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By
Kenn Gold
 With viewer numbers that any network show would kill to have, Nickelodeon’s iCarly is at the top of it’s game with nearly 8 million viewers per new episode. Now airing it’s third season, the cast actually filmed season 2 and 3 all at once, a move normally unheard of in the world of series television. Actor Nathan Kress plays the pivotal role of Freddie (Fredward Benson) the kid who lives across the hall from Miranda Cosgrove’s Carly, and who is the tech advisor/resident geek for the group's web show. Freddy also has a crush on Carly, and plans to be her 2nd husband, and has to deal daily with the torment of an over-protective mother, and the mean exploits of Carly’s best friend Sam, played by Jeanette McCurdy. Though in real life the two are great friends.
Simultaneously mature and engaging, it is evident that this young man has his eye on the ball, and that he truly cares about the fans of the hit show, and is not taking his well earned success for granted. Now on hiatus with filming the hit series, Nathan recently took the time to talk about his acting experiences, and his larger plans with MediaBlvd Magazine.
MediaBlvd> How did you end up with this role?
Nathan> Actually, I’ve been acting collectively for about nine years so far. I started when I was 3 to 6, and then quit for a while, then started back up when I was 11. That’s what I really started taking auditions more seriously, because I kind of knew more what I was doing. So I got a few little bit parts and guest parts here and there. But I got the audition for iCarly in late 2006, right after my 14th birthday. I had the audition, which went OK. It wasn’t one of those auditions where you just came out of it feeling like you nailed it, and that you might very well get the job. Actually, one of the reasons why I wasn’t so sure about it, there’s a way of gauging the audition based on the way you look, most of the time. In looking at you, if they tell you to read the first three scenes only, so that you don’t have to read everything, that tells you that you may be able to read it well, but we don’t think you look the part. So that was actually what happened. They just had me do the first scene. But then after that, they had me do all the other ones, which normally doesn’t happen. That was kind of interesting. I was kind of on the fence about what to think about that. But after the first edition, they called me in for a callback. I read the exact same sides and then after that I was notified that I was going to be doing a screen test with Miranda and Jeanette. So I was getting pretty excited by this point, because I’d never gotten this far with any other major project. So we went in for a practice day for the screen test, where I met up with Dan Schneider the creator of iCarly, and he kind of coached me through the script and on what changes he wanted to remake, and stuff like that. A couple of days later we had the screen test, and then a couple of days later after that, I found out I got the job. In comparison, it was actually a very fast process. Most of the time, there is an addition and two or three callbacks, then going to the producers, then during a screen test. So that’s one of Nickelodeon’s things. When they find some way that they think can do it, they make the process worked very fast.
MediaBlvd> What about Drake & Josh? You had a guest role there, and then that got cut?
Nathan> Yeah it was interesting the way that worked out when Dan was casting that. He had written Drake & Josh, and created that, so he was in charge of casting. When I was on set and I was working, even though iCarly hadn’t started, he was still on the lookout for people to play Freddy. An episode of drake and Josh, I’m kind of playing a Freddie-ish character. I’m a little geeky kid, who is trying to hit on Meagan at the party. That’s kind of who he was on the lookout for, for Freddy. After I’d shot my scenes, he called me over and talked with me for a little bit, and I met up with some executives and stuff. We talked a little bit about what I’d been doing, what grade I was in and just some pretty innocuous stuff. After that, it was like six or seven months later, I found out that I got the audition for an untitled Dan Schneider project. At that point, it wasn’t called iCarly. We didn’t know the name of it till we really started. I guess that Drake & Josh bit was sort of a tryout to see if I could play that kind of character. But since I got the job on iCarly, and our characters were so similar, they ended up cutting out the part on Drake & Josh because they didn’t want people to get confused seeing the same geeky kid hitting on Meaghan, then that same geeky kid hitting on Carly in a brand new show. So they ended up cutting me out, but if you look really, really close, you can see the little nerdy kid in the orange shirt in the background.
