Seven years later, the damage still stings. Bella Thorne opened up on “Call Her Daddy” this week about the real toll from her 2019 blackmail ordeal—and it wasn’t the hack itself, but what came after.
Thorne, now 28, took everyone back to June 2019, when a hacker threatened to release her private nude photos unless she complied with demands. Instead of buckling, she made a power move: she released the images herself on Twitter before the blackmailer could. It was a calculated decision to take back control. “I just did an honest Twitter post,” she recalled during the podcast. “I just kind of set it out as … you’re not gonna keep taking this from me, so here it is.”
But here’s what broke her: the internet’s response. Thorne said the wave of victim-blaming that followed—people accusing her of faking the blackmail, of deliberately exposing herself, of wanting attention—hit harder than the crime itself. “The worst part of that was people saying, ‘Well, you did this. You are faking it. You just wanna show us your t—. You want us so badly to see your private parts that that’s why you’re doing it,'” she told host Alexandra Cooper. “That, to me, like, really broke me then. That like, really, really broke me.”
This wasn’t some random person from the internet either. The backlash came from mainstream outlets, comment sections, and even people in her industry. A young woman who’d been hacked, threatened, and forced into an impossible choice—defend her privacy or take a humiliating power move—got roasted for the power move instead of getting support.
Thorne’s journey from Disney it-girl to controversial figure has been anything but linear. She rose to fame as CeCe Jones on “Shake It Up” alongside Zendaya, hitting teen idol status fast. But post-Disney, she pivoted hard: cannabis line, OnlyFans record-breaking earnings ($1 million), directing an adult film, and now building a more adult entertainment portfolio. In the process, she’s become a lightning rod for exactly the kind of double standards she’s describing.
What makes her “Call Her Daddy” appearance significant isn’t just the vulnerability—it’s the clarity she brings to a problem bigger than her. The 2019 hack exposed something the internet loves to do: blame women for their own exploitation when they try to manage it themselves. Thorne didn’t get sympathy for being a victim; she got attacked for being strategic. That contradiction—being punished for agency—is something millions of women recognize immediately.
She’s in a better place now, engaged to producer Mark Emms with plans for a destination wedding in London, but the scars from 2019 are still fresh in real-time conversation. The fact that she’s willing to name the mental health impact on a major platform says something about where the culture is moving: trauma isn’t something you just “bounce back” from, especially when the public spent months second-guessing whether it even happened.
The 16BARS take: Thorne’s vulnerable moment is a reminder that the internet’s cruelty to women in crisis runs deeper than memes—it’s systemic. When a woman tries to protect herself, we find new ways to blame her for it.
