Slimed!: An Oral History of Nickelodeon's Golden Age Read Online Free PDF Page A

attention-starved because he was homeschooled and didn’t get to be around a lot of kids all of the time. As a result, being on set was paradise for him. There were all these people around to talk to and he just loved it. As a result, he could be pretty unfocused and needy at times.
    RICK GALLOWAY: I love Bob Mittenthal. He was always very sweet, very nice, even when things got very crazy. Or seemingly.
    DAVE RHODEN: Bob and I had a great relationship, and in fact, at one point he came to me and was like, “Hey, I noticed you’re not doing all those one-liners and zingers on Rick anymore. Is something wrong?” I was like, “Nah, my mom told me I shouldn’t be doing that anymore.” And he was like, “Oh man, that’s too bad. I thought that was hilarious.”
    BLAKE SENNETT: When I first started, I wanted the others to think I was cool and not bad as an actor. My character was cocky and charming, and I wanted to be that. In the first episode I was in, I had to hurl a baseball with incredible velocity and accuracy so it could sail into home and get the guy out. I had to do that! I can’t throw a ball that incredibly far! I’m not an athlete. I was worried they would think I was an idiot.
    SHAWN DAYWALT-LUTZ: Early on in
Roundhouse
, I was playing the mom, and it just stuck. Buddy Sheffield continued to develop it, but I’d like to think my inflection and my delivery had something to do with it.
    BUDDY SHEFFIELD: The mom was just a compilation of every TV mom. The things she was concerned about were what every other TV mom was concerned about. And the dad was a self-contained dad. That’s why I put him in the roll-around chair with the TV and BBQ and everything attached right to it.
    JOHN CRANE: I played a number of characters, but one was the dad who was this big, bombastic idiot. I grew up watching
All in the Family
, and I always thought my character was kind of clueless like Archie Bunker. Blue-collar, too. One of Buddy’s things was that the dad would always say, “Pull my finger!” He wasn’t exactly the classiest guy around. Especially when the chair came around . . .
    CRYSTAL LEWIS: The chair was definitely like a cast member! Sometimes it seemed to have a mind all its own. It cracked me up that it would have new additions every week, regularly being transformed to fit sketches and episodes. We weren’t really encouraged to climb on it. Also, it might run you over if you weren’t paying attention.
    DAVID SIDONI: The first week, it was just a fight:
Everyone
wanted to play on that thing.
    SHAWN DAYWALT-LUTZ: John Crane had tricks with that thing. He could make it go fast and spin it around and stuff. It was really difficult to maneuver, but I never worried he was going to run into me. No one else could be trusted with it, though.
    JOHN CRANE: I was playing the dad on the show because I was about ten years older than the rest of the cast. Micki Duran was seventeen when we did the show, and I was thirty. The rest of the guys and girls were twenty-one, twenty-two. I was married. I had kids. If I hung out or went for a drink after the show, it was usually with Rita, Buddy, and Benny.
    SHAWN DAYWALT-LUTZ: The role you play in a show makes its way into your relationships. And everyone played my kid. Even though I wasn’t old enough to be anybody’s mom on the show, I did feel somewhat maternal about everyone. I still do.
    DANNY TAMBERELLI: I don’t really know where I stopped being myself and started being Pete. Or the other way around.
    TREVOR EYSTER: Sometimes it’s, “Oh, sorry I called you Sponge!” It might be a new friend who’s a fan. I really don’t care, because I felt very, very married to that character. Sponge and I are one. I’ve been both heralded and harshly criticized for that.
    VENUS DEMILO: I’ve always participated in dance and cheerleading. I’m an active girl. So my character fit. It did definitely resonate with me.
    ALASDAIR GILLIS: I was essentially playing myself. It was a