Demi Lovato felt a huge weight lifted off her shoulders when she filmed the music video for “Dancing With the Devil.”
The visual for the title track of her new album, Dancing With the Devil… The Art of Starting Over, recalls the night of her heroin overdose in July 2018 down to every last detail, including the green jacket she was wearing that day. In a new interview with Mix 104.1 Boston on Monday (April 5), the pop superstar opened up about the “healing” filming process that helped her process the shame she didn’t know she was still carrying with her three years later.
“I wanted to give it just a slight artistic approach to telling this story, as opposed to the documentary, which was very, very literal and fact based,” she said, pointing out small details such as the disco ball in the hospital room. “But definitely, walking onto the set was difficult.”
Michael D. Ratner, who directed her four-part YouTube Originals docuseries with the same title, helmed the “Dancing With the Devil” music video with Lovato. But when it came to some of the more emotional scenes, the 28-year-old singer called the shots and told him that if she started crying and gave him a look, then it was his cue to keep rolling.
“After I finished that take, I started to get a bit of a migraine because I cried so hard. But it was so therapeutic. I literally felt like I lost 100 pounds of shame that I didn’t know had stuck with me in that incident,” Lovato continued. “But it did, and it was healing for me to walk through it.”
Watch Lovato’s latest interview below.
