Bella Thorne has opened up about being pitted against Zendaya while the pair starred in the Disney Channel series Shake It Up.
Speaking on the latest episode of Alex Cooper's Call Her Daddy podcast, the actress and singer revealed she liked the Euphoria star "immediately" when they first met during screen tests.
However, the 28-year-old recalled that they were made to feel as though they were competing for the top spot, despite playing best friends on the show, which ran from 2010 to 2013.
"People can't, they don't, women with women," she said. "It's just, 'Nope, we have to make you guys all big for one spot so that we can have the 80 other million ones, but if you guys can beat each other down and scrape till whatever extent we're asking you to, like eat yourselves alive while we have all these spots, but for women, just one of you.'"
Looking back, Bella noted that she believes it was a result of the patriarchy.
"I mean, man. The patriarchy's been doing it for, obviously, since the beginning of time, but it really, like yeah," she stated. "You just go back and you're like, 'God damn, they were 12. What's wrong with you? You're an adult.'"
The Midnight Sun actress added there was no reason for her and the Drama star, 29, to be competing.
"And also, it's a duo. We're not beating each other," she told Alex. "We're supposed to be best friends. They play best friends."
Bella also divulged that the tension became so intense that the pair once "escaped" from the set while filming a crossover episode with Good Luck Charlie.
"It got pretty bad, and then, and then you have your families, and you have the rest of the set and everything and I think it got to a point where when we were on our Good Luck Charlie crossover, we escaped to another set in the middle of live taping, which is really ballsy, bada**, and rebellious," she remembered.
The star revealed that she and Zendaya used the time to "hash out" their differences.
"They were looking for us for that next scene and we got into it, hashed it out, and it was so beautiful," she shared.
