This Saturday night at 6:30 p.m. ET/PT, Family Channel will be premiering its brand-new original series, Really Me. The show centers around 15-year-old Maddy (played by Sydney Imbeau), who wins the dream-come-true prize of her very own reality television show. Maddy and her best friend Julia (played by Kiana Madeira) quickly learn that being stars on VTV’s reality show is not always as easy as it might appear.
Coming fresh off of a huge audition with my own budding Canadian actress, I thought it was the perfect conversation starter with Sydney and Kiana. I asked them to tell me about how they got into this business.
Kiana was quick to tell me that she caught the acting bug when she was about five and fell in love watching John Travolta in Grease. By ten, she had joined a small agency in Toronto and by fourteen, she had joined a more competitive agency. “That’s the thing about this industry,” she says. “You have to learn to take rejection. But I never wanted to give up.” And then she got called for Really Me, and the rest is, well, history.
Sydney came to be an actress a little differently. She was actually really shy and not outgoing at all. But because her sister was interested in acting, she figured she’d give it a shot too. And then a funny thing happened. She started to like it, and came out of her shell, and starting booking commercials and then landed this role on Really Me.
The two auditioned for their roles together, and it seemed very clear to me that these two had ridiculously great chemistry right from the start. According to Sydney, the entire cast has amazing chemistry. “We are a big cast, with big, big chemistry. We are all so close to each other.” In fact, she says, the most difficult part of the job is saying goodbye to everyone when the show wraps.
The two seem really excited for audiences to get to finally see this show that they are so obviously proud of be a part of. They say that it’s really different than anything else on TV right now. It’s not just a reality show and it’s not just a sitcom; it’s a combination of the two. It’s real and relatable, but it also has this element of being new and exciting. I mean, what teenager wouldn’t want to have his or her own reality tv show??
When I asked them to choose a real reality show to be on, a few names came up, including Canada’s Next Top Model and Survivor, but only if they didn’t have to eat any of the strange foods. Well, luckily for them, Really Me is only sort of a reality show, and there probably won’t be any eating of 100-year-old eggs any time soon. Although it might make for some funny television…
(You can catch Sydney and Kiana in Really Me, premiering this Saturday, April 23rd at 6:30pm ET/PT on Family Channel. New episodes of the show will continue to air on Sundays at 6:30 ET/PT)
(images courtesy of Family Channel)
Hi, Kiana’s last name is actually spelled “Madeira” but great interview!