Media Village

About acting and her music
February 15, 2006

Best known to Disney Channel viewers as Maddie, the sweet candy counter girl in the network's hit series The Suite Life of Zack & Cody, Ashley Tisdale also stars as the talented and scheming Sharpay in the network's original movie High School Musical. She recently talked with Maya Motavalli of MediaVillage about her roles, her co-stars and her music. An edited transcript of their conversation follows.

What's the difference between working on a movie and a TV show?
With a sitcom you have a live audience. We go in, we rehearse, we're done by four or done by three and everything moves very quickly. With a movie they have to get all the different shots. You block and then you film it, so it takes a lot of patience. It's a very cool experience.

Are you like Sharpay or Maddie in any way?
The only way I can say I'm like Sharpay is I love to perform. I started off on Broadway in Les Miserables so I have that whole performing thing down. But [I don't have] Sharpay's personality. She's really mean. It's fun to play the mean part though, sometimes.

Was it hard to go from playing good girl Maddie to bad girl Sharpay?
You know what? It wasn't. Maddie is a lot like me. She's a little bit sarcastic though.

I like that.
Yeah, I like that about her, too. But Sharpay is fun. I watched a lot of movies to prepare for playing her. I actually watched Mean Girls with Rachel McAdams and I liked how she portrayed her character. She was a mean girl but she had a smile on her face whenever she did it. So I watched all these other things and kind of put some things in and made it creative myself. I just loved playing the mean girl. When you're not like [a character] it's kind of fun to play.

I just want to know, on the High School Musical album, I Can't Take My Eyes Off of You … what is that, anyway? [This song is not included in the movie.]
It was an additional song written by Matthew Gerrard, who did We're All in This Together [and other songs in the movie]. He had pitched the song and we knew we weren't going to use it but we just recorded it anyway.

I loved it.
It's cool. It's kind of weird because it's me and Lucas [Gabreel, the actor who plays Sharpay's brother in the movie]. My kid brother is singing it with me and I'm singing, "I can't take my eyes off of you." But it's a really nice song. It's not really our characters singing.

Do you like working on The Suite Life?
I love working on The Suite Life! It's like my home. The twins [Cole and Dylan Sprouse] are like my brothers and Brenda [Song] is like my sister. It's so much fun. Our schedule is amazingly awesome. We shoot on Monday and do live audience on Tuesday so we get to shop and hang out. It's so much fun. I've been very lucky. I did pilots for network shows on NBC and ABC and they didn't go. So I've had my time where the stuff wasn't popular and wasn't great. I've worked really hard to get to where I am. I'm very lucky to have both projects that did so well. But Zack & Cody, those twins are absolutely adorable.

(Sighs) They are…
They're so funny and so normal, like boys. They play non-stop. They just don't care. That's the best part about them. Their dad has really kept them grounded. When they're off from work they're hanging out with their friends and not doing events and stuff. That's really refreshing.

A lot of 7th graders and 8th graders are watching High School Musical and everybody has been talking about it non-stop.
Somebody told me their daughter is in high school and never watches the Disney Channel, but she was singing the songs from the movie and all her friends were singing them with her.