Jonas Brothers recently appeared on a Podcrushed episode with Penn Badgley. The brothers engaged in a one-hour conversation, mostly speaking about their early childhood, their struggles coming from a poor background, with their father’s drowning credit card funding their dream. However, while talking about their teen boy band days, Nick shared an incident that left the host visibly disgusted. Thrusted early into the limelight, from the outside, it looked like they were living a Disney rich life, the press, the teenage dream, all of it. But behind the scenes, they were being constantly pestered for their faith and for wearing purity rings. At the time, Nick revealed, they were overworked and completely unequipped emotionally.
Nick Jonas on being grilled about sex life as a 14 years old
Nick revealed how, at the time, the brothers were quietly battling their own inner feelings. One felt unappreciated, another thought the rest weren’t taking things seriously enough, and someone just felt completely exhausted. But despite all that, they kept going as a group, sidelining personal emotions to maintain their image and meet expectations that came in faster than they could process. One of the most unsettling parts of their early fame, they said, was how the media treated them. During the conversation, Nick shared how they were constantly hounded about their purity rings and private lives.
Joe added that journalists would press them to talk about their sex lives when they were barely teenagers. Kevin said, “For us, I guess, call it famously, we were known for, like, purity.” He continued, “Rings, which were something in the church community… where everyone our age, like around 10 or 11, was like, ‘We’re going to wait for the right person.’” But then came the press. “One person in an interview…” they recalled. “You’re 15, 16, and they ask you about it and you’re like, ‘I don’t want to talk about this.’ And then they go, ‘Well, we’re going to write that you guys are in a cult.’ And we’re like, we were just 10-year-olds trying to wait.”
Nick, now 32, pointed out that the industry has come a long way, at least in terms of “the conversation and dialogue.” He said, “I think it’s really a good thing Where it would be like so outside of the realm of possibilities or something someone would do to ask at that time a 14-year-old about their sex life.” Penn Badgley, who was interviewing them, was visibly disturbed and called out the absurdity of asking literal kids about their sex lives. The brothers agreed, “it was weird, uncomfortable, and bordering on predatory.”
As they got older, they started questioning things they were probably not allowed to speak aloud before, like their beliefs, identity, and how much of their image was actually them vs. what had been forced onto them. They talked about how scary it was to try and live life on their own terms when they had said certain things “in print” years ago. Even after splitting up, they recalled people always assuming they still did everything together. There was never room to just be individuals. They talked about how even into their 30s, people would ask “Where are your brothers?” when they were just trying to spend time with their own families.
