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“Can we play ‘Be Like a Woman’ in this beeyotch?”
At a studio in Manhattan’s NoMad neighborhood, the speakers fill the room with an avant-pop track from 1979 — one that failed to find an audience upon its release, but
leaped onto the Billboard Hot 100 this year after being discovered by teens on TikTok. Minutes ago, a group of stylists, publicists and journalists were bustling around with an all-business attitude; it’s a Friday morning in late June, so we all want to get our work done to head into the weekend. But there was a marked vibe shift when a certain 19-year-old stepped out of the elevator.
“That fit is so fire.” “What a fire setup.” “Are we about to hang out and do a video together? Fire,” he says. Everyone is giggling about his vocabulary, but they’re still charmed. Besides, he’s in on the joke: The older the person he’s speaking to, the more he plays up his youth. In 90 minutes with me — I’m 26, too old to be his peer, but young enough to get his references — he uses the word “fire” a mere three times. But while chatting with the 30- and 40-something photographers and creative directors on set, something new is “fire” every 30 seconds.
Outside of his entourage, most of the people here hadn’t ever heard the name “Malachi Barton” before prepping for this shoot. That’s OK — he’s doing just fine with his target audience: the TikTok generation. He has more than 7 million followers on that platform, plus 3 million on Instagram. (He doesn’t post on X anymore. None of the kids do.) And his popularity will only grow with the Aug. 13 debut of “Camp Rock 3,” in which Barton plays the male lead in the relaunch of the Disney Channel franchise that sent both Demi Lovato and the Jonas Brothers’ careers into the stratosphere nearly two decades ago.
So he’s got big shoes to fill, and he knows it. “‘Camp Rock’ is literally a legendary movie franchise, and you could ask anybody and they’d know what it is,” Barton says. “The fact that I’m able to be a part of this next generation of Camp Rockers is so fun and so sick.”
The child of Felicia Barton, a singer-songwriter who competed on “American Idol” at its peak in 2009, and tour manager and audio engineer Loren Barton, Malachi made his on-screen debut in a Christmas episode of “The Young and the Restless” in 2012. He was only 6 years old — and freaked out by the prospect of appearing on camera in pajamas. “I was like, ‘This is for me in my bedroom only.’ I felt like I was naked,” he says, laughing. But after shooting a few quick takes and seeing the production move on, Barton’s nerves were replaced by a new feeling: “I remember going up to my dad, like, ‘Wait, I want to do it again. I want to keep going.’ That was what started it, because I just didn’t want to stop. The rest is history.”
Since then, he’s been working almost constantly, flitting across Hollywood in small roles before being cast as the younger brother of Jenna Ortega’s character in the Disney Channel sitcom “Stuck in the Middle” in 2016. Now, he’s become modern Disney royalty, a key player in the same pipeline that produced stars like Miley Cyrus, Selena Gomez and Zac Efron — or at least, the version of that pipeline that still exists in 2026.
“Camp Rock” became the second-most-watched Disney Channel film of all time when it premiered in 2008. Eighteen years later, Disney still manages to continue developing young performers into superstars; the recent rises of Ortega, Olivia Rodrigo and Sabrina Carpenter prove that. Yet, today there are fewer crossover successes than there were during Disney’s “Hannah Montana” heights, since the sheer volume of content aimed at tweens has vastly increased and YouTube dominates traditional TV when it comes to kids. That means there’s all the more pressure on the company to identify children with the je ne sais quoi to capture and maintain the eyes of a generation that’s always chasing its next dopamine hit.
Naturally, some of the pressure to become ubiquitous gets passed on to the young stars themselves. Barton is now a full-fledged influencer, living much of his life online to promote partnerships with brands like CeraVe and Hollister and — of course — his work at Disney.
“I have fallen into every pit there has ever been on social media,” he says. “Every day, I scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll. My attention span is not good anymore.” When a new project boosted his engagement on TikTok, “I caught myself being like, ‘These views are going crazy. I’m on top of the world!’ And then it just dropped, and my self-worth dropped: ‘Oh my gosh, people don’t like me as much.’ Then I checked myself. Like, ‘You sound stupid. What are you doing? It’s not that deep.’”
“I’m not envious of anyone going through it now,” says Joe Jonas, who returned to Disney to appear in and executive produce “Camp Rock 3” alongside his brothers. He sees his younger self in Barton. “It was tough enough with just the gossip sites commenting on teenagers’ dating lives, but with social media, that’s all heightened now. So I just reminded Malachi that it’s important to remember where you come from, and the reason you started this in the first place.”
