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Cameron Boyce death: Dove Cameron opens up about losing Descendants co-star

“If there was a word stronger than devastated that could describe the depth of pain that I was feeling, I would use it,” the actor said

Adam White
Thursday 01 August 2019 03:18 EDT
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Disney star Cameron Boyce dies aged 20

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The Descendants actor Dove Cameron has opened up about losing her former co-star Cameron Boyce, who died in July due to an epilepsy-related medical condition.

Cameron, who worked with Boyce on the Disney fantasy franchise since 2015, recalled in an interview with Seventeen Magazine that she received a number of messages to inform her that Boyce had died.

“I was nervous about why I could be getting so many texts and calls, so I only looked at my mother’s text,” she said. “I knew she would be the gentlest, and the most concise, whatever it was.”

After being told of Boyce’s death, she called her fellow cast member BooBoo Stewart, and pair “just sobbed without speaking”. She added: “If there was a word stronger than devastated that could describe the depth of pain that I was feeling, I would use it.”

She also said that the Descendants cast have a group text chain, which Boyce remains a part of, and that they have clung to as a lifeline. “It’s hard when there are no adequate words to express the pain we are all feeling, but the usual text is ‘love you.’ Or ‘are you eating?’ Or ‘how are we all today?’” she explained. “I think something like this horrible loss makes you realise how important you are all to each other. I am grateful for my chosen family at a time like this.”

It was declared this week that the coroner’s report into Boyce’s death, which declared that the actor experienced a “sudden unexpected death from epilepsy”, was consistent with his family’s earlier statement that attributed his death to the ongoing medical condition.

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