Meet Molly: EnterTeenmentNews Interview

Meet Molly

Molly Quinn is a Texas native who currently stars as “Alexis Castle” in ABC’s hit crime drama “Castle.”  Having been bit by the acting bug at the very young age of 6, the talented seventeen year old has already worked with some of Hollywood’s biggest stars like Jim Carrey and John C. Reilly.  She recently snuck away from the “Castle” set long enough to play “Jen” in “Avalon High.”  The sweet and friendly actress made time to talk with us recently and gave us the scoop on everything from who was the prankster on the set of “Avalon High” to what her TV Dad is pressuring her to do this year. Meet Molly!

“I think I realized I wanted to be an actress when I was 6 years old,” she begins when asked about her start in show business. “I was auditioning for our local production of the ‘Nutcracker.’ I wasn’t exactly… let’s say… ‘proud’ of my dancing.  So when they auditioned for the speaking part I was like ‘Okay, I want to be in this.  I know out of 200 girls, I may not get the dancing but I may be able to get the speaking part.’  The director, who was Martin Beck, had been a writer/director on the east coast and he was in Texarkana.  He booked me the part.  After that, he asked my parents if he could teach me acting lessons.  And they were like, ‘Sure. Why not? What will it hurt?’  Wow! He just really fostered that love of creating in me and it’s never gone away.  He would let me do anything I wanted.  If I wanted to be a guy, if I wanted to be a vampire, if I wanted to be a frog he just let me play.  I had so much fun expressing myself that way.”

After receiving more training, Molly and her family decided to make the move to California so Molly could be where a lot of the acting action begins.  It didn’t take long for her to start working.  “The first thing I booked coming out to California was ‘Walk Hard, the Dewey Cox Story.  I had one line and it was ‘He walks so hard.’” She laughs. “I still don’t know what that means! But it was a great time. I got to meet John C. Reilly.  It just made me love acting even more!  Then I did a Compound W commercial.  Then I did ‘A Christmas Carol’ with Robert Zemeckis.  That was phenomenal!  I had to use a British accent for that.  I’d go in [to audition] with the British accent. When I finally got the call back and I was with Robert Zemeckis, he was like ‘So, Molly, how long have you been living here?’  And I was like, ‘Well, what do you mean?’  And he was like, ‘Well, you’re from England right?’  And I’m like ‘No, I’m from Texarkana, Texas.’  It was great. I got to work with Jim Carrey and made really great friends with him.”

Working on “A Christmas Carol” brought another unexpected perk for Molly.  “I think the coolest thing was… I was working with Robin Wright Penn and Cary Elwes at the time of the anniversary of ‘The Princess Bride,’” she explains. “So they came in on that day and gave everyone signed copies of it.  On mine, Cary Elwes signed ‘As you wish!’  I geeked out over it!” she says excitedly.

Molly is equally as excited about starring in the new Disney Channel original movie “Avalon High.”  “What made me want to do Avalon High and ‘Jen’ specifically was that she’s really conflicted and she’s really a sweet character and very different from ‘Alexis,’” she explains about deciding to take this role.  “She doesn’t have that type of support group. She’s having to deal with a lot of things on her own. Like ‘Alexis’ has her father there and she has her grandmother there.  She has people to bounce things off of even though she is the adult in the relationship. It was fun playing someone that has to seem all bubbly and seem so perky and keep up those people skills and actually on the inside she is dealing with a lot more than people know,” she says.

“I would describe ‘Avalon High’ as… you don’t know who anyone is,” she states when asked to tell us about the movie.  “You start off the movie and you start figuring out that we are reincarnations from King Arthur legends. You think you have us pigeon-holed into who we are.  But even at the end of the movie when certain things are revealed, you still don’t really know who is who.  You have to think. It’s a very psychological movie and that’s what I really liked about it.  It was like a new Disney.  Disney is always growing and that’s what I love about Disney!”

Molly loves the whole movie but one scene does stand out for her. “I think my favorite scene from the movie is when Brittany Robertson, who I have always wanted to work with ever since I saw ‘Dan in Real Life,’ her character, Allie Pennington, confronts Jen over one of her secrets. So she’s the first person that really sees through Jen and kind of starts digging deeper than Jen’s comfortable with and Jen has to deal with that. It’s interesting seeing the way that she does.”

Another co-worker made a big impression on Molly.  “Working with Steve Valentine who plays ‘Mr. Moore,’ I really learned the benefits of improv.  That was really great because I stick to scripts.  That’s what I do. I like to build my back story and then stick to the director’s lines. Because on ‘Castle’ we have a lot of dialogue and really have to get it there and get the beats.  But working with this and seeing Steve Valentine, he’s done so many things. He’s on ‘I’m in the Band’ right now on Disney XD… just how funny he was, how off the cuff funny.  That’s what I want to learn and I’m trying to apply that in my own acting right now.”

“Gregg Sulkin plays so many pranks,” Molly confesses about things getting crazy on set.  “I got pranked with these things he calls ‘bangers’ which he would put it in like a water bottle and when you picked the water bottle up it would explode.  He was such a joker. So it was really hard getting our work done on set but it was a lot of fun.”

Being a part of the Disney legacy is something Molly does not take for granted.  “I felt very honored,” she says of working on a Disney Channel project.  “It was really great that ‘Castle’ worked around ‘Avalon High’ and was able to work my dates out.  They always say that people don’t work out projects for kids but they really do, especially [for] Disney.  I think it’s really great that they promote wholesome programming.”

Fans who enjoy seeing Molly on “Avalon High” can look for her on Monday nights on ABC at 10:00PM on “Castle.” They can also look for her on Facebook.  “I have a Facebook fan site.  It’s MollyCQuinnOfficialFanSite.  I love talking to my fans on there! They’re from all over the world.  And getting to know about their lives.  Because that’s what I love about acting is becoming different characters.”

Soon, thanks to her TV Dad, she will be joining the millions of people who have discovered the joy of Twitter.  “By the end of this year, I will be starting a Twitter because Nathan has been on me about it for about a year.  So I am finally going to succumb and do the twitter thing. So be watching out for that!”

She’s smart, friendly, sweet and talented. Yes, Molly Quinn is definitely one of Hollywood’s bright young stars that everyone should be watching!

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