Barton lives by that advice. “Honestly, what drives me is Jesus Christ, and being a light of God in a business where there isn’t a lot of that,” he says. Then he shows his age again: “That’s what gets me stoked when I wake up. I’m like, ‘That’s so lit! Jesus is freaking sick.’”
He knows that’s not a line anyone expects to hear from a teen star in 2026. “You don’t often see faith being talked about in this business. There’s so many crazy things that go on,” he says. “I use God to say, ‘I’m not here for all that crazy stuff. I’m here to do my job and have fun doing what I love through a filter of God.’ It’s just cuckoo craze out there.” Reluctant to sound judgmental, he adds, “But, like, also, cuckoo craze is fun!”
Beginning in the mid-aughts, “High School Musical” (2006) and “Camp Rock” (2008) ignited widespread interest in movie musicals for children. Disney’s more recent musical franchises “Zombies” and “Descendants” are why that trend has lasted — and the reason Barton’s success keeps doubling. “Stuck in the Middle,” a two-season sitcom called “The Villains of Valley View” and the “Under Wraps” movies established him as a familiar face across Disney projects. But his first musical, “Zombies 4: Dawn of the Vampires,” is what earned him a large chunk of his online following. “Honestly, dancing on TikTok was not my thing originally. But a couple of the guys in ‘Zombies 4’ were pretty big on TikTok, so they were teaching me,” he says. “I was like, ‘Ooh, what? “Renegade”?’” The “Renegade” and other TikTok dances became a fixture of his internet presence as he promoted the movie and last summer’s “Descendants/Zombies: Worlds Collide” concert tour, often clearing 20 million views and no doubt helping the tour sell out more than 40 arenas. The tour will pick up again later this year with additional talent from “Camp Rock 3,” and Barton is also set to reprise his role in 2027’s “Zombies 5: Secrets of the Sea.”
Tim Federle, best known for creating “High School Musical: The Musical: The Series” — in which Disney winked at its own influence on pop culture while introducing the world to a pre-“Drivers License” Rodrigo — proudly calls himself “a big believer in Malachi Barton.” The writer-director worked with Barton while executive producing “Camp Rock 3,” and also cast him as a warlock in his upcoming series “Coven Academy.” Resembling the soapy, addictive output of The CW in its heyday, “Coven Academy” is the first-ever young adult series to air on Disney Channel and Disney+, and has enough blood and grit potentially to bring back the teens who might otherwise be aging out of Disney’s wholesome multi-cams.
Federle made room for Barton in the cast after a conversation with Ayo Davis, the president of Disney Kids & Family, who called him after seeing fans lose their minds at the sight of Barton at an event. “She said, ‘Tim, I haven’t seen a reaction to a young actor like this ever in my career,’” he recalls — which is saying something, considering that Davis began working in talent development and casting at Disney in 2002. “‘It’s visceral in the room, and you should consider writing him a little role in “Coven Academy.”’”
“So I created this role, and Malachi read for it — which surprised me, because he’s the kind of actor who’s quickly tipping into offer-only,” Federle says.
This is true; with “Camp Rock 3,” Barton was the first choice to play Fletch, according to Disney. He’s clearly still floored by his own growing profile. “The ‘Camp Rock’ process was crazy. It was literally so bang-bang-bang,” Barton says. “I was on tour. We were literally maybe halfway through, and I got the call from Disney. They were like, ‘Hey, so we’re doing another “Camp Rock.” This is the vibe.’ I was like, ‘OK, let me feel it out.’ I read the script — so fire — but I was on tour.” He was told that if he accepted the role, he would have to skip the rehearsal period due to his tour obligations and go straight into shooting — then immediately head into production on “Coven Academy.” Exhausted, Barton didn’t know what to do. “I felt like I wasn’t in the right mental space to make decisions. Then I finally had a day off. A week later, I called ’em back, like, ‘All right, screw it. Let’s do it.’”
“The X factor Malachi has is so undeniable.” After being impressed with Barton’s performance in the “Coven Academy” pilot, Federle began writing more material for him “to help headline the series, because show business is about timing and luck and the universe whispering to you,” he says. “And it was so clear that he has something incredibly special that you can’t teach.”
