Interview: Cameron Goodman

Tommy2: Hey it’s Tommy2 and today we’ve got with us a very special guest by the name of Cameron Goodman who will be starring in the upcoming Disney Channel Original Movie, Sharpay’s Fabulous Adventure. Cameron how are you doing today?

Cameron Goodman: I’m great! How are you doing Tommy?

Tommy2: I’m doing good man! Now of course I’m excited to talk about Sharpay’s Fabulous Adventures, but it’s been almost seven months since that project wrapped, what have you been up to since then?

Cameron Goodman: Well that’s an awesome question. I have a pilot coming out and it’s on NBC and it’s called Friends with Benefits and it’s a sitcom comedy, and I’m getting married in the first show. And then I started creating this show in my living room with some of my friends and we’ve been getting some traction on that show and it’s exciting. The show is called Breakfast Burrito and it’s on YouTube, but we’re going to have TheBreakfastBurrito.com website. And it’s just a young persons news show because I have always thought like really passionately that young people do like the news, and by young I mean like high school, middle school, college like… the news isn’t interesting, it’s just that the format is just so boring and all of my friends would always come to me like “Cameron you know, what’s going on? What’s going on in the news?” And I would give them the download on everything that was going on Internationally, and I’ve been really, really pouring myself into that. So we, we shoot it, write it, direct it, and edit it all in my living room.

Tommy2: All the power of YouTube for ya!

Cameron Goodman: I know! Isn’t YouTube crazy? Um, and we had a production company already come and get on board with it and we’ll be taking it to the networks this month, so cross our fingers!

Tommy2: Now going back, you mentioned with Friends with Benefits, your going to be getting married. Is there an actual marriage in that?

Cameron Goodman: Yeah, it’s the wedding, the pilot episode is the wedding episode and it’s, I’m uh, the lead boy, I’m his younger sister and my getting married kind of spurs him to realize that he needs to grow up and like find a life an stuff.

Tommy2: And you got the wedding dress and all?

Cameron Goodman: I know it’s so weird, I got the wedding dress. In fact, apparently there was like another wedding shoot going on and the same time and they only had one wedding dress left so I had this like really awful, beat-up wedding dress because all the 300 other gowns were taken that day. Anyway, I thought that was funny!

Tommy2: Interesting… now tell us about how you got involved with Sharpay’s Fabulous Adventure. Like the auditions and all of that?

Cameron Goodman: I love this question because I actually teach acting to kids in Adrian R’Mante’s (The Suite Life On Deck) Acting Camp, and we go do different cities and we teach. And the one thing that I’m always telling my actors and actresses is to take big chances and audition, because I think that, that is totally what what booked me this role. I went in with these enormous glasses on, absurd jacket, and I was like in full character and I created this insane character. I came into the place… giant frappuccino and started kind of like to perform when I came to that door, but in good way, it’s all very funny and later when I was at the read through for the movie, one of the executives came up and was like “that was the ballsiest audition I’ve ever seen!” And I looked at him “like oh gosh I did something wrong” and he was like “no, that was good, that was good.” And he just… because I knew when I went in there, I was like either their gonna kick me out for being out of my mind or they’re gonna love it you know and luckily for me it was the latter

Tommy2: Were you a big fan of High School Musical?

Cameron Goodman: Are you joking me… I’m like the biggest fan of High School Musical! I’m not kidding, my friends think I’m such a nerd. But, so I went to film school. I decided to go back to school because I wanted to learn screen writing and film. And we’re going around this classroom and everybody’s sort of like in dark clothing and plaids and like knit hats, even though it’s summer. And they’re like what’s your favorite film and we’re going around and everyone’s like Seventeen Years In Siberia, or like The Demon Inside Me, or like Nails On A Chalkboard 2, like all these really insanely esoteric films or whatever and it gets to me and I’m like “High School Musical, the first one!” And there’s like dead silence and everyone stares at me and I’m like “It is happy, it is fun, it’s just so wonderful and obviously it’s a popular film that people like. So that’s the kind of film that I want to be a part of you know.” And so it’s sort of a total dream come true when I booked it a few months later.

Tommy2: Yeah that’s awesome! And without giving anything away, what’s the back story in Sharpay’s Fabulous Adventure?

Cameron Goodman: Well Sharpay having always wanting to become a big actress and quote “Have It All” from the third song, goes to Broadway to become a Broadway star. Her biggest idol is an actress her age named Amber Lee Adams and that’s the character that I play. So she wants to understudy and sort of be Amber Lee Adams and in that pursuit recognizes that Amber perhaps is not such a great role model for her anyway and it’s sort of interesting because Sharpay’s been the sort of the evil character in the last 3 films and this film she’s the hero and she sort of recognizes the error in her ways and becomes a real heroine in this film. She really, becomes the character that you can get invested in and really like care for a lot in this film. So I really, I do love this little, this little ditty.

The funny thing about this movie is that I didn’t know it was High School Musical 4 until after we got to the set and like a few days after I’d been in Canada because they had only given me the top secret coded script with all the names changed.

Tommy2: Oh interesting!

Cameron Goodman: So I was just stoked to be in a Disney Channel movie and I was like “this is awesome.” And then a few days into it, and I remember I read the script originally and was like wow they should really get Ashley Tisdale for this. And a few days into it like I, you know, nobody told me, by the way this is High School Musical 4 and the whole time I kept thinking this is so weird because she plays a character just like this in High School Musical, and they’d just been sending me the names changed and everything so I called my parents and said “you will never believe this!”

