Demi Lovato was noticeably absent from the MTV VMAs on Monday, August 26, and when she wrote on Instagram that she skipped the awards ceremony “for a reason,” speculation began almost immediately. People started wondering if the message was a subtle dig at Taylor Swift, who opened the show and went on to win three awards. But Lovato stopped the rumor mill in its tracks with a follow-up story that instructed everyone to “stop reaching.”
Lovato revealed this morning that she was a no-show at the ceremony because she nabbed an exciting role on the final season of Will & Grace. After sharing the news, she was quick to dispel accusations that her original comment was directed at Swift. “Btw.. I didn’t ‘shade’ anyone last night. My REASON for not going is because I’m literally living my dream being on Will & Grace rn so stop reaching thaaaaannnnkkssss,” she wrote in one of her stories.
Fans may have started jumping to conclusions because Swift and Lovato do have somewhat of a fraught relationship. In 2016, Lovato seemingly knocked Swift’s early brand of feminism to Glamour, saying, “Don’t brand yourself a feminist if you don’t do the work.”
Lovato continued in that same interview, “To be honest, and this will probably get me in trouble, I don’t see anybody in any sort of squad that has a normal body. It’s kind of this false image of what people should look like. And what they should be like, and it’s not real.” (Swift famously had a “squad” of girlfriends a few years back.)
Things seemed to get tense again when the whole Swift-Scooter Braun drama went down earlier this summer. Lovato, who is Braun’s client, said on social media, ““I have dealt with bad people in the industry and Scooter is not one of them. He’s a good man.”
Still, despite what their past issues have been, Demi Lovato doesn’t want words put in her mouth. It sounds like she wants to spend her time celebrating her Will & Grace moment instead of entertaining gossip.
