An Orange County teen gets in the Hollywood game in Disney+ series ‘Big Shot’
Karaoke sparked the desire to act for Tisha Custodio, but it was her father’s basketball skills that really came in handy when she got her big shot in Hollywood.
In her first TV role, the 19-year-old from Orange County will dribble the ball as she’s coached by veteran actor John Stamos when the new Disney+ series “Big Shot” premieres today.
“I was excited to even audition for this show, and getting it is so surreal,” said Custodio, who grew up in Tustin and Irvine before moving to L.A.
The series is about a college basketball coach (Stamos) whose capricious attitude gets him fired, so he must take a job teaching and coaching at an all-girls private school.
Custodio portrays Carolyn “Mouse” Smith, a member of the basketball team.
“She is the shortest and the youngest and she is the one that is the most enthusiastic about the coach coming,” she said of her character, who plays point guard for the team.
“I think this show is going to do very well. We touch on so many important subjects throughout the season,” Custodio said.
Pass the mic
The Filipino-born actor immigrated to the United States when she was 3 with her family, and the acting bug bit shortly after that.
“A big part of Filipino parties is karaoke, and when I was little everyone would keep asking me to sing princess songs,” she said.
Singing those songs led her to become a fan of actress Lea Salonga, who is also of Filipino heritage and is known as the singing voice for Disney princesses Jasmine and Mulan.
“That got me interested in being an actor and a performer because she was the only person that looked like me at that time,” Custodio said.
When she reached junior high in 2014, Custodio enrolled in the Orange County School of the Arts and spent multiple summers performing at Shakespeare Orange County, which she credits for honing her acting skills.
“I was very young and I was working with adult actors and I got to understudy a lot,” she said.
Her parents, Jonathan and Michelle Custodio, thought it was just a hobby, but by then Custodio said she was obsessed with making acting her career.
She began going on auditions while still in high school and landed parts in a couple of web series and a commercial for Carmax. However, she didn’t score any big roles until “Big Shot,” which she got the summer she graduated, much to the excitement of her parents.
“They were freaking out. I think they were more excited than I was,” she said.
Part of the credit for her upcoming screen credit goes to her dad and his basketball skills.
“I never really got into it until I had to audition for the show,” she said. “I had to kind of understand basketball before the audition,” she said.
Luckily for Custodio, her dad played college basketball in the Philippines, so he set up a weeklong training session to get her ready.
After landing the role, she’s continued to work on her skills.
“After the auditions we had a basketball coordinator on the show who ran this monthlong intensive session before we even started filming, and we just worked on drills and we really became an actual basketball team,” she said.
So can she take on her dad on the court now?
“He’s very intimidating. I play with him sometimes but he’s very excited that I appreciate the sport now,” she said.