What’s it like to be a star? Brendan Meyer, who plays a 14-year-old genius turned teacher on YTV’s MR. YOUNG, gave us a glimpse of stardom when we chatted with him back when the show premiered! If you missed the interviews in the issues of THE MAGAZINE, here’s the full version!
What is the average day like when you’re playing Mr. Young?
An average day, well, I go to set and normally Tuesdays and Wednesdays are rehearsal days, so we rehearse the show and do a run-through at the end of the day with script in hand and all that, and then Thursday and Fridays are shoot days and Friday is the live audience day, so each day is an eleven hour day, so it normally consists of going to work for eleven hours and then going home and going to sleep!
Have there been any challenges adjusting to being at TV star?
It’s a tough thing, because I was from Edmonton, so I had to move to Vancouver. So my mom and my brother live with me and my dad travels back and fourth each week, so that’s adjusting. With school, I am and always have been home schooled, so it just worked out when I decided to become an actor. So I don’t have a large amount of workload, but I have to do three hours of school work on set on top of the workload already every day that I’m doing, so keeping up with school is a challenge but it’s still fun.
Do you enjoy performing in front of the live audience or would you prefer to just have the camera there?
I prefer the live audience because you get that buzz of a live theatre show and you also get the real laughter so that’s always great, especially because one of the great things about doing a multi-camera show like Mr. Young is that they add the laugh track in later, and that’s why they do the live audience, to record the laughter. So, when you’re doing it on the Thursday, it’s hard because you have to hold for the laugh and you don’t know how long, you can’t gage how long one laugh will be, because sometimes you don’t know how good the joke will be. Whereas Fridays are great because it’s live laughter because that feeds you and you know what’s funny so, it’s great to get the immediate response and it’s really the best of both worlds. You get all that live audience and live buss and energy from the crowd, but you still have to do five takes, perfect it, and make sure that it’s great.
What’s been your favourite episode to shoot so far?
The first one, the pilot, was one of my favourites because it was cool because we had the entire cast, because we don’t always have all nine of the regulars on the show every time so I really enjoyed shooting that one. I also really liked “Mr. Big Brother” where the outdoor set that we usually have was made into a carnival, so it was really cool because we had all of these carnival games, there was a lot of background games, so that was cool. Filming in a new location like that was really cool. I liked doing the Shakespeare episode because I’m really into Shakespeare and I really enjoyed that.
Have there been any other ridiculous moments on set?
We had an episode where Mr. Tater, the principle, gets… I don’t know how to describe this… he basically gets turned into a cereal. So basically, what happens is he opens up the door and he gets fired by this cannon of rice krispies, falls into a vat and then milk gets poured on top of him. These crazy gags that you get to do and you’re just like “what is this?” Every episode it’s something new. This last episode I was in a leprechaun suit and I had to be knocked into a vat of mud. So that was my “thing” for this week, was being covered in mud. And that is, by far, one of the easiest things that anyone has had to do on the show. So you can imagine what other people are doing if I’m getting knocked into a vat of mud, I’ve gotten off easy. “Phew, I got the mud” as opposed to something else… There’s always a little trepidation when you go to open the script, because you’re excited to get a new script, but then you’re like “What’s coming”, but it’s all funny.
You mentioned before that since you were home schooled, you drew inspiration from teachers on television. Were there any in particular?
Will Shuster from Glee, I drew on because every episode he’s like “All right, kids, today we’re going to learn a lot about the future of music, and if we’re going to make it to sectionals, we’re going to have to…” you know, that sort of thing. As far as TV, you can sort of pick up a lot from movies too, if you watch inspirational teacher movies, it shows what it’s like. You know, you watch Dead Poet’s Society with Robin Williams, “Welcome kids to the first day of school,” Kevin Kline in The Emperor’s Club, that kind of stuff. So those kind of teachers in particular, Dead Poets Society, Glee, that kind of stuff is what really inspired the character. And, I guess, you could say teachers in other sitcoms. I can’t think of one now, off the top of my head, but even teachers who have been like, one off on certain shows like Suite Life of Zach and Cody, Hannah Montana, That’s So Raven, those kinds of things, you know, you can just see the teacher, on every TV show there’s a teacher and the kind of cadence in their voice and the way that they speak, because in many ways I’m playing a TV teacher as well. But Will Shuster and Dead Poets Society would be the big ones.
Were there any “TV Child Geniuses” you drew off of?
It’s interesting to see that, one of the challenges of the show is that sometimes I’ll have these really long science dissertations on, so I don’t know if I can specifically base that aspect of it on, but similar things when you watch, obviously not to this degree, but stuff like The Big Bang Theory, and stuff, when they talk about these things that are really advance, they have to know what they’re talking about. So, more than anything, it’s just figuring out what you’re saying. And you have to make it sound like you know what you’re talking about, which is really the key. It’s like another layer, it’s similar to Shakespeare, if you don’t know the language, and you have to solve it. It’s not like you can just say, “5 particles…”, you actually have to sit down and solve it. It’s not too hard, for the most part it’s been pretty easy, but sometimes it’s like “oh, ok then, it’s going to be hard to rattle this one off”.
What’s your personal favourite subject in school?
My favourite subject is probably English. Right now I’m studying biology, oddly enough, as I’m doing the show. I’ve finished up English while I was on the show, now I’ve started doing biology. But ya, I guess my favourite subject is English.
Thank you, Brendan Meyer! Catch MR. YOUNG all summer long on YTV!