MediaBlvd> Tell me about the Nickelodeon cruise that you just finished a few weeks ago. How was that experience?
Nathan> Oh, the Nickelodeon cruise was amazing. This was our second time going; we went into 2008 too, me and Jeanette. It was really cool. It’s a really unique experience to be able to meet up with the fans in a more personal way. A lot of the time when you are doing personal appearances and there are people waiting in line to come see you, you don’t really get the chance to talk to them. When we were doing our meet and greets, we had a little bit more time to be personable to them, asking if they were having fun, what they were doing today, were they having fun, and just let them talk about themselves. It was a little bit more of a opportunity to get personal with the people we were interacting with. So that was a really unique experience, and I love it. And there is always that desire to travel a lot with me and my family. We were able to go down the Mexican Riviera this year, which was a blast. We got my entire family to go, including my two older brothers, which we weren’t able to do last time. So that was a really fun experience. We had family time every night, and my brothers and I would have a movie night. During the day, we’d just be hanging out with all of the kids on the boat, so it was really, really fun.
MediaBlvd> One thing I was thinking about when I saw those interludes from the ship during the shows, was it scary at all? You’re on a boat and you can’t get away from the fans. It sounds like it was a good experience, but if you did have a bad experience then that person would be following you around the whole trip.
Nathan> I think the kids have a good idea of privacy. When we got back to our room, we were pretty much not interacted with. That was sort of my retreat. After I was working for seven hours, I just wanted to go in and crash, and chill out for awhile. There was always a couple of kids who would knock on the door and run away, or call my state room at 2 in the morning, or try to follow me to my room and stuff. But it wasn’t crazy. It was a little bit of an issue, but not enough to be upset about. They were really good about privacy, mostly.
MediaBlvd> Were you surprised with the success of the show at all? I think ‘iFight Shelby Mark’ got 7.9 million, and ‘iThink They Kissed’ got 7.6. Those numbers are incredible.
Nathan> Yeah, they’re huge. When we started the show, we had no idea that it was going to be this big. Just the concept and the cast, and everything put together, we knew it was going to be a good show. But we didn’t know it was going to be this big. When we started, it was just kind of a fun thing, and nobody had seen it. We didn’t know how it was going to do. We’d done 16 or 17 episodes before the premiere, so we were way into it before people started giving us feed back. We’ve gotten some pretty good ratings, and it’s been a rush to see how well the show is doing.
MediaBlvd> So in the filming schedule, you just wrapped up the third season? Is that how it works? Are you on hiatus right now?
Nathan> Yeah, we are on hiatus. It’s really hard to explain. When we shot our second season, we shot forty five episodes, which is a lot. People don’t every normally do that, ever. When we did that, that was easily two seasons worth. Normally a season is anywhere from twenty to twenty five episodes. So when we did that one season put together, they just divided it right down the middle and called it the last half of our 2nd shooting season, and the start of the third airing season. Technically we shot our 2nd season, but they are airing our third season right now.
MediaBlvd> When do you start filming again, or do you know yet?
Nathan> At this point, we don’t know. We’re just kind of focusing on school and extra curricular stuff, different projects, and stuff like that. We’re just kind of taking a break and don’t really know when we’re coming back, but just know that we are coming back.
MediaBlvd> How do you handle school? Are you home schooled, or do you take regular classes?
Nathan> Pretty much everybody I know who is a regular on a show and still in school is home schooled. I just don’t see how they would be able to handle doing both at the same time. If they are gone all the time, I don’t know how the teachers would be able to deal with that. So yeah, I am home schooled, and so are Miranda and Jeanette. When we are on set, during the school year, they give us three hours a day to do our school, which is about half the time we need to do it. So a lot of the time, we are working on the weekends and on our off days and off weeks. So during the school year, there is not very much free time at all, so we’re just looking forward to having a couple of months to just do normal home schooling before we go back.
