Disney Channel’s latest star is Peyton Elizabeth Lee
Disney Channel has an impressive record of launching TV shows featuring actors who became bigger stars than their series. Selena Gomez on “Wizards of Waverly Place” and Miley Cyrus on “Hannah Montana” are among them. The latest rising star on the cable channel, “Andi Mack’s” Peyton Elizabeth Lee, sees the success of her show not so much about her, but about the series in general.
“The coolest thing for me is that people like it for so many reasons. They connect with so many different characters and so many different themes,” Lee says in an interview to talk about the new episodes of the second season that will begin airing at 8 p.m. Monday. “The coolest thing we hear is that ‘These characters remind me of myself’ and ‘They remind me of my friends,’ which is very exciting because in a lot of shows, kids look up to the characters.
“For ‘Andi Mack,’ fans are looking at our characters on an even level and from a mutual perspective.”
“Andi Mack,” the coming-ofage series from veteran television writer Terri Minsky, has been among the top 10 cable series for girls 6-11, 9-14 and 6-14 since it launched in early 2017 on Disney Channel.
Lee finds the popularity of the show easy to explain: Viewers can relate to the character and her life very easily. The 13-year-old actress knows this because when she’s not filming the series, she goes back to living a regular life. What happens in her life away from work and on the set are similar. The storylines may take on a larger scale, but they start with issues and situations that teens face.
“You see a lot of the same themes. You see a lot of characters on the show and you go ‘Oh, these are those people.’ Which is cool,” Lee says. “I think going to school you pull a lot of memories and you bring those into your acting, which is very important.”
And the themes addressed on the series have included family, friends and what it’s like to be a 13-year-old trying to figure out who she is. That search has been complicated because on the eve of her 13th birthday, Andi learned her older sister, Bex (Lilan Bowden), is actually her mother. At the same time Andi is dealing with such a life-changing revelation, her best friends, Cyrus (Joshua Rush) and Buffy (Sofia Wylie), are also figuring out their places in the world.
The fact that Andi’s family is mixed race (Lee is half-Chinese) has not been the basis of many stories. But giving the family a diverse look is another reason Lee keeps getting positive feedback from viewers.
“I think an important point is that kids don’t see the show and think this person is this and that person is that. They see it as ‘She looks like my neighbor’ or ‘She looks like my best friend.’ It is this community of people and kids don’t take thinks like that out. They just see it in terms of that they know,” Lee says.