Symera Jackson, Eliza Pryor, and Kai Calhoun are just a bunch of typical middle schoolers — apart from the fact that they’re starring on Netflix’s newest family sitcom, that is.
The young actors play school wilderness club members in Team Kaylie, a comedy about Hollywood socialite Kaylie Konrad (The Voice’s Bryana Salaz) who is court-ordered to take on community service. Though it’s hardly the first acting gig Symera, Eliza, and Kai have snagged, their roles on Team Kaylie are the biggest parts each of them have had on a show to date.
“I say it’s just surreal,” Kai, 13, told Celeb Secrets while the cast checked out the Team Kaylie billboard in Times Square. “You keep thinking that it’s gonna feel real, but then it doesn’t.”
“It takes a long time to process,” 12-year-old Eliza added. “Seeing the billboard up there, it’s like, that’s actually me. It’s a weird feeling.”
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Kai and Eliza play Ray Ray, a fashionista of sorts, and Valeria, a witchy goth girl, respectively. Staying true to the fashion of sitcoms geared toward younger audiences, each character showcases an extreme version of a specific personality type. Ray Ray, Valeria, and Symera’s overachieving Jackie couldn’t be more different — but in real life, Kai, Eliza, and Symera’s feelings toward their newfound fame are pretty similar: they think it’s all a little weird.
“I went to an elementary school and all the kids were like, ‘we watch the show, we watch the show!’ And all of them came up and gave me hugs,” 14-year-old Symera explained.
“A lot of people who say things to me [about being on the show] are my little brother’s friends,” quipped Eliza, prompting giggles from Kai and Symera. “He literally goes around his school and brags about it to all of his friends.”
Though the young cast members admitted that being recognized in public — and semi-stalked by your kid brother’s friends — may take some getting used to, they’re proud to be part of a show with such an important message for viewers.
“I feel like a lot of the main themes are, like, finding yourself,” Eliza said, noting that each of the characters discover more about themselves as the season progresses. “I feel like they all really figure out who they are and [the series] kind of shows kids embracing themselves, being proud of themselves, and finding who they truly are.”
However, working on a show with values at its core doesn’t mean the upcoming stars don’t get to have a little fun on set. While we chatted, Kai, Eliza, and Symera spilled the details on the best behind-the-scenes moments and bloopers from filming season one.
“This is kind of embarrassing, but I was supposed to run through a bush and my foot got caught,” Eliza shared. “I literally face planted and tumbled over, and I heard everyone around me go ‘oooh.’”
While slightly less embarrassing, Symera’s favorite blooper sounds a lot more uncomfortable.
“We had to wade through this huge mudpit in the wilderness competition episode,” she said. “I slipped and got completely covered in the muck. We still had scenes to film afterward, so we kind of just wiped it off and kept going with the dry goo.”
And in possibly the funniest behind-the-scenes faux pas, Kai revealed a close call he had with another cast member and an unintentionally-airborn prop.
“I don’t think anybody knows this yet, but in one of the first scenes, Kaylie was flapping her shoes around and her high heel fell off, flew across the set, and almost hit me in the face,” he said. “We got very close really fast.”
You can catch the first five flying-shoe-free episodes of Team Kaylie on Netflix now. Fifteen more episodes are slated to hit the streaming service soon.
