BELLAIRE • MEMORIAL • RIVER OAKS • TANGLEWOOD • WEST UNIVERSITY

Lights, camera, action

By Abby Chapman, age 11 and Tate Chapman, age 11 | April 1, 2015

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Abby and Tate Chapman (from left), twins and fifth graders at St. Vincent de Paul Catholic School, love acting and recently starred in a Nickelodeon TV movie called Splitting Adam.

We started taking acting class when we were 6 years old, with coach Mari Ferguson. She taught us how to audition and other things about acting. Our cousin in New Orleans saw a casting call for twins for a movie called Seconds Apart being filmed there and told us we should audition.

Mari put our audition on tape, and we sent it to the casting director. We were hired for our first job when we were 6 and a half years old. It wasn’t a big movie but when we got there, we were very excited because we had a trailer with a star on it. After that we did some commercials, print and several short films. We continued working on our acting.

Abby got to be on a Blue Bell ice cream box, and it’s been fun seeing the box in the freezer section at the grocery for the past few years. We also started going to Los Angeles to get more training. In the beginning we did a lot of drama and really didn’t like being sad or crying. We realized that comedy fit our personalities better because we like to laugh.

We eventually met Irene Dreayer, who was the executive producer for Suite Life with Dylan and Cole Sprouse. She introduced us to people at Disney and Nickelodeon. Last year we did an episode of Liv and Maddie on the Disney Channel where we played young Liv and young Maddie. We were there for a week filming, and it was a blast.

This past summer was really exciting. We got to go to Vancouver to film a Nickelodeon TV movie called Splitting Adam, which aired Feb. 16. We played the role of Gillian Baker, who is a funny little girl with really cool clothes. It was so much fun being on set, and everyone working on the movie was so nice. We’re hoping to do more in the future because we really love it. Sometimes it can be hard because we get really close on something and then we’re told “no” a lot, but when someone says “yes,” it feels great!

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