While Barton certainly carries the expected polish of a media-trained child actor — clear skin and a bright smile, perfect manners, a ceaselessly chipper attitude — there are moments when the normie 19-year-old boy in him comes through. When we first sit down, I ask what memories he has from the years before his career began. “It’s so funny! It’s really hard for me to remember a time where I wasn’t working,” he says. He’s still grinning, but there’s almost something sad in his words, or at least a wistfulness.
“It has been a blessing and a curse. Because it’s all I’ve known, it’s like, ‘Oh, I’m comfortable in it.’ But oh, man,” Barton says. “There’s a part of me that wanted the normal, like, ‘I’m going to middle school. I’m going to high school.’” When he tells me about making the decision to join “Camp Rock 3” right after being on tour, he reasons, “My friends are in college, so it’s not like I’d be going home and hanging out with them. Everyone’s in college, dude. It sucks.” But on a dime, he shifts back to the positive. “They’re home for summer right now, though, which is great,” he says. “And honestly, I’m so grateful for my parents. They did such a great job at rushing me from set to baseball practice, and making sure I have friends outside of the business. And listen, I’m not blocking myself off to college at some point. My dad just turned 45, and he’s back in school to become a therapist. Like, the world is your oyster. Just freaking do whatever you want.”
That everyday boyishness is the reason Disney Kids & Family’s senior vice president of casting, Brenda Kelly Grant, and her team gravitated to Barton for placement across the Disney portfolio. “This is a kid — now an adult — who has always been himself. He’s always had a very specific point of view,” she says. “He had real interests as a kid. They would wrap him on set by a certain time so he could go to camp. I think that’s what really has connected with kids: They appreciate that relatability and that authentic journey.”
Grant also points out that Barton has developed a reputation for skillfully taking direction. He says the best note he’s been given came from director Paul Hoen on the set of “Zombies 4.”
“I blink so much when I act,” Barton says. “He’s like, ‘First of all, you need to open your eyes, and you need to keep them open. There’s so much story that is told in your eyes.’ And I forget what movie it’s from, but he was like, ‘It’s all in the eyes, Chico.’ Or something like that.” Barton may be too young to recognize the “Scarface” reference, but he’s held on to its lesson: “I really learned that on that movie, because watching it back, I was like, ‘Oh, if I would just keep my eyes still, that would have been a lot better.’ It’s all in on your eyes more than you know.”
Federle recalls that ahead of shooting “Coven Academy,” “I said, ‘Malachi, your audience is growing up. I think it’d be great for you to start growing up with them. Ground it. Shake off anything multi-cam. Just be a guy. Step into your greatness by actually doing less. This is a single camera; it’s on you, and the camera does a lot of the work. Just trust that you’re enough.’ And I give him credit. He really, I think, trusted me, did less and was amazing. My experience with him is that he really wants to be pushed, and he doesn’t want to coast.”
But Barton isn’t quite ready to leave the nest yet. When I ask whether he’s starting to get offers for adult projects, he says, “Some indie projects have come through, and opportunities to produce, and I’m loving that. But truthfully, I need a break. I need my brain to breathe for a second.” He says “Coven Academy” is giving him what he needs in terms of a transition: “I got to tap into a little bit of like a psychopath. I’m crying, we’re fighting, we’re kissing — all the things of older television that I’m really excited for.”
Asked how long he thinks he’ll stay at Disney, Barton says, “Dude, as long as they’ll have me! I’ve literally grown up in the Disney bubble, and I wouldn’t trade it for the world. I’m trusting God’s plan, and I’m hanging out with Mickey Mouse right now, and it’s fun.”
The stability of the Disney bubble helps keep Barton afloat. He had “a pretty heavy walk with anxiety” during the pandemic, he tells me, including panic attacks that were “gnarly” enough to make him quit baseball. “I am just a kid. There’s battles you go through at 19 that are just natural, and I’m figuring it out. It’s such a hard journey,” he confesses before pivoting back to the bright side. “There’s something really cool about it, though, because you learn so much from it.”
I tell him that being his age was a nightmare for me, and the camaraderie over post-pubescent angst seems to allow him to exhale. He puts his elbows on the table. “It’s, like, crazy. Like, why are we so crazy? What happens from 17 to 20?”
It’s going to last a little past 20, I tell him. Especially for a Hollywood kid. Who knows what the rest of his early adulthood will look like?
“Sorry — 25. 30. I’m going to be ruined until I’m 40,” he says, beginning to laugh again. For the first time, he allows the smallest bit of sarcasm to creep in. “But no, it’s great. I’m just hanging out and having fun. We’re doing the thing.”
