OK, don't tell anyone this, but I'm actually a sucker for kids' shows. Not all of them - can't stand Wizards of Waverly Place, for example - but even 17 years later, I still love The Odyssey. And Aaron Stone on Family Channel is one of the better ones, which follows in the vein of The Last Starfighter and The Greatest American Hero: Charlie (Kelly Blatz) is addicted to the video game Hero Rising - except it's not just a video game, it's actually a recruitment program to find the world's best player, who then will become a real-life verison of their character to fight evil. So Charlie gets to put on a fancy, techy superhero suit to become the titular Aaron Stone and try to save the world, all while keeping his secret identity from his family and friends. The show's pretty funny when it wants to be, and I really wish it had been around when I was younger.
Blatz is much of what makes Aaron Stone work, and I got to talk to him (by phone) this week about the show - and about Skyrunners, his made-for-TV movie that airs tonight on Family Channel. Check out my Q&A with him below.
How’s it going?
Oh, fantastic. It’s interesting, because you actually look like a phone right now.
I’m having a bad hair day.
You look great! A lot of buttons.
So Skyrunners airs Nov. 27, and in the States, that’s the same day as the Aaron Stone finale, although we’re only on episode 7 here in Canada.
I know! I just found out about that; it’s so weird.
Are you going to have a viewing party?
No, I’m going to be on a plane, but me and my family, we’ll get together and have some Buffalo wings and watch it.
Can you tell me about your character in Skyrunners?
I play Nick Burns. He’s a really, really cool guy, but he’s not the most popular guy in school. He’s not a jock or anything. He’s cool in his own way; he’s the guy who’s friends with everybody. I like to say he’s Ferris Bueller-esque. He gets by on his charm and his humour and he just slips by in class and with girls. Very care-free and adventurous. Whereas Tyler, his younger brother, is very neurotic about everything. He’s very set in stone. So we find a UFO and we’re this odd couple, where we have this great relationship, but I’m the one who wants to take the UFO and travel around the world with it, and he’s the one who wants to tell the Feds about it. I’m always convincing him. Nick is very convincing, and he convinces Tyler to take it, but Tyler’s still trying to convince him that something bigger is going on. And when Nick realizes that Tyler is right, he really has to rise to the occasion and save the world.
What’s it like to film a Disney Channel movie, as opposed to filming a series?
It was great. The thing with movies, you have a whole script. When I’m on Aaron Stone, we have an overall arc for the show and we’re getting script the week before we’re shooting them. That’s good because it keeps you on your toes and you have to create something different in a 22-minute episode. You have to keep the storyline relevant. But with a movie, you have the whole script and you know what’s going to happen and you have more time to prepare and have a whole outlook on the movie. While shooting Skyrunners, we had a little more time to work on the big, big moments. There’s a lot of green screen work on Aaron Stone, so it was a lot of similar things that I could take with me to shoot Skyrunners.
They both have fairly out-there plots.
Yes. It’s very out-there. That’s the thing that Disney does well; they have these fantasiese, or heightened realities, and I think it’s great for kids. Kids’ imaginations are so wild that they kind of latch on to things like that. With Aaron Stone, it’s a crazy, crazy concept, but the thing for me, I wanted to try to it as real and as personal as possible. I wanted kids to feel like, “Wow, this is how it would actually be if I had to become a video game character and had to save the world!” I wanted the fears and insecurities to be there. I didn’t want a huge change when Charlie became Aaron. With Skyrunners, I wanted to make it seem as real as possible, too. Like if a UFO really did crash, what would you do with it? What would go through your mind? So that’s what I did and hopefully kid see that. It’s a heightened thing but we wanted to make it relatable.
When you were preparing for Aaron Stone, did you watch – and I may be showing my age by saying this – but did you watch The Last Starfighter or The Greatest American Hero?
I didn’t! They told me that it was very similar to the storyline of The Last Starfighter; it was a big influence on the show. I didn’t see it and I didn’t want to see it; I didn’t want to have a pre-conceived notion when I created the character. I wanted to do what I thought it should be and tried to create it from my own perspective, not someone else’s.
In the first episode, Charlie talks about feeling ridiculous in his superhero costume. Did you actually feel that way?
Oh, yeah. I was like, “Charlie’s a video game player, and then he actually has to become the superhero in the game, and he has to put this suit on and immediately be this guy.” And I knew that would be very awkward for him to get used to fighting these guys, so, for me, I just went into it as Charlie did. I just showed how weird I felt in that suit and how weird it was to fight guys, because it really was, at first. And as Charlie gets more comfortable with it, so did I, so it shows.
On Aaron Stone, Charlie is a bit of a former nerd. Did you have any real-life experience with that to draw from?
[Laughs] Yeah, I guess so. In that age, there’s always that weird, awkward phase where you’re just growing into your body and you’re very lanky and you’re just trying to fit in. I definitely can relate to that.
Skyrunners airs tonight (Nov. 27) at 7:30 p.m. ET on Family Channel. Aaron Stone airs Sundays at 4 p.m. ET on Family Channel.