News of the performance video first emerged in early February 2025, on IMDB where it was described as a long-form (20 min) music video in the shape of
"A theatrical performance piece set in an ageing cinema, featuring Grace VanderWaal's songs from 'Child Star. ' Through intimate choreography with four dancers who embody societal pressures, the piece explores a former child star's journey into womanhood."
Grace explained to the
Hollywood Reporter why she made the perforamce video:
"It’s a really complex topic, and I think that there was just so much room, and there still is, to express those feelings and conversations even further, and so I felt like taking it to that space. Number one is what the project was already calling upon, but was very, very appropriate for this because there’s just so much to explore."
In an
interview with Eric Cantanada for his "Once and Always a Fanboy" podcast, Grace talked about the video:
"Making the album-video was extremely challenging – a lot of tears. I have always been a part of every single visual that you see, and I am a very visual person. I feel that when I write something, I can immediately see what it looks like, and with that comes a lot of frustration because it’s incredibly tedious to try to create something that literally I see in my mind. And also, really unsatisfying when it’s like ‘No! In my fantasy, the light was here and not there and …’. So it's been really challenging but also extremely rewarding, and I’m just so, so connected to the visuals of this project" To the
Hollywood Reporter, she explained how the ideas for the choreography started:
"I was just making slideshows. Literally, I just walked into Pulse [Records] and had a Google fucking Slides, because I’m a child, of five seconds, 15 seconds, and then ‘Grace falls into a pool of dancers.’ We only had three days to choreograph the entire thing – and by the way, it was three days right before filming. It was really stressful."
In an
interview Euphoria Magazine Grace explained that the art of Childstar was inspired by medieval fashion and its inherent violence.
"It was all the chastity belts and metal and restraints and all these things that are still worn today, but are a bit more invisible. It slowly turned into this aesthetic of its own, and we began to mix more colors, fabrics, and chiffon – it just added to the painting," [We assume that this was in refernce to the video for “What’s left of Me”] She described how The aesthetic fully developed around the performance video for "Proud," which was heavily inspired by Swan Lake.
"I watched the whole ballet on YouTube. My eyes were glued to the screen. I actually cried."
In an
interview with Teen Vogue Grace talked about the beginning and end of the video:
When I come out at the beginning of the performance video, everyone's holding the mic — I just wanted to be shown as extremely infantilized and weak, and held to a high standard. It's like you're entering this ring of sacrifice.
At the end, I’m experiencing a symbolic death, carried out by dancers. I wrote the story of the play, and I liked the storytelling archetype of the progression of a birth to a death. It symbolized how the public and society in general take everything girls have and their youth, and then when they don't have anything left to give, they're dead to them and seen as a used product and discarded away.
In an
interview with Zach Sang Grace told that she would have like to go further than that.
I wish I went harder on that album, way harder. My first ideas for some of these labels were really out there. Like, I wanted to go to award shows and paint blood on a white dress, have a goat with me.
