Jennifer Stone credited her work as an ER nurse with keeping her grounded after growing up in the heightened world of Disney Channel fame.
Stone’s two worlds collided when she found herself balancing the return of the "Wizards of Waverly Place" franchise with the realities of working in an emergency room.
"I was like trying to post, and my hospital has terrible Wi-Fi, so I was getting outside, trying to post and do my job with that, and then literally coming in and wiping a-- and I just was like, nothing keeps you more humble," she told Avery Woods during an appearance on the "Cheers" podcast. "Nothing keeps you more humble."
The realities of Stone’s work in healthcare stood in stark contrast to the Hollywood bubble she experienced as a teenage Disney star.
"I mean, I joked that it was like Disney High, because it was," she explained. "I mean, everybody dated everybody. There were feuds, there were people mad at so-and-so, like it's just nonsense. It was our high school, right? So, all the high school stuff that would normally happen in that environment, but you have access to so many things you wouldn't normally have."
"You have money, you have all these things that at 16, in high school, you wouldn't have, so it's just a heightened version of high school, I think," Stone added.
Stone credited her parents with helping her avoid getting swept up in that world and maintaining a sense of normalcy.
"I would have probably been a mess," she said, referring to how things would have been without the support she had from mom and dad. "I mean, and it's sad, because I've been in this industry for so long that it's like I've seen people I used to audition with. I mean, last month, there was a girl that I used to see all the time, and we would hang out as kids, and she overdosed, you know what I mean? It's like there's so many sob stories with kid actors, and I got really lucky."
Stone said her parents, both computer science majors with no creative backgrounds, supported her acting ambitions because they recognized her passion for the craft. Their efforts to keep her grounded became particularly clear when a writers’ strike sent Stone home to Texas at 16 during the run of "Wizards of Waverly Place."
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"I think it was second season or something, and I went and got my driver's license, and they were like, 'You need to get a job while you're here,' so I literally was an elf at one of those places that take pictures with Santa Claus and stuff," she recalled.
After "Wizards" ended, Stone said she still "needed to be humbled" and "taken down a few pegs." That perspective came in a far more serious way when she was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes at 20 and spent the following years in and out of hospitals.
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Her experience as a patient ultimately inspired Stone to pursue a nursing degree, while working through the COVID-19 pandemic further reshaped how she viewed the pressures of Hollywood.
"You do not sweat the small stuff," Stone explained. "The entertainment industry stuff, like I'll have my actor friends spin out about like, 'Oh, I didn't get a call back or this happened,' and I'm like, 'Doesn't f---ing matter. You're alive. You're getting to do what you love. You're alive. You're healthy, and you don't know how much time you have.'"
"It makes all this stuff so small and so much easier to digest because you've digested such bigger, harder things," she added. "You know, it's like exposure therapy."