Tommy2: Now speaking of Ashley, what was it like working with her?

Cameron Goodman: Ashley and I are really very similar, which is so funny and fun. So I, we just got along very well. I really, really, really enjoy spending time with her and he had just a ball on set together. And it was funny, we go to the same church, we read the same kind of books, we like to do the same things in our spare time and it was very similar… kind of jokes and humor and everything. So, we had a great time.

Tommy2: Now based on the trailers that are out, we can look forward to a bunch of big dance numbers. Do you have much of a dance background like and will we be seeing you dance much in the film?

Cameron Goodman: No! God no! I have no dance background. In fact I cringe every time I have to do dancing in an audition. I don’t luckily have any dance numbers in the film, so I’m pretty good to go on this one.

Tommy2: And what other characters or actors in the film did you enjoy working with?

Cameron Goodman: It’s really, actually I still hang out with Jack Plotnick who plays the writer in the film, and he has a great acting class that I’ve been going to for a few months now that I really enjoy. And Austin Butler is amazing, we helped each other a lot putting auditions on tape on our off days and stuff. And Bradley is just the coolest! I had no idea that he was you know eleven years old or whatever. He seems like he’s in his twenties, and he’s a little mature.

Tommy2: And obviously it seems like you’re really invested into your career and you’ve been doing everything to get yourself out there, including like the stuff with TheBreafastBurrito.com. What type of encouraging words do you have to people that want to do what you’re doing?

Cameron Goodman: I really, really think that you have to be willing to embarrass yourself on a regular basis to be an actor because there’s so many things that you’re like “oh I don’t want to do this, okay!” I mean you sort of take a big breath and just do it. And I think people are always so embarrassed to put themselves out there and you can’t be. You just have to take bold risks all the time. You know to get your agent you have to go in and be like “Hey I’m going to make you money, and this is going to be a lot of fun and like let’s work together” and sometimes having to say things like that is just embarrassing. The first time you go down the red carpet is humiliating! People think it’s so awesome, people are like “Oh I can’t wait to walk down the red carpet and people like taking pictures of me.” It is so humiliating because odds are these people are not the people that are watching your films. They go home and watch Star Trek or Fringe or they don’t know who you are. There’s somebody like whispering your name in their ear and they’re like so/so look here, Ashley look here, Cameron look here. And a lot of times they’re like I don’t need a picture, they’ll just tell you flat out, “I don’t want a picture of you” and your like “okay, I’m really sorry to bother you.” So anyway… sorry!

I guess my other, my other big passion is that I went to school on the east coast and I studied economics and all of my friends felt very inclined to do exactly what their parents wanted them to do. We all studied really hard, we all got into a good school, and then we all went on and like became bankers, lawyers or doctors. Period, that’s it. All of my friends are bankers, lawyers and doctors and I think a lot of them really regret having just taking for granted what everyone else is doing and just doing it. Because sometimes people are meant to be actors and artists and musicians and broadcast journalism, things outside of the box and when you’re programmed to think, this equals success you’re less likely to take risks and possible fail. Now I’m not saying to be stupid or to make choices that put your future in peril, but I am saying if there is something your passionate about it’s worth a year or two of your time to investigate. And when I say like take a year off and find out if you, if your an astronaut you know. Take a year off and find out if your and artist, or an actor or whatever. I mean take a full year off. Only invest every minute of your day to doing that. Like figure out what you can do every minute to get yourself further in that goal. Like don’t waste that year and then go huh, “I guess it’s not meant to be.” Because these are artistic careers you have to do just consumes yourself with ideas. It’s a game of darts. You know you throw one hundred darts at the board and one of them will stick. You know I go out for a hundred auditions and I book two of them, and hopefully one of those auditions, you know one of those jobs is something that will lead to another job, you know. But a lot of times it’s not, this career is so full of people going “Oh my God I made it! Oh my God I made it! Wait a second, no I didn’t.” I mean I see that so often that you always have to be like “I haven’t made it, I haven’t made it, just keep going.” Like don’t even stop for a second to think that you’ve made it, do you know what I mean? Like never relax, you just have to keep going forward full steam and throwing those darts.

Tommy2: Yeah, you definitely have to be passionate and that definitely comes through in that answer that you just gave that you’re just serious about getting out there and showing your stuff. Now Cameron for people that want to follow you know and try and figure out what’s going on with you online, do you have like a Twitter account or Facebook or anything that people could you know find out about you?

Cameron Goodman: Yeah, Facebook is my favorite thing. I like it a little bit more than Twitter, but uh yeah, BreakfastBurrito.com website would be awesome and you can email with me directly, and also Facebook has my actual email. So I actually get a lot of people who are interested in acting emailing me for advice and I take every email seriously, I really do because I know if your emailing me for advice your probably considering this career choice and there’s a lot of pros and cons to it. So I do like to talk to people about it before they make that decision and move out here.

Tommy2: Alright Cameron, it’s been a great time talking with you today and getting the scoop on Sharpay’s Fabulous Adventure. Thanks so much for your time.

Cameron Goodman: Thank you Tommy, your the best!