Ali Novak’s My Life with the Walter Boys is coming to Netflix this month. Ahead of the series’ release, we interviewed stars Nikki Rodriguez, Noah LaLonde and Ashby Gentry. A quick synopsis: Our main focus is Rodriguez’s character, Jackie, who moves to Colorado from New York after a tragic loss. When she gets there, she experiences a culture shock because the rural area is so different than the city she grew up in. And that’s not all: The family she moves in with is just…a ton of boys. As in, she’s surrounded — eight of them on a regular day, plus sometimes the oldest. Two of them, Cole (LaLonde) and Alex (Gentry), stand out in exactly the way you’d expect in a YA drama…
Warning: You might encounter some spoilers below.
To get started, we asked each of the actors what brought them to My Life with the Walter Boys. Rodriguez found the story to be “super heartwarming,” featuring “so many themes that…are universal for everyone.” What are some of those themes? The series “centers around love, and also loss, and grief, and chosen family.” LaLonde echoed those sentiments, mentioning how the story “takes place in a world where…you can feel the love. And you can feel the warmth from the friends, from the family, from the community.” Additionally, he highlighted another aspect that’s “so relatable, and something so easy for all of us to pull from,” namely, “figuring out who you are in high school.”
Gentry agreed with Rodriguez and LaLonde about what he called the “sincerity that underpins this story at its core.” But he also had other interests, including “some of the lighter, YA elements of the show. And honestly, comedic elements of the show.” Seeing that combination, he “knew it was just going to be something that was so much fun to actually do. Day in, day out.” But did filming My Life with the Walter Boys live up to the anticipated fun? By all accounts, the answer seems to be a resounding yes.
All three actors enjoyed opportunities for horseback riding, both on and off camera. In Gentry’s case, “I was very privileged to work with Mark and Bailey, our two riding instructors, as well as John Scott, who everyone in Calgary knows. And I got to ride a horse, I mean, like three times a week. We actually went horseback riding, all of us, on my birthday, because I got to celebrate my birthday over the course of the show. And we went on this, like, four-hour scenic horseback ride through the mountains. And it was awesome.”
But spending so much time with the horses wasn’t all that made the experience what the actor called a “treat.” He also enjoyed “spending time with people that I genuinely felt and consider to be family.” (Which is kind of an important dynamic for convincing viewers that we’re actually watching a family interact on screen.) And those family dynamics were exactly what LaLonde wanted to “put a spotlight on.” In one particular episode, there’s a scene where the Walter boys’ parents are having a conversation about Jackie. “And they just gave us free rein…they gave us, like, plastic swords [and] footballs…We were all messing around.” He had “one of those moments where it’s like, ‘I’m…this is a job?’ It just didn’t feel like it.” Instead, “it just felt like you were being able to be a kid and play catch with your friends and brothers.”
Rodriguez decided “to steal both of their answers.” She listed both getting to hang out with everyone — though, that happened more off screen than on for her “because Jackie’s the one who doesn’t quite feel as comfortable with everyone” — and getting to be around the horses as highlights. And, when she started talking about individual talents in that area, both of her costars backed her up in saying she was the best at cattle-herding. But it was Gentry’s assertion that he was “the best at nothing” that sparked a good-natured arguing. Very much like you’d expect from siblings in the moment, actually.
(Jump to about the 5:30 mark in our video below to watch that whole exchange. It’s way better to just experience it than to try to have us explain it to you, promise.)
The back and forth with the real-life actors made us think about an argument on the show that’s an actual argument. In that scene, which we referenced in our interview (again, possible spoilers…depending on how sensitive you are to them), it’s obvious that Alex and Cole maybe just don’t see themselves — or each other — clearly. So, we asked all three actors for some help in making sure we don’t underestimate or misunderstand their characters.
LaLonde admitted to some “jerkish aspects to Cole Walter.” A lot of those are your usual “jock at high school stereotypes.” But we should be careful and avoid viewing him only in that surface-level way. Cole “dips into some of those” tropes, but “he’s just lost all that.” So, he doesn’t quite fit into that box. And LaLonde expressed interest in seeing how viewers respond to his character’s “navigation of that loss.” But there’s a lot more to this character and a lot more to be careful about misjudging.
“The thing that is gonna be misunderstood is maybe how much of an impact everything that’s going on around him really has.” In some scenes, “there’s a feeling of like, ‘oh, he doesn’t really care. Does he care about this? He doesn’t care about anything.’ That’s not the case. He just doesn’t know how to show it. And he doesn’t know at this current junction of his life. He doesn’t really know who he is, and who he is post football career, who he’s going to be post high school. All these things are happening for him — all these things are changing. And he’s feeling behind in that…in that race.”
For Gentry, the main takeaway is no, Alex doesn’t hate his brother. “The trap that I was trying to avoid falling into was that he just hates Cole, which is so not the case. He loves Cole a lot. And I think he grieves for Cole, in a lot of ways. Because he feels like he’s lost his big brother, that he can no longer connect to because of the difficult past and the tension that they have as a result of Jackie coming into their lives.” So, when the brothers confront each other, “one of the best parts about doing that scene was it was the first moment in the show where I really got to treat Cole like my big brother, as opposed to this enemy figure.”
Finally, Rodriguez said it might be easy to put any of these three characters “in one single category.” She described Jackie as “driven and type A, and pretty sophisticated,” someone who “knows what she wants out of life.” But this series’ characters “are all so layered and have different reasons for why they do the things they do. And I feel like you get to learn about them, and it comes out throughout the series in a really nice way.”
