for you to take care of yourself," Romano said of the brand, as we continued on in a heartfelt, eye-opening interview.
B+C: With being a mom and now having your own podcast alongside a podcast company that you co-founded, how do you balance it all?
Just having supportive things around you, whether that's supportive people or supportive elements. My husband is the CEO of PodCo. We have a wonderful team, a social media team. For the longest time I was posting on social media myself, and I think it's wild to see when something starts so small and then starts to become bigger and bigger. I'm really happy and proud of where we've been able to grow.
B+C: I love that. I want to get into your podcast company a bit more because I think it's genius to draw on the Disney nostalgia of it all. What do you think is the real reason that people are so drawn to podcasts curated by child actors?
What a good question. People are definitely drawn because they want the tea. I think people want gossip. We have so many crazy stories that people just never asked us about. What I love about podcasting is that you have as much time as you need to talk about the things that are important to you. And with our different hosts, they have their own dynamics, and then they choose who they want to bring on as a guest. And those guests also have crazy stories. It's all about sharing anecdotes and war stories, I guess you'd call them. It's a lot of fun.
B+C: You've had some notable guests cover some pretty big topics. Dan Benson talked about his adult entertainment career and Anneliese van der Pol revealed that Raven [Symone] was actually supposed to be a side character for possible racial reasons. Is there something that you've experienced or learned from being a Disney star that you wish people knew?
Oh, gosh, I think that the most important thing as a young performer, whether you work for any big network, would be for you to know your worth. And I think that the power of "no" is really important because I said “yes” to everything. And while I do think that Disney was really gracious in giving me amazing characters to play, they always gave me strong female characters to play.
That was my type casting, and I'm really grateful that I was just serendipitously given those roles. Maybe that part of my personality type was just kind of type A and strong willed and sort of bossy, I guess. But I myself have always had times in my life where I didn't have the answers and was a little confused about what the next steps were. And so for a long time, I did struggle. But I do think that understanding the power of "no" at a young age can help all of us, because having agency over your body and your wellness, right.
B+C: That's a great point. And your kids seeing that you were playing strong female characters — that's something that's really good to be exemplified and admirable, too. So your company, PodCo, acquired the Ned's Declassified Podcast Survival Guide and the Wizards of Waverly Pod as well. I'm curious — how did those conversations come about? Did they come to you or your company went to them?
I've been collaborating with a lot of people on my cooking show, and then my husband, who listens to a lot of podcasts, was like, “I think maybe we will move into podcasts with Vulnerable.” And we came together and said, “Oh, Vulnerable is the idea, and let's get these people on to visit with you.” So, I had Lindsay [Shaw] on, and I had collaborated with Devon [Werkheiser] on the cooking show. We also knew the Lawrence brothers. Lawrence brothers was first. We went to Joey [Lawrence's] wedding, and we talked about the podcast at Joey's wedding.
And then we talked to Devon and Lindsay, and we said, “Would Daniel [Curtis Lee] come and get the team back together?” And they said, "I think so." And they reached out to him. And now they make content together all the time, and they kill it online.
B+C: You guys are coming up on [my FYP], too, but I'm not mad about it. It’s great.
Thank you. Yeah, we're busy. And then the
Wizards of Waverly Pod came out with Jennifer Stone being awesome, and she enlisted David De Louise, who [plays] the dad on
Wizards [of Waverly Place], to be her co-host.
B+C: Love him.
I know. He was just in my house cannonballing at 2:00 A.M. We had a party in Austin [Texas], and all my hosts flew in for it. So we threw the party for everybody, and Austin folks came, and the party lasted really late. It was a good time.
B+C: I believe it. Does your company have any other podcasts in the works that you would be able to talk about?
I can talk about one. I have [another] big announcement, but I can't announce it yet. We have a very large nostalgic rewatch that's coming. We also have three or four others that are rewatches that are big name ones that people are coming to us now with their ideas, because I think they trust that we're going to fight for them to get the most value out of their time. And also the product is going to look good. The one that I can announce for us here is Big Name B-tches, co-starring myself and Anneliese van der Pol.
B+C: Oh, no way. That's so exciting!
Big Name B-tches is about to set foot on its set in two weeks. And we're going to have amazing guests. It's going to feel like a big old girls brunch, sassy stuff, love life. It's going to be very different from Vulnerable, in that I felt like I [record] Vulnerable and it's a very emotional experience for me. I want to be as emotionally available to my guests as I can be. But then what I realized after Vulnerable is that I get kind of depressed. So having this very light, fun, happy, joyful, dare I say, chaotic podcast that I can have in my life. I adore Anneliese, and she's just the best.
B+C: What kind of guests are you guys aiming to have on that show? Is it more Disney stars?
It's everybody and anyone. So it's anyone from the LGBTQ+ community, like drag shows. We've got Todrick Hall that's interested in coming on, but we've also got really fun girls. I'm definitely going to go out to Hannah Berner, who's a friend of mine.
B+C: And that's coming out in two weeks?
No, so we're filming it [in two weeks]. People can get excited about it. We're announcing that it's coming, and it will be coming shortly after that. I would say in the next couple of months, it's going to come out.
B+C: That's so exciting—I will definitely be a listener. I wanted to lean into the Even More Stevens podcast as well. Have you ever discussed having Shia LaBeouf on?
