Miley Cyrus and Selena Gomez are adult women now — but at one point they were just teenagers feuding over a boy, according to Wizards of Waverly Place alum Jennifer Stone.
Stone, 31, reflected on the crossover with former costar and current cohost David DeLuise during the Monday, July 29, episode of their rewatch podcast, “Wizards of Waverly Pod.” They discussed Wizards of Waverly Place’s 2009 crossover with two other Disney Channel sitcoms: Hannah Montana and The Suite Life on Deck.
Released as a three-part event known as “Wizards on Deck With Hannah Montana,” the crossover brought together the teen characters from all three popular sitcoms, though Cyrus, 31, and Gomez, 32, never shared a scene together. (Gomez starred as Alex Russo on Wizards, while Cyrus played Miley Stewart and her famous counterpart on Hannah Montana. Both actresses were about 17 years old at the time.)
“Did they not get along during that shoot or something?” DeLuise, 52, asked Stone, who replied, “They intermittently got along,” before adding, “I mean, come on. It was, like, high school. Like, they both dated Nick [Jonas]…”
Cyrus and the youngest Jonas Brother — who tied the knot with Priyanka Chopra in 2018 — briefly dated between 2006 and 2007. They reportedly reunited briefly in 2009 when Jonas visited Cyrus in Georgia while she filmed The Last Song. Gomez’s relationship with Jonas had begun the previous year, though the pair broke up in 2009. They rekindled their relationship in 2010 before calling things off for good.
“I think Miley dated him first and then Selena dated him, and then it was just messy high school nonsense,” Stone said. “They’re fine now. They’re all good now. But, yeah, it was high school just BS.”
Gomez had previously referred to her relationship with Nick as “puppy love” in a 2015 interview with Capital FM, confirming that she still considered the musician to be one of her friends. Gomez has also addressed her relationship with Cyrus, telling W Magazine in 2016, “We never feuded. We both liked the same guy when we were 16. It was just a Hilary Duff–Lindsay Lohan thing: ‘Oh, my God, we like the same boy!’ We are now completely settled in our own lives.”
Cyrus shared a similar sentiment in a 2019 interview, where she squashed further speculation about her so-called feuds with fellow Disney Channel alums Gomez and Demi Lovato.
“I grew up collaborating with Demi and Selena. There was never any competition,” the Grammy winner said at the time. “When you are authentically yourself, no one can be you, so you’re never worried about someone stealing your place.”
Lovato, 31, for her part, shared in an April 2020 interview with Harper’s Bazaar that she is no longer friends with either Gomez or the Jonas Brothers. (Lovato dated middle brother Joe Jonas in 2010, though their relationship only lasted a few months.)
“When you grow up with somebody, you’re always going to have love for them. But I’m not friends with her,” Lovato said at the time. “I will always have love for her, and I wish everybody nothing but the best.” Cyrus and Lovato, meanwhile, had a falling out in 2012, though the two women reconnected in March 2020 via Instagram Live.
“Life is moving usually so fast that it’s hard to slow ourselves down and appreciate people in our lives,” Cyrus told Lovato at the time. “You’ve been that person for me for so many years and we’ve been friends for so long. We can not talk forever and then some bulls—t will go down, and I’ll just know you’re the person I want to reach out to.”