Kids should be kids — not child actors.
That was the takeaway from Hollywood Demons: Child Stars Gone Violent. The Investigation Discovery (ID) docuseries episode looks at how the lives of Full House’s Zachery Ty Bryan, Family Ties’s Brian Bonsall,That’s So Raven’s Orlando Brown and others imploded parallel to their young stardom.
Bryan, who played Tim Allen’s eldest son, Brad, was drinking at nightclubs at age 14 because of his status as “the kid from Home Improvement.” Things got worse after the show ended in 1999, with a long list of arrests for domestic violence and DUI, the latest involving alleged partner abuse on New Year’s Day.
“One of the downfalls of being famous [is] there’s nobody around to wag a finger, take away your allowance,” said Billy Riback, Home Improvement writer and producer. “I think that’s what happened to Zach probably.”
Ribick said that 43-year-old Bryan, who was 9 when he started the show, “was mischievous” and “got in more trouble” than his TV siblings — Jonathan Taylor Thomas (Randy) and Taran Noah Smith (Mark) — on the show starring Tim Allen and Patricia Heaton. He was “the kid who could maybe puncture a kid’s bicycle tire just because he thought it was funny.”
Bryan’s friend Travis Wade said he helped the actor move across the street from him in the wake of Bryan’s 2020 split from wife Carly Matros, with whom he has four children, to be a support system.
“I would never [reveal] what Zach has shared with me about what he endured as a child,” Wade said cryptically, “but I will say this: I have a huge empathy for him.”
Wade’s wife, Alexis, said Bryan screened a documentary he produced about child trauma for them. While Bryan said the film wasn’t about his experience, he broke down in tears while they watched it, and they consoled him.
“My heart just broke because it’s very tragic, but it almost seemed like he was talking about himself,” Alexis said.
Alexis also talked about Bryan’s relationship with on-off-fiancée Johnnie Faye Cartwright, with whom he’s had three children since 2021. One month after Bryan’s divorce from Matros, he was arrested for allegedly strangling Cartwright. Bryan made a plea deal, receiving probation and domestic violence counseling. In 2023, he was arrested again and pleaded guilty to felony assault, leading to more probation.
“I definitely felt it was a toxic relationship” early on, Alexis said.
Bryan was arrested in Myrtle Beach, S.C., on Jan. 1 for second-degree domestic violence. The incident allegedly involved a different woman with whom he has his eighth child.
Talent scout Peter Seidman, who helped discover Bryan at age 8, said he has been “shocked” by his growing rap sheet.
“There was nothing in my history with the kid, or what I knew about him, that would suggest that that would happen,” Seidman said. “I think the stuff that happened with Zach in recent years had nothing to do with the television series. Something happened when this kid got older where he did not have the guidance and support that he needed. Whenever I hear about a kid in trouble I think: Where’s Mom and Dad?”
Addiction specialist Dr. Drew Pinsky suggested that “fame” is to blame for the “fact that Zachery could” go behind the velvet rope at 14 to party “and get away with it” — and it’s obviously led to dependency issues. He was arrested on DUI charges for the fifth time in 2024. It was his second arrest for alleged DUI that year.
Pinsky said it was also “the culture at the time” of a “kids will be kids” mentality when adults “didn’t pay attention to children the way they should have. If you don’t get to go through the normal developmental milestones of childhood, you’ll pay a price.”
The docuseries episode looks at how child stardom hurt other young actors.
Bonsall, who played Michael J. Fox’s little brother, Andy Keaton, on the ’80s hit Family Ties beginning at age 4, appeared in the docuseries and talked about how challenging it was navigating Hollywood so young, including being chased down the street by adult fans. One “fan” sent him “weird photos” and it turned out to be a prison inmate.
Bonsall said his mother — who is also in the doc — pushed him into Hollywood, and he talked about how his parents divorce affected him deeply and led to him acting out in “horrible ways,” breaking windows and home and cutting his eyelashes as a boy. He quit acting as a teen and began abusing drugs and alcohol. He later faced several arrests, including alleged domestic abuse.
Now a musician, Bonsall said his child stardom continued to impact his life well into adulthood. A man named Nathan Loebe started impersonating him — even copying Bonsall’s tattoos — and raped seven women over 12 years while pretending to be him. Loebe was sentenced to 274 years in prison in 2019.
Brown, who played That’s So Raven’s Eddie Thomas, would reportedly smoke marijuana in his dressing room as a teen with nobody keeping an eye on him.
“I never saw him do it, and I never spoke to him about it,” Marc Warren, who was a writer and producer on the show, said in the docuseries. “Our job was to deliver a show. I’m not going to yell at some kid not to smoke pot. … That’s not my job. He’s got parents for that.”
Asked if Brown’s parents were on the set, Warren replied, “I can say I do not remember his parents being on set.”
That’s So Raven stars Anneliese van der Pol, Raven-Symone and Orlando Brown. (Bob D’Amico/Disney General Entertainment Content via Getty Images)
Brown’s ex-girlfriend Omena Alexandria, who has a child with the actor-singer, talked about him becoming violent during their relationship, eight years after he was on Disney’s That’s So Raven, and discovering he had secretly been using crystal meth.
“I didn’t really realize there was a drug use problem until this violence kind of gradually escalated,” she said.
She detailed how she had to drive to a police station in 2016 because he was melting down as she was driving and she wasn’t safe. As police arrested him at gunpoint, he pulled out a meth pipe from his sock and tried to hide it in her car, she said.
Brown has a long rap sheet, including for domestic violence in which he allegedly wielded a hammer and knife.
Dee Jay Daniels, who played Michael on The Hughleys, appeared in the docuseries and talked about being arrested on murder charges in 2012 for the stabbing death of J.J. Lewis. Daniels’s TV dad, D.L. Hughley, who he had fallen out of touch with, testified as a character witness at his trial.
“I felt esteemed, honored, that I haven’t talked to my pops in so long and the fact that he’s still my pops,” Daniels said of Hughley.
Daniels was acquitted. A friend of the actor, Marcus McCliman, was found guilty of voluntary manslaughter and the use of a knife in the case.
The second episode of Hollywood Demons, “Child Stars Gone Violent,” premieres March 31 at 9 p.m. on Investigation Discovery and streams on Max.
