Christy Carlson Romano, who first broke out on the Disney Channel sitcom “Even Stevens,” is opening up about her experience working alongside co-star Shia LaBeouf. Speaking with Amanda Hirsch of the Not Skinny But Not Fat podcast on Tuesday, Romano said that she and LaBeouf were “like oil and water,” despite being just 14 and 12 years old, respectively, at the time.
Romano explained that their incompatibility on set stemmed from how they were raised.
“I was being raised and brought up to be this type A, I mean exactly like Ren Stevens. Like, you know your lines, you hit your marks, you don’t mess up,” she said. “You’re a New York kid, like that comes with a certain echelon… I was trying to go to pre-college Juilliard… everything we were doing, my mom called it cross-training, came with a certain dollar amount of training.”
In comparison, LaBeouf has long been open about his tumultuous childhood and has said that his father was a recovering addict, and at times abusive. “He was a Venice Beach kind of bum kid,” said Romano. “It’s like that kind of vagrant fun, but also very chaotic and very scary lifestyle, and he was very young to be having that.” She likened his upbringing to the lifestyle depicted in the 1995 Larry Clark film “Kids.”
Romano did give LaBeouf credit for finding his manager at just eight years old; the “Transformers” and “Holes” star “had a dream and made it happen for himself,” she added.
“Even Stevens” ran from 2000 to 2003 and followed Ren (Romano) and Louis (LaBeouf), the two younger siblings of the Stevens family who were described as having opposing personalities and often clashing.
This isn’t the first time Romano has weighed in on her relationship with LaBeouf. Earlier this year, the actress posted — and then deleted — a statement reading “Shia doesn’t deserve to be on the Rushmore. I’ll be writing a Substack on this so you can understand why,” to X. The comment came after “That’s So Raven” star Raven-Symoné was asked who she’d put on her Disney Mount Rushmore, to which she responded that LaBeouf would be one of them.
On Tuesday, the actress also posted a photo of herself with LaBeouf and his father on the set of “Even Stevens” to Instagram. “Recently found this picture. Shia and I spent 3 years of our lives right next to each other in adjoining trailers, both of us enduring painful childhoods,” she wrote. “If only we could have been there for each other, but we were each going through our own battles and could barely take care of ourselves.” She concluded by writing that she’d “finally” be sharing everything in her forthcoming memoir, “Once Upon a Trainwreck: The Fall and Rise of a Child Star,” which will be available on Oct. 6.