Disney’s Next Big Thing: Malachi Barton on ‘Camp Rock 3,’ Doomscrolling on TikTok and Not Hiding His Faith in God

“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.