ABC Family’s newest drama Chasing Life is almost here!
In honor of the premiere, Chasing Life star Italia Ricci sat down with press to chat about her role and what we can expect from the series this season.
Chasing Life premieres this Tuesday, June 10th @ 10PM ET/PT on ABC Family.
How would you describe your character April?
Italia: “She’s so many things. She’s just a regular girl. She’s a stubborn, smart, ambitious girl who just wants happiness and success in her career and love, everything that most people want. She’s written so well that I feel like she’s every man’s woman because she’s not always in the same head space. She gets giddy and girly and goofy and then she’ll just be an angry drunk, we’re all a little bit bipolar [laughs]. It’s just the way the world works, but she’s so inspiring and she makes mistakes and then she relies on people to help. She’s not a hero. She’s definitely a role model, but she knows she’s not perfect. I think that’s really important for a character we want audiences to relate to.”
Will we see more of your character’s chemo process? What sort of research did you conduct to prepare?
Italia: “You will see more of that, absolutely, because it’s all part of the horrible process that cancer throws at people, but you will see the stages. And the research — immediately after I booked the role, I thought I was going to learn everything I could about cancer, become and expert and be able to handle anything that the writers threw at me. But then I realized that my character doesn’t know everything about cancer and so I thought it would be better for my performance if I didn’t know more about it than April knew. So I wasn’t anticipating anything that was going to happen to her.”
Do you think Chasing Life can properly portray what cancer patients go through?
Italia: “The show isn’t all about cancer. From the people that I’ve spoken to everybody goes through it differently, so there’s no one way to try and show the world what somebody would be experiencing. So I did my best to play April as authentically as we can within the confines of entertainment television. I’m sure there will be some people who completely disagree with how she’s reacting to certain things physically and emotionally and then there’s some people who might say that’s exactly what they experienced, or what they saw somebody experience.”
Can you share anything about the new upcoming season?
Italia: “The season is going to explore how the diagnosis elevates all of the stakes in April’s life. All of her decisions matter to her a little bit more than she thought they did at this point and how she handles that and the mistakes that she makes and the victories that she also accomplishes. It’s interesting to see her whole world getting massaged because of this big awful thing, but people can expect to see so many things. I read the scripts and I get so into it like “seriously, what, where, why?” It’s so cool.”
Do you think Chasing Life can properly portray what cancer patients go through?
Italia: “The show isn’t all about cancer. From the people that I’ve spoken to everybody goes through it differently, so there’s no one way to try and show the world what somebody would be experiencing. So I did my best to play April as authentically as we can within the confines of entertainment television. I’m sure there will be some people who completely disagree with how she’s reacting to certain things physically and emotionally and then there’s some people who might say that’s exactly what they experienced, or what they saw somebody experience. I hope people can at least understand. They’re going to know it’s still television. It’s not a documentary, but at the same time being on set doing some of those scenes, it does get scary when you have to remind yourself that you’re not sick.”
What will viewers be most surprised by when they watch Chasing Life?
Italia: “How funny it is. The pilot is always tough and general audiences don’t always realize that you have to jam so many stories and so many characters and so much information into a pilot episode that a lot of the times it’s not like the rest of episodes. But even in our pilot, you feel that it’s not heavy. It’s a feel good show. It’s a feel good family show and I think that people are going to be surprised at how much more they’re going to laugh than cry.”
