Heartland fans love Alisha Newton
Actor, 12, now part of family in CBC series
I think I would also like to work in psycholog y. I think it’s interesting how the mind works
alisha newton
There’s a scene in Season 7 of the CBC show Heart landt hat may be as close to a passing-of-the-torch as we are likely to get.
In the attic of the Bartlett ranch house, 12-year-old Georgie Crawley discovers some baby cowboy boots that once belonged to Amy Fleming. They obviously won’t fit Georgie, a relative newcomer to the ranch and the horse-filled adventures of the Calgary-shot CBC family series. But she wants to keep them anyway.
“They’re like vintage!” she tells Amy, who seems a little annoyed by the implication.
The scene may have a few fans of the long-running series feeling a little vintage themselves.
Six years ago, Amy Fleming (Amber Marshall) was a motherless 16-year-old girl with a knack for taming horses. Now she is about to get married and long surpassed the teenage growing pains that Georgie is about to enter.
As played by Vancouver actress Alisha Newton, Georgie became the breakout new character in Season 6, arriving into the lives of the kindly Fleming sisters by stowing away in Grandpa Jack’s (Shaun Johnston) pickup truck. Georgie was an orphan with a habit of running from her foster homes. But in Season 6 she was adopted by eldest Fleming, Lou, (Michelle Morgan) and husband Peter (Gabriel Hogan).
“That was definitely a big deal for Georgie,” says Alisha, taking a short break from filming the attic scene earlier this week in Heartland’s studio. “Now she’s an even bigger part of the family.”
Similarly, Alisha has become a big part of the Heartland family, a tight-knit group of cast and crew that have remained more-or-less unchanged since the series debuted in 2007.
Fans seem to have embraced Alisha as well. Adding a new main character to an established series can be precarious. But with Amy, Lou and friend Mallory (Jessica Amlee) growing older, adding a new character to directly appeal to the all-important demographic of preteen girls was a practical, forwardlooking move.
Earlier this year, the Hollywood-based Young Artist Association awarded Alisha its Best Supporting Actress in a Television Series trophy in Los Angeles. She beat out heavy hitters such as Game of Thrones actresses Sophie Turner and Maisie Williams. The Young Artist Awards have been handed out annually since the late 1970s, bestowing honours on former child actors turned Oscar hopefuls such as Diane Lane, River Phoenix and Christian Bales. In 2003, Marshall herself was nominated for a preHeartland role as abducted Utah teen Elizabeth Smart in a movie-of-the-week.
“It was really, really fun,” says Alisha about the awards, adding that she figured she had little chance of beating the Game of Thrones girls. “I got to go with a whole bunch of my acting friends and every night we’d be hanging out at the pool.”
Which sounds like a lot of fun. But, of course, working on a TV series is actually a lot of work for a 12-year-old. While labour laws limit the number of hours she can be at work, Alisha also has to keep up her studies with an on-set tutor. She is also being home-schooled this year and frequently flies back and forth between Calgary and her home in Vancouver.
Along with making her debut in Heartland last year, she also filmed a small role in the summer blockbuster Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters. But Alisha says she enjoys the challenges of acting and finding new characters.
“She’s a rock star,” says producer Jamie Paul Rock, himself a newcomer to the show this season. “It’s great to have younger characters in there so young people can continue to watch. Alisha is going to be a star her whole life.”
Perhaps, but she hasn’t quite decided what she’ll do with that life.
“In the future, I’d like to do acting and definitely working with animals,” she reports. “I think I would also like to work in psychology. I think it’s interesting how the mind works.”