MediaBlvd> How about the dialogue that Freddie has to do? Sometimes it seems pretty complex, and I don’t know if it’s right or not with the computer stuff and the cables and such. Is that something that is hard to do, or are you a computer geek yourself? How does that work?
Nathan> For the first couple of days when I first read it, and I see that there is a huge paragraph with a bunch of techno babble, I’ve got to say, I get pretty intimidated. And when we do table reads for the first time on the first rehearsal day, when I see that line coming up, I’ve just got to take a deep breath, and hope for the best. Sometimes it gets pretty tough. I don’t know if that stuff is real, and I kind of doubt it is. Some stuff we’ve had to make up to allow for the continuity of the show. So that tech stuff does get pretty hard, and I have to hold on to my script the longest when those lines show up.
MediaBlvd> How much of what we see on screen is there when you are filming? I mean the computer and video screens and so on. Is that there when you are filming or added later?
Nathan> It’s all entirely green screened. It’s funny, because sometimes we’re able to post cut outs of our lines on the computer screen, so we can be reading what’s going on. Since it’s on green screen, you won’t even be able to see it. But unfortunately, they have to be green pages, or otherwise, they wouldn’t be covered up by the green screen. So most of the time, we only have the chance to do that when the computer is facing away from the screen, so you won’t see it at all.
MediaBlvd> Do you have a favorite episode that you’ve filmed?
Nathan> There are a lot of favorite episodes that we’ve shot, that haven’t aired yet, so I’m worried about giving it away. There’s one called “iEnrage Gibby”, which was one of my personal favorites to shoot. There’s a lot Gibby/Freddy interaction. Gibby gets very, very mad at Freddy for doing something that Freddy didn’t actually do. And Gibby wants to fight him, so Freddy is trying to figure out a way to get out of it, because he finds out that Gibby is a pro kick boxer. So he’s getting pretty scared of Gibby during the episode, but that was one of the most fun ones to shoot, in my opinion.
MediaBlvd> Do we get to see GIbby’s mother again, the supermodel?
Nathan> I think so. Yeah, she was just in one of the last episodes that we shot in the 2nd season.
MediaBlvd> What has this fame meant to you personally? Do you have to give up some of your personal space? I’d assume you get recognized like crazy when you go out.
Nathan> Yeah, it all just depends on where you are, and if you expect kids to be around. It always seems like the places where I expect to get noticed, I don’t at all. But then, the most random places is when everybody figures it out. It’s always kind of interesting, cause it always keeps me on my toes, but it’s fun. That’s half the fun of this whole thing is getting to meet all the fans, and everybody who likes the show. But sometimes you’d prefer to be able to go around in privacy. Most of the time, that only happens to me when I don’t look very nice, and I’m wearing some crappy jeans and an old t-shirt and a hat and going through the grocery store picking up something for my mom. I’m hoping nobody is going to recognize me, because they’re going to want to take a picture, and I’m going to look terrible, and it’s going to get up on facebook or whatever. It’s pretty rare when I don’t want people to figure out who I am, cause I always like to meet people who like the show. So I guess it just depends on where you go, and if you feel like you are presentable to take a picture or no.
MediaBlvd> One thing I wanted to ask about is t-shirts, and the saying on the shirts that you and, and sometimes the other characters tend to wear. You have bizarre two liners that don’t tie in with anything. Who comes up with those and what’s behind that?
Nathan> That is all Dan Schneider. He comes up with all of those. I don’t know quite where the penny-T’s really come from. They just showed up in one of or episodes. But when we go to wardrobe and stuff, I always see little papers that have layouts of different messages. Different people will choose from that list, which ones they want to put on t-shirts, then they will pick a color, and if they want it to be diagonal across the shirt. All of that comes from Dan, and a lot of time, it involves noodles, ointment, feet, or other random objects that Dan likes to talk about. Ointment is his biggest one. He always likes to talk about ointment, which is hysterical. I don’t know why ointment is funny, it just is. But all the random messages come from Dan, and we just wear it proudly. The only one that makes sense so far, is Danwarp Tweets, which is Dan’s twitter, twitter.com/danwarp. So that was just saying that he has a twitter, and then he was able to put that into an episode of iCarly. So that was really cool, but that’s the only one that makes any sense, that people are supposed to be able to understand.
