HE’S ALL THAT’S PEYTON MEYER ON REBOOTS, AUDIENCE EXPECTATIONS AND PLAYING THE ULTIMATE DOUCHE

BY CLARA SEELY-KATZ

Peyton Meyer is one of those actors who many young adults today grew up watching. His wholesome face was featured in not one but two Disney Channel television series during the mid-2000s and early 2010s, and because of this, he has had a fanbase that has watched him grow up as they went from young teen to young adult along with him.

Being an actor means a lot of public scrutiny that is difficult for even older and more experienced actors, let alone those who first found fame as children. Meyer, however, was able to utilize his childhood acting experiences to grow and mature instead of faltering under pressure. Growing up on the screen forced him to skip through certain aspects of childhood, but in return, he gained poise and a level of self-awareness that many others at his age lack.

He will be starring in the new Netflix original, He's All That, a reboot of the classic nineties’ movie She's All That with a twist. Although Meyer's natural charm and sweet nature have traditionally caused him to be typecast as more of a "boy next door" character, in his new role, he will be playing a different type of character that we haven't really seen from him yet (Meyer lovingly calls his character "a douche").

From first casting calls to the true root of all his acting inspirations, Meyer spills all about what it takes to be a child actor and what it takes to be a good man.

FASHION STYLING: EVAN SIMONITSCH, GROOMING: KC FEE

Can you tell me about growing up as a child actor? Were you a teen, or did you start much younger?

I was still a kid. Before acting, I grew up as a sports kid. I grew up playing baseball, football, basketball, hanging out with friends all the time, just the normal, typical kid things. I was always watching the sitcom George Lopez, and one day, I asked my mom, how do people do this [acting]? How do people get on TV? She didn't know, but she told me that they're actors. So, I did as much research as I could on acting and looked up the entire profession and what it was. Then I started doing these little competitions in Las Vegas, where I'm from, and I got a part in a play. Suddenly an agent wanted to contact me and hire me and bring me out to LA, so my mom and I ended up just driving back and forth to LA to from Vegas to go in for auditions. It's funny that once you start to do something you're meant to do, the doors open themselves. It was so cool. Once we threw the dart to do it, all these other doors started opening up for managers and auditions. It just started working itself out, and I think I was twelve when I was cast in my first acting role.

Do you think that growing up in the acting world heavily affected your perspective on life and the world in general?

Yeah, I think it's affected my entire life, to be honest, and my entire perspective of the world. Even when sets have a lot of kids, it's still a professional setting, and it's still a workplace at the end of the day. Don't get me wrong, we had school, and we had some fun times, and we hung out, but it was still a very professional business setting at the end of the day. From age twelve through my entire life past then, I would spend seven/eight months out of the year waking up at five and coming home at five that night. So, it changed a lot and made me appreciate a lot in life, but it really gave me a shortcut through childhood and into more adult life. I missed a little piece of my childhood, but I was honestly okay with that because it gave me such a leg up. When I was nineteen, I dealt with things young adults in their mid-twenties are just starting to get into. I still have twenty-four and twenty-five-year-old friends who still haven't learned fully about taxes and jobs. Also, things like doing your laundry, your clothes, I've been doing that stuff since I was a little kid, so I feel like I was trained at a young age to be more independent.

So, can you tell me how you first got started acting at Disney?

Yeah, it was funny. I did this general meeting with the head of casting of Disney. We had a conversation, and I read a couple of scenes for her. She loved me, and she told me they wanted to get me in something, and I ended up going in for the Girl Meets World auditions. I auditioned around seven or eight times before I finally booked Girl Meets World, and we filmed the pilot. As soon as we finished the pilot, I immediately booked Dog with a Blog. My first episode was on Girl Meets World, and then as soon as that was done, we had to wait eight months for it to get picked up or not. So, between that time, I actually did a bunch of episodes of Dog with a Blog, and it was so much fun. It was my first actual set experience where they were in their second season, and they were already moving, and there was a dog on set. It was wild. And getting to learn the process before I got into filming Girl Meets World was so much fun. It was such a great show to get a start on, and the cast was so welcoming. And the whole show, all the creators, were just so amazing. It was an awesome experience.

