Houston’s Kelly Frye bubbles up in Disney ‘Sulphur Springs’
On the new Disney Channel series “Secrets of Sulphur Springs,” Kelly Frye plays a young mother whose family has just bought and moved into a supposedly haunted hotel. Her character, who is skeptical of any supernatural shenanigans, called for a bit of acting on Frye’s part.
“Ghosts are real,” swears the Houston native. “The other side is there. You’re either in a place (where) the veil is thinner than normal, or you aren’t.”
Frye, who grew up in West University Place and Clear Lake, swears her childhood home in West U was often visited by spirits who weren’t shy about making their presence known. The family called in various clerics to rid the house of the offending apparitions, to no avail.
“Our house was totally haunted,” she says. “I feel bad for whoever lives there now. Everybody who stayed in that house saw a ghost.”
Frye did some modeling as a child, before graduating to commercials for Academy Sports + Outdoors and Titleist golf balls. Her other screen credits include legal drama “All Rise,” Disney sitcom “Sydney to the Max” — playing a woman prone to lapsing into baby talk — and several episodes in the last few seasons of CBS’ “Criminal Minds.”
Frye, whose older brother is
Catastrophic Theatre co-artistic director Jason Nodler, caught the acting bug in her senior musical at Clear Lake High School, which she calls a “quintessential ‘ Varsity Blues’ giant high school, where nobody really knows you besides people in your group.”
She played Rusty, the town cutup.
“I remember walking the halls after our opening weekend, and all of these people come up to me being like, ‘Oh my God! You’re so funny,’ ” Frye remembers. “You want to be seen as an adolescent, and that was probably the first time I truly felt seen at a giant high school. People saw me for the goofy person that I can be.”
In “Sulphur Springs,” which premieres at 7 p.m. Jan. 15, Frye’s Sarah Campbell; her husband, Ben ( Josh Braaten); and their three children take over the Tremont, a sprawling hotel in the small (and fictional) Louisiana town of Sulphur Springs.
Once a prosperous resort and summer camp, the property is now forlorn and derelict. It’s full of dark corridors, strange noises and hidden rooms, not to mention a creepy — and consequential — fallout shelter in the basement. Rumors abound that the hotel is haunted by the ghost of Savannah, a girl who disappeared 30 years ago.
“I think that (with) the Tremont, the veil is thinner than normal, and we’re getting to experience that with the Campbell family,” Frye says.
At least early on, “Sulphur Springs” focuses on eldest Campbell child Griffin’s (Preston Oliver) explorations of the spooky old Tremont, which get complicated when he and his new friend/classmate Harper (Kyliegh Curran) discover a portal that enables them to travel back in time.
According to Frye, the series’ playfully adventurous, nostalgic tone reminds her of movies she grew up with, like “Goonies” and “E.T.,” though she notes “there are no aliens that I know of.” She also admires the writers’ ability to balance comedy and suspense.
“Sometimes there is something around the corner that you’re like, ‘Whoa! What was that?’ ” Frye says. “And other times, it’s one of the twins, Zoey or Wyatt — or both of them — who do something so frickin’ funny that the tension that’s been built up is released through laughter.
“It’s a really fun show to watch, and it’s not just for children,” she adds.
The show also creates subtle notes of tension between Sarah and Ben, who stayed at the Tremont during its heyday. He has cashed in his savings and uprooted the family from Chicago to Louisiana without telling them much about his motives — or his past connections with Harper’s mom and the mysterious Savannah.
“That’s where I think the show will be more relatable than maybe some other younger programs for everybody in the family,” Frye says. “You do see their interactions and their struggles, and the veneer wearing off a bit between the couple.
“And how they work through it — which I think that’s good to see, not just for parents, but for children, too,” she adds.