Kidsday interviews actress Tiffany Thornton
Photo credit: Newsday Photo / Patrick Mullooly | Actress Tiffany Thornton with Kidsday reporters Briani Baboolal, Ali Depetris, Eliza Copjec and Robert Valenzuela
We met actress Tiffany Thornton, who stars as Tawni on the Disney Channel show "Sonny With a Chance," at ABC-TV offices in Manhattan recently.
Do you like working with Demi Lovato? Is she like a sister to you?
She is like a sister to me. We are both from Texas, so we have that in common. She is like a little sister, and I just love her to pieces. I call her Little Dem.
Are you ever nervous on TV? What makes you nervous?
Well. Boys make me nervous, in general. As far as getting nervous, I have a lot of lines to memorize, so that could be kind of tough, especially when we have a live audience like we have on Friday nights. There are a whole bunch of people watching us. But I always just pray before we go film, and that makes me feel more at peace and calm about what I am doing.
If you got the chance to be on Broadway, what show would it be?
I would love to be Glinda in "Wicked." I love "Wicked" so much, and Kristen Chenoweth is amazing; it would be very hard to fill her shoes.
Do you prefer to be in a comedy or drama series?
I enjoy watching drama on television, but I think I would prefer to make someone laugh rather than make someone cry. I like when people laugh and are having a good time. Comedy comes a lot easier to me than drama. I am not very good at crying on camera; I just feel so weird, and I feel like I am choking. It just looks kind of funny when I do that.
Would you prefer to be a singer or actress? How about both? I don't know if I have a preference -- I love both of them so differently. Singing is something I have done my whole life and is very dear and near to my heart, and acting is so much fun to have as a job because I don't feel like I am working. I feel like I am hanging out with my friends all day and memorizing a few lines here and there. I want to do both, and that is what I am doing now.
Is is true you were a cheerleader when you were younger? Yes, it is true. I was obsessed with cheerleading my whole life. I had a stepsister who was in high school when I was young. Her high school colors were blue and white. I took gymnastics when I was little, and I went to the store that was attached to the gymnastics place and I personally made an outfit that color-coordinated to my stepsister's team because she was a flag girl, and I would wear it when I was like 6 to the games. I would cheer in the stands and pick out which cheerleader I wanted to be when I grew up, and I always picked the blonde with the curly hair because my hair is naturally really curly.
What does it feel like to be a star on TV? I am a star. It feels so funny to be called a star because I am just acting like a character named Tawni five days a week. It feels really nice, I love meeting people like you guys and being able to talk to people and be an influence on kids. There is a lot of pressure sometimes on people that are on Disney Channel to be good role models, but I enjoy that responsibility. I think it is great. Hoepfully people can learn from me and I can put a smile on people's faces.
Why did you want to become an actress? That is a really good question. I love kids, I love making people laugh. I just wanted to be an influence on people. Sometimes you are having a bad day and you need to laugh you watch "Sonny With a Chance" or "Hatching Pete." It is fun to play characters and pretend to be other people. It is fun to dress up and wear Tawni's clothes. That is really fun too.Do you like working with the cast of "Sonny with a Chance"?It's awful! I'm kidding! They're fabulous. Demi is so great to work with. She is so funny. Brandon [Smith; he plays Nico] is really funny; he makes us laugh a lot when we are supposed to be filming and we can't stop laughing. It's so bad. Sterling he is from Texas as well. So me and Demi and Sterling [Knight; he plays Chad Dylan Cooper] are from Texas and he is a sweetheart. Doug [Brochu; he plays Grady] is the next Will Ferrell, plus Jack Black plus cool guy from Florida. And Allison is really, really smart. She is 12 but she has the mid of like a 30 year old.
Are you close with your cast members? Yes. I did a couple of episodes of " Hannah Montana," I played Becky. So I knew Mitchel [Musso] already. He is from Texas as well. So I see him sometimes when I go to the studio and he is recording music. Sometimes I will do some background vocals on his songs and I see Jason [Dolley] a lot for stuff that we do for Disney. I saw him at a gifting lounge for the Kids Choice Awards, so it is always good to see him. My cast members from Sonny are like me brothers and sisters. We always hang out all the time. On our lunch break sometimes we will go bowling. I went once with Brandon and Doug and Sterling and I beat all of the boys. It was pretty cool. I got a 176 or something, it was insane. I bowled that well since, but I felt the pressure and I had to show the guys what I was made of and I did.
Who messes up the most on the set and what do they do? You know everyone is pretty good about memorizing their lines, but if Brandon starts to laugh everybody loses their mind. I cannot focus if Brandon is laughing. Our laughs kind of feed off of each other. So he'll start to snicker and we are filming a scene and I will start [snickering], and it is just really hard to hold it in. He doesn't really mess up but something that is funny or distracts us and then it is hard for us to get back.
Did you ever want to do something besides being an actress? I wanted to be so many things. I wanted to be a model and then I changed my mind and I wanted to be a singer, then I went to actress and then I went to a pediatrician which is a doctor for kids and then I decided I wanted to own a nursery to take care of kids, then I decided I wanted to make a baby clothing line.
What was your first you starred in and did you enjoy it? The first movie I starred in was "Hatching Pete," and so I really enjoyed it. I have never been in a movie and been on the big screen. Like Sterling was in "17 Again" with Zac Efron. I just saw that last week and that was really cool to be on the red carpet and see him on the big screen. I really want to do that some day. "Hatching Pete" was the first movie I have done and it was really fun.
What do you do with the cast outside of the studio? We go bowling and I win. We go to dinner sometimes. There is a restaurant called BJ's and they have really, really good food so we love to go there. Sterling and I hang out sometimes too. He is like a brother to me. We have meatloaf Wednesdays sometimes at Demi's house. Her Aunt Lisa cooks us meatloaf and it is the best meatloaf in the whole world. We just like to get together as much as we can, but it is hard because Demi is so busy and the guys are busy all the time. We are not going to film again until October. That is a long time not to see each other.
What was your favorite episode to film in "Sonny With a Chance"? I like all of them, but I really like the one where I was bald. It kind of felt like there was a vacuum on the back of head and they were sucking my face into the back. It was cool. I look a lot like my dad because he doesn't have very much hair. I really liked the one were we did the Wicked Witch of the Web where I got to play Dorothy because I love the "Wizard of Oz."
Describe a time when you were jealous about someone or something. There was a girl on my cheerleading squad who could do a standing back tuck and I cannot do that. I went to tumbling classes and I could do back handsprings but I could just never do a back tuck where you come off the air and you flip all the way around without touching your hands and you land back on your feet. So I was little jealous of Megan but I got over it. Not everybody can do a back tuck I get it, fine. Maybe someday I will learn how to do it. I should go back to tumbling classes.
Were you ever on TV as a child? What were you on and did you like it? I never did TV as a child, I am still kind of child, but I never did it when I was really little. I think the first thing I did was about five years ago.
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