MediaBlvd> Thanks, I was actually going to look that up and see what it was. But I’ve noticed that all of the other websites that are mentioned, like sendmeabag.com, all link to the iCarly web site.
Nathan> Yeah, the redirect to iCarly.com.
MediaBlvd> Sam’s pretty mean to Freddy on the show. How do you guys get along in person? It seems like you are pretty good friends in real life?
Nathan> Yeah, that’s one of the most common questions that people ask. “Is Sam really mean in real life?” Jeanette McCurdy is possibly one of the nicest people that you could meat in your entire life. In that way, she is so not like her character at all, so it’s surprising when they see us interacting with each other in real life. We’re just really good friends, so our interaction on camera is nothing like our interaction in real life.
MediaBlvd> I figured that was probably the case, since you guys seem to interact so well off screen.
Nathan> Yeah, you have to have some pretty darn good chemistry to do that stuff.
MediaBlvd> I take it you’ve never actually been hurt. Sometimes I see her throwing stuff at you, and sometimes I think that is bad, because my kids want to replicate that behavior.
Nathan> Yeah, that is what we are always worried about. What if a kid throws an apple at his little brother because Sam did it to Freddy, and it was funny? We are always kind of worried about that, but fortunately, none of that stuff ever hurts. For example, that apple, when she threw it at me, it was a Nerf apple, a little squishy hacky sack kind of thing. When she threw it, it just felt like I get hit with a pillow, but I reacted like it hurt real bad. Then I fell on the floor and there was a pad right there, so everything we do that looks like it hurts is totally fake. Besides headaches and that sort of thing, because when you fall on your head five or six times, even when it’s on a pad, it starts to get a little achy.
MediaBlvd> For you personally, would you like to ever see Carly and Freddy get together, or have Carly change her mind, or would that change the dynamic too much?
Nathan> There are episodes coming up where that kind of stuff is “explored” for lack of a better word. But I don’t want to give anything away. There is that element in some of the episodes coming up.
MediaBlvd> Excellent. I thought they were going to touch on that in ‘iThink they kissed’, but it didn’t really get into it. What do you like to do in your free time? I know your bio talks about the game, Airsoft. Can you talk about that a little bit?
Nathan> Airsoft is a lot like paintball, but instead of balls of paint, they use 6mm little plastic bb’s. So it doesn’t hurt that bad, but you have to wear eye protection and all of that stuff. It’s really fun. There’s a lot of different venues that you can go to. There is one place that is fairly close to my house, that you can go and just shoot up your friends all day long. It’s a blast. Most of the time, I’m not a big party boy. I won’t invite 150 people over to a penthouse or something. That is just not how I like to do parties. I invite 4 or 5 guys over and we go out and Airsoft for awhile, come back and eat junk food and play video games all night That is my definition of a party, but Airsoft is definitely one of the main activites if you are planning on coming over to my birthday party. So that is one of the things that I definitely like to do. Besides that, I am a video gamer. I actually just got into photography, which is one of the electives that I’m taking this year for my junior year. I was able to get a pretty nice DSLR that I’m going to be using for that class, so I’m learning a lot about it and very excited to be getting into that. I think that is going to become one of my new hobbies.
MediaBlvd> What other projects would you like to do when iCarly is not there anymore? Do you like serious stuff too, or would you like to keep doing comedy?
Nathan> If I can, I’d like to do both. I think, for me, drama is much more of a challenge, so I’d like to do that. At the same time, I think comedy is a little bit more fun for me. I want to run the gamut of this acting business. I want to do everything! But it is going to be a big undertaking, and who knows how that is going to work out, but I’m going to try to do everything I can.
MediaBlvd> Is there anything else that you’d like to mention to your fans that we didn’t cover?
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