Photo by: Chris Large/Netflix
We were joined on the Popternative show by Nikki Rodriguez, Noah LaLonde, and Ashby Gentry who star in the new Netflix coming-of-age series, My Life with the Walter Boys. The series premiered on the streaming platform December 7th and is based on the popular 2014 Wattpad novel of the same name by by Ali Novak.
The series follows Jackie Howard (Nikki Rodriguez) who loses her entire family in a tragic accident and is sent to a small rural town in Colorado with her new guardian – her mother’s best friend, Katherine (Sarah Rafferty), who is raising ten kids with her husband, George (Marc Blucas). Jackie is determined to stay focused on getting into Princeton while getting used to her new life, all while wrapping her head around her feelings for two very different Walter brothers: the reliable and bookish Alex (Ashby Gentry), and the mysterious and troubled Cole (Noah LaLonde).
When discussing Jackie’s journey throughout the series, Nikki explains some of the challenges she first faced in portraying her: “I feel like that’s an actor’s dream come true, to be able to work with such a character arc like that. It was definitely something I was aware of and definitely tried to make sure was truthful on screen. So it was quite the challenge especially at the beginning because [Jackie is] so uncomfortable in her environment but I felt so comfortable immediately with everyone, so that was probably the most difficult part.”
Noah touches on the complexity behind Cole’s character: “I kind of understood it as if you don’t understand each side of him, you can kind of get caught up in the negative aspects. And I tried to lean into the other stuff because that’s who he really is.”
When diving into the sibling rivalry dynamics between Alex and Cole, Ashby says “We tried this thing where we [him and Noah] would like lock in before we shot where we’d be like okay we’re enemies, we’d fist bump and after we wouldn’t talk to each other all day. And then we would fist bump at the end of the day and then we’d be like how was your day how’s it going. We wouldn’t do that on the days where we actually fought with each other on screen, and then at a certain point we were like, yeah we don’t really need to be doing this. So we certainly leaned into the fun of it as much as we could.”
Watch the full conversation with Nikki, Noah, and Ashby below.
My Life with the Walter Boys is streaming on Netflix.