High School Musical 3: Senior Year; Director ‘had me dancing against the mirror and just strutting around the room’
Jamie Portman, Canwest News Service
Blonde teenage beauty Jemma McKenzie-Brown was a student at London’s prestigious Sylvia Young Theatre School when the news came.
The people at Disney wanted to bring an international flavour to High School Musical 3, so they were extending their casting arm all the way across the Atlantic. Jemma and her friends knew that they had to try out – if only for the experience of auditioning for a big international movie. But little did this friendly 14-year-old expect that she would end up winning the plum role of Tiara Gold, the English newcomer who becomes personal assistant to East High diva Sharpay Evans, played by Ashley Tisdale.
“Most of the girls at my school auditioned,” Jemma remembers. “I had a first audition, and then I got a call back.”
As a student, she had worked on the popular British TV series The Amazing Mrs. Pritchard. But now, suddenly, she was being plunged into the big time. She had made a strong enough first impression for director Kenny Ortega to fly over from the U.S. to supervise a second audition.
“He had me doing the coolest thing. I walked in and I didn’t know I had to do a dance, and Kenny told me to put some music on and just improvise. He had me dancing against the mirrors and just strutting around the room.”
What happened next was a flight to Los Angeles for what amounted to a three-day audition. And on the last day, she worked with another newcomer – Matt Prokop, who ended up playing volatile school basketball whiz Jimmy “The Rocket” Zara.
“It was definitely new to me because I have no singing or dancing background whatsoever,” says Prokop, 18, whose limited credits included guest appearances on The Office and Hannah Montana.
“So just the opportunity to audition for High School Musical was a privilege for me.”
Matt’s expectations weren’t high. “I was just looking at it like – I’m going to go in and give it my all and have a great audition. Sure enough, Kenny had faith in me, and now I’m here.”
It was all about bringing three fresh faces to the High School Musical franchise and to further strengthen a cast base that already included names like Zac Efron and Vanessa Hudgens. According to producer Bill Borden, thousands of teenagers were auditioned.
“It came down to 15 kids we thought had star quality. “We brought them into a dance studio and had them sing, dance, play sports. In the end, the final three had some magic that we felt would transfer to the big screen.”
Borden stresses that it was not a matter of looking for a new Troy (Zac Efron) or a new Gabriella (Vanessa Hudgens).
“We want to find new characters, we don’t want to clone anyone. That isn’t how school life really is and that isn’t how we want these actors to be perceived.”
The third young performer to make it into the new movie is another 14-year-old, Justin Martin, who plays towel boy for the school basketball team and is The Rocket’s best friend. He’s surprised but delighted he ended up in the movie because he originally thought he was being rejected.
“They told me I was too small to play in High School, so I almost didn’t get the role,” says Justin, who has performed on Broadway in the role of Young Simba in The Lion King. Then he was called back to do a scene with Jemma and Matt – “and then it was a week of auditioning. Each day a lot of people got cut. Out of a whole bunch of people, we got picked, so it was a humbling moment.”
