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

who taught me how to dress better.
    HEIDI LUCAS: That doesn’t make any sense. That I brought additional clothes to the set? That’s not my recollection
at all
! Keep in mind, I had just moved from Illinois to Hollywood. I literally packed two suitcases. So I didn’t have a lot of clothes to bring.
    VENUS DEMILO: We all definitely shared qualities with our characters.
    KIRK BAILY: Heidi wasn’t stuck-up. Not at all.
    MICHAEL BOWER: Heidi’s like her character. To this day, she’s in her own world. It has to be her way.
    HEIDI LUCAS: I promise this is not just me wanting to have the world think I’m not a brat, but there’s not a lot to me that was in Dina.
    STEVE SLAVKIN: Heidi was smart, funny, and extraordinarily talented. She was a great actor and a total pleasure to have around. Whatever we wrote for her, she made it better. All of the kids had a little bit of their character in them, and that’s what made them so interesting and real.
    TREVOR EYSTER: Steve is a very diplomatic guy, but I would have to confirm that everyone was very much their character.
    MARJORIE SILCOFF: They loved having kids with braces, and I myself had braces on my last one or two shows. They loved it because of how “normal” it made the kids look. It was frustrating that my awkward phase was caught on video for everyone to see, but there you have it. Making kids feel better about having braces.
    ROGER PRICE: I chose them for their potential, not for their experience. I tried to build up the self-esteem of the kids and let them always be aware of how important they were: to the show, to me, to the survival of Nickelodeon. This had the effect of calming kids down.
    VANESSA LINDORES: I did not audition. Carole Hay was my fourth-grade teacher, and somehow I ended up in herdrama class she was teaching outside of school. Roger Price came into the class and would choose children to put on the show. It still baffles me, but somehow I ended up on it . . . for a long time.
    ROGER PRICE: If you’re a girl who looks in the mirror and sees an imperfect face staring back at you, might you not take a little comfort from cross-eyed Vanessa being on your favorite show?
    JUSTIN CAMMY: Vanessa was cross-eyed and everybody constantly made fun of Lisa’s weight. I was clearly chubby for a period. Some of the kids couldn’t act and were clearly there representing a certain look or group. The show defied the star-good-looks mentality and let kids be kids.
    ADAM REID: The drama class was run in a very noncompetitive way. It was like Second City or Groundlings. It wasn’t like Roger came in the room and said, “You, you, and you are coming on the show.”
    ROGER PRICE: In the classes, it became obvious who was a future star and who was a spear-carrier. Nearly all of the kids got a chance to go in front of the cameras. But the ones that set my Geiger counter racing in the auditions were the ones that continued to do so in drama class and on set.
    ABBY HAGYARD: Alasdair had no reason to be jealous of a Kevin Kubusheskie or a Lisa Ruddy, because everyone was one of a kind. The kids were all taught that. You are what you are, and if you don’t get chosen for something, it doesn’t mean somebody else is better than you; it means that somebody fit the category better. If you’re four-foot-three and he’s six-foot-one, it’s not because you’re not talented. It’s because you’re four-foot-three.
    CHRISTINE MCGLADE: It was more of a collaborative ensemble feeling. No one was put in a special position, including me.
    JUSTIN CAMMY: There were those of us who were certainly not at the level of Christine or Lisa or Alasdair. There was a hierarchy and everyone knew what that hierarchy was. Roger had his favorites. He had a very, very special bond with Alasdair, and when Adam came around, it was clear he was deemed a rising star.
    ADAM REID: They would go through this
huge
process. The first thing was a height restriction. If you were over a certain height