We knew going into this that a lot of people would be asking us if Shia was going to come on the podcast. I figured, yeah, we knew that that would be like an empty chair. And maybe in some regards, maybe we could have created an empty chair space just to be like, “That's Shia's chair.” If he ever fills it, that's his choice. Overall, we know that he's a busy guy. He's got a lot going on personally. When you think of family and you don't see your family for a really long time, everybody grows and changes, and sometimes you don't talk to your family, and that doesn't mean that you don't love them. We just want the best for him, whether that's like being the healthiest that he can be.
We don't want to pressure Shia to come on this podcast. That's kind of where we were at with it. I do think that we have a right to be able to talk about the show that we were on, even if it was an ensemble show, even though Shia was like the number one. There were two and a three and a four. It was like a whole family. So sometimes people will be like, "Well, why would they do it without him?" It's because we are allowed to. Just like everyone else gets to have an experience that they talk about.
B+C: I agree. It's all your individual experiences. You don't have to have every single person that was involved. You have that right.
But he is always welcome and of course, Shia is always welcome to reach out to me, too. There's never been any reason why I think he would think that I would be upset with him or not want to talk. We're on good terms. At least on my end. I'm on good terms.
B+C: I mean, you were on a child's show, so everyone kind of grows up separately. People forget that, I think.
Oh, totally. I think it's convenient to say, "But they are real brother and sister." Yeah, we are, but we're far away from each other.
B+C: : Absolutely. I want to switch gears to Kim Possible. Besides the obvious animation of it, what do you think the biggest difference is in terms of acting when it comes to voicing a character versus playing a character as that person?
It's really interesting that people always see me as Kim Possible.This has happened to me my whole life. I used to think that it was because I was on other TV shows and that my face was recurring on the TV shows. So of course they think of me as Kim Possible because I was on Cadet Kelly or Even Stevens. So if my face is there, then they're just putting my face on Kim. But now what's really odd to me is that folks who don't even really know who I am for other things know me as Kim Possible. Subconsciously, they must have seen me on something and they don't even realize it because my shows were in syndication and reruns for decades. I find it wild that people still see my face as Kim Possible exclusively. And I'm proud of that because if and when it were to come back, I would really need to be a part of that.
B+C: That would be perfect.
I think everybody would support that. But ultimately, it is so different to act 12 hours a day and be on set and if that's not your jam, if you've grown up doing that, it can be really tiring. You're kind of like, "Okay, cool. This was a blast." And I had this little family, and now we don't talk to each other anymore. So I just think that there's a true art form to finding community on set. And then if you could work with those people again, amazing. But to me, that doesn't sound like the sexiest thing that I would like to do right now.
B+C: Right. I think something like, Kim Possible — it just was so good for its time that you don't necessarily have to go back and do a reboot or something like that.
We did the live action, and Sadie Stanley, who's a huge star now, that was her first big thing. And I think that they did a great job. But to make it into live action, you'd need tens of millions of dollars.
B+C: Yeah, that's incredibly tough for that show.
It's so tough. There was no way that I think on the budget that they had that they were going to be able to truly do it justice. But I thought it was a really cute movie and I had a cameo in it and it was fun.
B+C: Did you ever have a say in Kim's catch phrases at all? Or was that all the writers?
No, I definitely did. I was basically with them in the studio in the first couple of episodes. And they were like, "So what would you say to your friends? Would you say, what's up? What's the deal?" And I [said], "I don't know. What's the stitch?” It was so off the top of my head that they were like, “Oh, that's it.” And for some reason, it locked in for them. We played around constantly with different catch phrases for her. That made sense for me because I was the age at the time. I'm sure that if we had Kim Possible 2023, it would be very different. There would be all the different "Bet" and "no Cap '' and all the different [sayings]. But "What's the stitch?" And it hasn't aged poorly. I think it still makes sense.
It's also really cute because it just reminds me of her personality. She says it like, “I'm ready for anything,” but I've got a really good attitude about it.
B+C: Was there ever a storyline either in Even Stevens or Kim Possible or even Cadet Kelly, that you either were unsure of or couldn't necessarily get on board with?
When we did a crossover with Lilo and Stitch, I think that internally, some of the people in the cast, we felt like, “Wait, but why are we doing this?” I think we were a little confused as to why we did those crossovers. But at the end of the day, I'm a huge Lilo and Stitch fan. And because Kim Possible was a 2D animation, I was like, okay, this should be interesting to see how they're going to draw it together. So in some ways, what I thought would have been like a bad decision for us to have Lilo and Stitch come on to KP turned out to be really cool because when you think about it, it's kind of rare for there to be crossover animated episodes. We're a part of Disney animation history for multiple reasons because of that.
B+C: Besides the shows that you were a part of, were there ever any other Disney Channel shows that you were just dying to get into or wanted to act in at the time?
At the time, not really. I did want to do one more DCOM [Disney Channel Original Movie]. I would have loved to have done another Disney Channel movie where it was more or less about me. It could have been fun to do something more magical — at the time, we weren't doing a ton of magical stuff. I would have loved to become a princess on Princess Protection Program. I remember when Demi [Lovato] and Selena [Gomez] did that movie, and I was like, "Oh, man, they're so lucky they get to do this."
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This interview has been edited for clarity.