As you just mentioned, you got your start starring in the Disney reboot of Boy Meets World called Girl Meets World, and now you are starring in the upcoming Netflix original, He's All That, a reboot of the widely loved She's All That. Do you think it is particularly hard to star in a reboot when the original show has a large fanbase with their own expectations?

Yeah, I feel like I'm a nineties’ kid. I keep getting these roles that are reboots! It's funny because the first one (Girl Meets World) I was very excited about because it was still early on into the reboot phase of Hollywood. There hadn't been too many reboots, and it was still very exciting because I knew my older brothers were huge fans, and they were super excited to see all of the old characters like Cory and Topanga. I didn't realize until about season two that it puts so much pressure on you to star in a reboot. I'm glad I didn't know it until later, but it puts so much pressure on you because many of these people don't realize that you're shooting for a new perspective, a new audience, and a new time. And a lot of the audience thinks you're just kind of poking with their childhood that they love when in reality, you're trying to remind them of it and get an entirely new generation to learn lessons from the show and see new perspectives.

I know many details of the movie are under wraps, but can you tell me about your character in your newest reboot, He's All That?

Yeah, I don't know what, what I can exactly say. But I can tell you that I was very wary about taking the role initially because I don't do any singing or dancing. In the past, I stayed very far away from those types of roles. And this role is singing and dancing throughout the film. It was something I've never done before. I definitely thought I don't know how to do this. But once we got started, it was really fun to dive into it all. It really enlightened me, and I realized I could do these things that I've never done before and put myself out there, which was cool. My character's name is Jordan Van Draanen, and he's basically the school douchebag if you would, like the school frat guy, the ultimate douche.

And you filmed this all during COVID. Can you tell me about the filming process?

It was so cool, honestly, because we were locked down. LA was locked up for seven/eight months, and after being shut up in my house, it was amazing to then be able to film; I was so grateful for it. But it was a tricky situation, and it was very different than anything any of us had ever done before. Normally when you book a film or a series, you're able to reach out to the cast and the directors and the producers and be able to sit down and have meetings and hang out. Maybe grab drinks or grab food, build some chemistry, and get to know each other a lot. Unfortunately, we couldn't do any of that. So, it was very tricky to start with. We weren't able to communicate, we just had to do everything through the phone, which still worked, but it wasn't the same as getting to know each other in person. So right when we got on set, it was basically like, what's up, let's get to know each other. The only thing was we had to get COVID tested three, four days a week, and another brutal part was that between set and our hours off, we weren't allowed to do anything. We were in quarantine. So, it's not like you could end a thirteen-hour day of work and then grab a beer, grab food or just relax with some friends. We had to just completely stay isolated, and once you stay home alone enough, you're even more excited to get back to set, but you don't get the human in you to have the energy to do the things you love. So, it was kind of tricky. It was a tricky situation.

Aside from just getting out of the house, was there any other positive thing you can take from that experience?

As I said, the singing and dancing thing, I never thought I would ever do a role that would entail singing and dancing. So being able to take on this character and being able to film with our great director, Mark Waters, he was terrific. He set me up with the right people to train, and being able to do it, sing and dance, it honestly made me want to do so much more of the things that I've always never wanted to do. And I feel like there's nothing, nothing in my entire arsenal that I wouldn't want to do anymore. Now the more it scares me, the more I want to do it.

Acting seems like it is something that you are passionate about, but have you always been this way, or was there a time when it was just a job?

When I was sixteen and seventeen, I looked at it as a job because I didn't grow up rich. I didn't grow up poor, but we didn't have a lot of money. I was splitting rent with my parents since I was thirteen years old, so when I was working, it was a way of getting food, in a sense. It was a way of paying bills. But, as I grew older, I started to find other avenues to make money, so acting isn’t all about "this is a job, and you're here to make money" anymore. Now it's turned a lot more into something that is a passion I will do for the rest of my life. It is very fun, and it lights me up. It's something I'm extremely passionate about - it's just all passion from now on.

If you could choose one actor/actress to work with next, who would it be?

Matthew McConaughey. I just finished his book, Green Lights. I always knew he was great because I've always kept up with his story, but being able to read his entire story and learn how his brain operates is so interesting. It would just be so cool to talk with him because on a human level, on an artist's level, and an acting level, I feel like I would just learn so much from working with him.

