The Jonas Brothers' Dad Worried They Looked 'Too Sexual' in Their 2009 Concert Film, New Book Alleges

09/25/2024 12:17 PM

Kevin Jonas Sr. also took issue with a 'South Park' episode lampooning his sons according to the new book 'Disney High'

In the mid-2000s, the Jonas Brothers became some of the biggest teen heartthrobs of the decade. But according to a new book, their father, Kevin Jonas Sr., fretted over their squeaky-clean image early in their careers.

"I've worked with a lot of kids who have parents who are very involved," former Columbia Records president Steve Greenberg told author Ashley Spencer in Disney High: The Untold Story of the Rise and Fall of Disney Channel's Tween Empire, "and the Jonases' dad was, by far, the most proactive and great of them all."

According to Spencer, Kevin Sr., then a pastor in the family's New Jersey hometown, "shepherded" his sons' early careers, ensuring that their public image aligned with the Jonases' values.

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When it came time to put together the group's 2009 concert film Jonas Brothers: The 3D Concert Experience, Kevin Sr. worried that footage would lead to Kevin, Joe and Nick being "perceived as too sexual," Spencer writes.

Filmed in New York City in early August 2008 when Kevin was 21, Joe 19 and Nick 16, the movie captured behind-the-scenes footage as well as the Jonas Brothers' performances at Madison Square Garden during their Burning Up tour. As Spencer notes in Disney High, the concert footage showed the Jonas Brothers "using foam guns to spray the ecstatic crowd with a white soapy substance. Later, the Jonases soaked themselves while banging on water-doused drums."

"A lot of times you could see their nipples because they'd be wearing fitted shirts, and they would be soaking wet," tour photographer Elise Abdalla says in the book. "Their team would be like, 'No, you have to crop it. No nipples.' Anything that was too sexy was out."

When South Park parodied the Jonas Brothers in a March 2009 episode poking fun at the apparent contradiction between their wholesome Disney image and their sex appeal to young fans, Kevin Sr. "was not pleased," Spencer reports. The episode lampooned the boys' purity rings and featured a very suggestive animated recreation of the concert film's foam scenes.

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"When the South Park episode came out, their father was super offended," Abdalla recalls in Disney High. "But I was like, don't you think the foam thing does look a little weird?"

In a 2016 Reddit Ask Me Anything quoted in the book, Nick also expressed his initial displeasure with the episode. "When it first came out I didn't think it was funny to be honest," he said. "But years later and once the purity rings were no longer around, it was very funny to me."

While Kevin Sr. may not have appreciated South Park besmirching the Jonas Brothers' image, Disney corporate brass apparently saw it differently, according to former Disney Channel president Anne Sweeney.

"We were absolutely thrilled because it meant that the rest of entertainment actually noticed us," she says in Disney High. "I thought it was funny."

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