Nick and Joe Jonas say they were asked uncomfortable questions as teenagers about their purity rings
"Famously we were known for like purity rings, which were something in the community of a church where that was like what everybody else in our age were doing around 10, 11 years old, like, we're going to wait for the right person," Joe explained on Penn Badgley's Podcrushed.
Joe, who was joined by fellow Jonas Brothers Nick and Kevin for the interview, added that "one person on an interview when you're 15, 16 would ask you about it, and you're like, 'I don't want to talk about this,' and then they're like, 'Well, I'm going to write that you guys are in a cult.'"
At this point, Badgley pointed out the grossness of asking "a 10-year-old" about anything intimate in the first place. Nick clarified that he wasn't 10, but noted that the industry has come "far" in "just the conversation and dialogue" since that time.
"I think it's really a good thing," he said, explaining, "Where it would be like so outside of the realm of possibilities or something someone would do to ask at that time a 14-year-old about their sex life."
Joe jumped in, claiming that "it was every interview" that these topics would come up in, but Nick was quick to point out that it wasn't just happening to them, but it was a larger problem in the industry as whole for young stars.
The brothers said they also felt pressure to live their lives a certain way as a result of things they said in these interviews, which would also sometimes question their religion. "Whether it was sex, or it was even religion or Christianity, [they'd be] questioning things like questioning if I believe in God, what is God? Is there even a God? And it's on the record. And you're like, uh... and so you felt the pressure," Joe said, adding, "I can definitely speak for all three of us here. [We] felt the pressure of being like, well, we have to live these lives because we kind of said it in a paper once. And it's in print, so you got to do it forever."
When the Jonas Brothers first signed with Columbia Records in 2005, Kevin was 17, Joe was 15, and Nick was 12, and the musicians and actors had a whirlwind rise to stardom ever since.
Though the aforementioned media scrutiny wasn't easy, the brothers eventually learned to make peace with it all. "Obviously, it would be scary and freak us out, until we got to a point where it's like, f--- this," Joe concluded. "And probably at the time we were like, 'frick this.' Because we were like, 'We can figure out who we are on our own terms.'"
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