Matthew McConaughey isn't just an actor; as you said yourself, just recently, he published a book. As you get older, do you hope to do more work in other areas of the creative sphere?

My writing skills are horrible so I have a lot of work to do on writing; I think I'll maybe pick that up later down the road. Directing I love. It's funny, I think I've worked on over one hundred episodes of television, and almost every single episode has a different director. So, I've been able to see such a wide variety of directors. I always ask questions, and I spend most of my time on set talking to the director and picking their brain about things because it's something that I'm passionate about. But it's very interesting to see all these different avenues that I'm going to dip into in a couple of years. However, as a twenty-two-year-old, you don't want to be the one in charge because people just don't respect you, or they think someone gave you the job. I just want to give it a little more time to be the right age and be the right fit and have earned it before I dip into it.

What would you tell your fans if they wanted to get into film and television?

I wish people could learn more about themselves, and I mean that on a human level, and I mean it through an acting level on an artist's level. If you can spend time learning yourself, you don't have to be anyone else. Even acting isn't being someone else. It's being yourself in different circumstances. If you want to be an actor, you have to get to know yourself completely throughout, you have to know every single part of yourself, and you have to constantly be aware of what you're feeling and what you're doing.

What is the most important thing to you in your life right now?

COVID changed my perspective on things because I've never had eight months to a year before to sit at home with my family and not have to work. For me, it was a summer vacation for eight months. A lot of people didn't have their parents home or wouldn't have had their family home, and I was lucky. This changed my perspective a lot. Since I finished filming He's All That, I've just been hanging out and enjoying my life. I actually moved cities. I moved to Nashville about two months ago. I spent ten years in LA, and I've been trying just to rearrange my life to live more of a peaceful one, since my life is such a hectic, crazy one. I decided that I want to enjoy the time that I have here.

I noticed that on your Instagram, you like to travel. Is travel also a big part of you enjoying your time more?

Yes, it is the heart of my life. It is everything. I love traveling. I've been to many places in Asia, I've been to Taiwan, I've been to Hong Kong, I've been to Singapore. I did Sydney, Australia, and Melbourne, Australia. I've done a couple of spots in Europe, and I've done Canada. I've been traveling around, and there are a couple of places that I'm missing that I'm going to take care of here very shortly once we're fully cleared to travel around the world. It's amazing how much you pick up when everything around you is different. The language, the money, the culture, the people, and the way of life. When everything is different, it is amazing to me how much my stress disappears. You know, any anxiety disappears, it just puts me in this different mindset of an entire world of people. It reminds me there's not just my friend group, not just my neighborhood, not just my community, but an entire world of people with their own struggles different than mine. And it's one of those things that I cannot wait to get back to. The number one place that I want to go to is the Northern Lights. That's always been on my list. I'm going to cross that off very soon.

Have your traveling experiences helped you become a better actor?

Oh, absolutely. The thing about acting is you want to do as many things and such a wide variety of things as you possibly can to understand more life perspectives. One day, as an actor, you will have to pay someone who's terrified of the water, and then the next a guy who surfs every day. If you yourself were terrified of water, and you started surfing every day, you would start to learn that it's more peaceful than scary. It's about learning these little things that you can start to shift your perspective on. So that way, when a character presents himself, you're able to adapt to the surroundings or the setting or what it would feel like to be that character. If the character has to travel to a new high school, and it's his first day in school, maybe you've never experienced that, but it's something to go try out. Just put a backpack on and walk past a busy school on the sidewalk. Just walk by and feel how intense it would be to be in that position. Traveling forces you to try new things and trying new things and going to different places is something that you need to do. I was told by a great acting coach when I was fourteen that you need to try every single thing in the world before you leave. I live by that as much as I can.

And my last question for you today is, if you were a book, real or made up, what book would you be and why?

There's this book called The Celestine Prophecy. I don't know if you've read it, but it's a book about a guy's search for these nine or ten prophets that you're supposed to live by, that the universe is governed by. It feels like me because I'm always learning more things, and I'm always looking for what's next. I'm always looking for what am I missing here? What's happening next? What more can I learn? And I think that's kind of been a concrete detail of my life ever since I was around ten. I've always wanted to learn more and figure out how this all works and why we're all here.