Key Takeaways
- Christy Carlson Romano says she first tried cocaine around age 23 at a party inside Paris Hilton’s home, where guests joked about getting “the Disney girl” to do it.
- The former Disney star said she liked the attention more than the drug and had spent years clubbing to attract paparazzi and reshape her wholesome image.
- Romano recounts the experience in her memoir, Once Upon a Trainwreck: The Fall and Rise of a Child Star, which arrives October 6.
Christy Carlson Romano has opened up about the first time she tried cocaine, which she claims happened while attending a party at Paris Hilton's home.
As she promotes her new memoir, Once Upon a Trainwreck: The Fall and Rise of a Child Star, the former Disney star recently stopped by the Not Skinny But Not Fat podcast, where she discussed being a late bloomer as far as drug use goes.
"I was old to start, to try cocaine. I was like 20, let's see, 23 or something like that," Romano said (around the 30:19 mark in the video below). "I think what I liked was the attention I got for doing it in front of people. And like, everybody's like, 'I got the Disney girl to do cocaine for the first time.'"
Romano, 42, who starred in Even Stevens and Cadet Kelly, and was the lead voice of Kim Possible, described the partying as a strategy rather than an accident. Romano said she had been hitting clubs since 16 and chasing paparazzi attention aggressively since 21, with nothing to show for it.
"Before Instagram, you really didn't have control over your image. It was whatever the paparazzi, TMZ, or, you know, Page Six, like really saw of you. And they had, and Perez Hilton, of course, like that was how you were able to change people's opinion of you," she said.
The conversation about her drug use came after host Amanda Hirsch recalled an excerpt from her book about trying cocaine for the first time at Paris Hilton's home.
In the excerpt obtained by People, Romano claims she was given cocaine by a marketing firm assistant at Hilton’s party named Edie. "Even though I’ve been to a million clubs, I’ve never seen cocaine before, never done it, but I know what the white lines on the table are. I’ve always sworn I’d never try it," she reportedly writes in the book.
After taking the drug, the Kim Possible star recalls that Edie and others laughed at "getting the Disney girl to do blow for the first time."
Once Upon a Trainwreck: The Fall and Rise of a Child Star arrives October 6 from Simon & Schuster, a book Romano said she wrote to "expose everything that actually happens in this business."
