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Mandy Moore is opening up about the "pop idol worship" during her career in the early 2000s and how it is vastly different to navigating fame today.
The This Is Us star appeared on Thursday's (March 21) episode of the Las Culturistas podcast hosted by Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang, where they talked about everything from her first movie role to creating a jukebox musical with Moore's own catalog.
After shutting down speculation about whether an account claiming to be Moore in the early days of social media was actually her, Rogers asked about how Moore dealt with the "pop idol worship" of the late '90s and early '00s, calling it "cuckoo bananas."
While acknowledging how fame was such a craze during that time, the "Candy" singer said she was able to have the best of both worlds, still being able to be a teenager hanging out with friends while being able to "put the work hat on" when it was time to do her job. However, she pointed out that it's probably harder to deal with now for younger celebrities finding themselves in the spotlight.
"I feel like it would be crazier to be a young person finding success now," she said. "The access people have via social media, it's like that's the difference. That was the only platform in which you could receive communication from someone besides watching them on Entertainment Tonight or premiere red carpet or reading about them in a teen magazine once a month."
The mom-of-two continued, "There was so little information out there about people that we lived and died by the little morsels that we would get, and now it's such a wild, different world I wouldn't know how to navigate being a young person with all of the content that's constantly out there, there's no privacy."
Yang readily agreed, adding how in today's world of social media, people are more likely to share as much information with the world as possible.
"Right now, instead of a morsel, it's like everyone is expected to throw out the full pig, the full hog," he said, to which Moore responded, "All the time, constantly, there's never enough to satiate people."
While Moore has gone on to earn critical acclaim in her acting career, she got her first start on the big screen in Princess Diaries, sharing stories elsewhere in the interview about co-star Anne Hathaway on set and being scolded (in scene) by Sandra Oh, who she called "the best."
Moore also talked about her first starring role in A Walk to Remember, which she filmed when she was around 16 years old, saying that experience left and "indelible" mark on her. After Rogers and Yang praised Moore for the chemistry she has with her co-stars over the course of her acting career, specifically gushing about her on-screen romance with A Walk to Remember co-star Shane West, she admitted that she had "such a crush" on her scene partner.
On Las Culturistas, Rogers and Yang "get into the hottest pop-culture moments of the day" and even hang out with special guests like Kelly Clarkson, Tina Fey and Seth Meyers. Check out more episodes of the Las Culturistas podcast at iHeart.com.