Mia Shewchuk has only been acting for two years come this November but has landed a recurring role on a Disney Channel television show.
The 10-year-old Pitt Meadows actress will be playing the role of Kali in Gabby Duran and the Unsittables, based on a trilogy of books by authors Elisa Allen and Daryle Conners.
The premise of the show is about a resourceful young girl named Gabby Duran who feels like she is living in the shadow of her successful mother and smart younger sister. Then she gets a job babysitting a group of extraterrestrial children who are hiding on earth with their families, disguised as humans. Gabby has to protect the children and their secret identities.
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Shewchuk has been cast in roles before this. She played the role of the screaming little girl in the remake of Child’s Play, released June 15, and she played the role of another little girl in DC’s Legends of Tomorrow.
Her first role was of an elf in a Duracell Christmas commercial.
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“I had a beard and I had to have prosthetic ears put on,” she giggled as she described the commercial.
The elves fire Santa and as one elf puts the items on Santa’s desk into a box and hands it to him, her role was to take Santa’s hat off his head and give it to the new Santa Claus.
In this new role, however, she has the most lines in her whole televised acting career.
“It’s not really all that difficult when you only have one or two pages,” said Shewchuk,
“But when there’s a whole six pages or 10 pages that you have to learn, it gets more difficult,” said the Pitt Meadows elementary student, who has numerous years in musical theatre as well, learning the lines for plays and songs.
Shewchuk has been doing musical theatre since she was three years old with Showstoppers Academy in Maple Ridge.
Her method is to read over the script one or two times and then try it from memory. Then she stands up and puts actions to the words.
Shewchuk loves the challenge of playing the part of a wide variety of characters with different personalities.
“I also like (that) you can express different things about your personality through the character and you can also play around with different emotions and characteristics,” said Shewchuk.
Her favourite genre is horror, a discovery she made after filming Child’s Play.
“There’s this certain feeling to horror characters where you never know what is going to happen next with your character,” Shewchuk said.
Shewchuk is in season two of the television series Lost in Space as the character of young Jessica. This show follows the plight of the Robinson family who crash-land on an alien planet. She is also nominated for a Joey Award for best recorded song in the 10-to-12-year category for her version of All Of Me by John Legend. The Joey Awards will be handed out Nov. 16.
Gabby Duran and the Unsittables premieres on the Disney Channel on Friday.
cflanagan@mapleridgenews.com
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