The former Disney Channel breakout stars this year in Machine Gun Kelly’s movie ‘Good Mourning With a U’ and B.J. Novak’s ‘Vengeance’ and overcomes fears of speaking about her sexuality through music: “A new lane that I never gave myself permission to inhabit.”

Dove Cameron, who came to fame as a teen on Disney Channel hits Liv and Maddie and the Descendants films, is in a new phase. The 26-year-old — who last year landed a major role on Apple TV+’s Schmigadoon! — is racking up millions of listens across streaming, TikTok and radio for her new single, “Boyfriend,” a self-described “queer anthem” promising a woman that “I could be a better boyfriend than him.”

And it almost didn’t happen. Cameron had written and recorded the song last year and put it on the shelf, until her label, Columbia, asked that she tease some new music on TikTok; she put up a short clip of “Boyfriend,” and it went viral overnight. The full version was released days later, although the singer admits she was “terrified” to put it out.

“The feeling of having people like something in theory for a week, and then delivering on it, I was ready to die,” Cameron says, having convinced herself it was “a bad song” and freaking out to friends and colleagues ahead of the Feb. 11 release. On top of the usual stress of putting out a single, she was entering new territory in her art by discussing relationships with women. “To me and to the people closest to me, my sexuality is not a revelation. I’ve even spoken about it in the public eye many times, but there’s a difference between that and then writing a song as explicit in the expression of your sexuality as this song,” she says. “I definitely was very like, ‘This is going to crash and burn in 100 ways.’”

The surprise success of the song (with more than 30 million streams on Spotify in less than two weeks) has turned Cameron’s life into a whirlwind, with a music video and tour on the way. And though she’s nervous to take on the title of queer role model (“People being like, ‘I see myself in you,’ that’s amazing. I am also a tiny, weird human who lives in a little house. I’m just trying to figure things out”), doing so has changed the way she sees her platform: “It’s creating a new space for me in a new lane that I never gave myself permission to inhabit.”

When the star came out in 2020 (she’d known she was queer since childhood), she did so via Instagram Live after a lyric video for her song “We Belong” drew criticism of queerbaiting for featuring LGBTQ relationships. At that time, she was in a long-term relationship with Gossip Girl and Descendants star Thomas Doherty. She first came out as bi, though today she says she goes back and forth between identifying as queer and as pansexual “because I’m still figuring it out, and that’s OK and we need to normalize that.” And while she says looking back she was uncomfortable to come out in the way she did — “I wanted to not feel like I was doing it out of necessity and defense” — it did push her to explore herself.

“I never would have found myself in such a way. I never would have delved as deeply as I have, I never would have the community that I do,” Cameron says. “I never would feel so safe in the public eye, if I’m honest.”

The singer-actress also continues to expand her acting ambitions, with an upcoming role in B.J. Novak’s dark thriller Vengeance as well as Good Mourning With a U (co-written and directed by Machine Gun Kelly), which she calls a “classic throwback stoner comedy” featuring Machine Gun Kelly’s circle of Pete Davidson, Megan Fox … and Cameron.

“Machine Gun Kelly called me one day and was like, ‘Hey, I wrote this movie, and the whole time I was writing it I was thinking about you for this role.’ And I was like, ‘Sir, have I met you?’” Cameron jokes of his intimate approach despite the two having no prior relationship. But by the end of the shoot, “I’ve never been so heartbroken to leave a set,” she says.

She is also signed on to play Bubbles in The CW’s live-action Powerpuff Girls series, which has seemingly hit a series of obstacles as the network announced the pilot is being redeveloped and reshot. Cameron says she has no update on where the show currently stands.

“The limit does not exist when it comes to all the things Dove will bring life to next,” says close friend and Schmigadoon! co-star Ariana DeBose. “I don’t know that folks realize the depth of her thought process — her constant curiosity in the world around her, the history of the female existence. She’s not to be underestimated.”

For now, Cameron is thrilled that both her acting and singing careers are going full throttle. “I’m honestly hoping to do both music and film at the highest velocity possible until literally I’m like, ‘I can’t do this, I need a week off.’”

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