GROOMED TO BE ALL THAT - LA Times (January 2002)

https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2002-jun-23-ca-lucas23-story.html

By MICHAEL P. LUCAS
JUNE 23, 2002 12 AM
For Lisa Foiles, a dance recital isn’t just a dance recital anymore.

While waiting for her cue in the wings of a hall near her Riverside home one recent evening, the freckled 15-year-old was taken by surprise: The youngsters she was following skipped offstage--and did a double-take. “You’re the girl on ‘All That’!” one shrieked.

“They waited for me to finish, and then there were 30 or 40 little girls around me [with] pieces of paper for me to autograph,” Lisa said. “They asked me all kinds of things--they wanted to know if I have a limousine.”

This is Lisa’s life since she debuted last January as a cast member on “All That,” the Nickelodeon cable network’s prime-time sketch comedy series. Thanks to television’s efficient and pervasive child-star system, she’s already a bona fide superstar--at least in the eyes of the show’s target demographic, 6- to 12-year-olds.

Every Saturday night, about 3.3 million viewers tune in to “All That” to watch Lisa’s characters--the coffee-wired talk-show host Kaffy and the funereally gothic Claudia--cavort in an ensemble of child comics along with guest stars such as Britney Spears and Frankie Muniz. Lisa is a product of one of television’s two big child-star factories. Nickelodeon and Disney Channel, which supply a major share of programming for the up-to-12 demographic, also nurture, package and deliver young stars to your home in a process that hums with efficiency.

And so Lisa has not only taken countless hours of singing, dancing and acting lessons, she’s even taken a course on how to be a child star--a series of workshops and classes on how to act professionally, deal with production crews, talk to the press and handle crowds of her eager young fans when she’s spotted in public.

Nick and Disney Channel executives say they have only a few dozen full-fledged child stars each, sifted from about 35,000 child members of the Screen Actors Guild. So when young performers are plucked from crowded casting rooms for plum jobs, little is left to chance.

Lisa’s big break came a year ago from writer-producer Dan Schneider. Round-faced and multitalented--he broke in as a teenage actor on the 1986 ABC series “Head of the Class"--Schneider was picking a new cast for season seven of “All That.” The show, which he co-created, has become something of a talent incubator at Nickelodeon, making stars out of Amanda Bynes, Kenan Thompson and Kel Mitchell, among others.

Schneider said he believed that “All That,” which debuted in 1994, had grown tired in recent seasons, so he and network executives agreed to start fresh with an all-new cast and new sketches for the season, which was launched in January. Nick executives were pleased by the result and ordered an eighth season, which went into production Monday, thanks to a double-digit rebound in ratings for the new format.

“We have a great cast, but Lisa’s one that a lot of people are talking about,” says Schneider, who also works on features films (“Big Fat Liar”). Lisa stood out among several hundred youngsters who auditioned for the new cast. Stuffing her cheeks with marshmallows, she did an impression of diminutive comic Buddy Hackett.

“Not many kids her age even know who Buddy Hackett is,” Schneider said.

The new cast started with a two-week comedy boot camp that Schneider held with help of a team that included the show’s dialogue coach, Brian Peck.

“Lisa has tremendous enthusiasm. She’s a natural,” said Peck, who is also an actor and voice-over artist. And, true to the aphorism that no detail is too small for a successful production, Nick brought in veteran Hollywood wardrobe stylist Janet Planet to costume the cast for some “Kids Choice” promotional segments. She immediately picked up on Lisa’s on-camera appeal, dressing her in an elegant pink crocheted sweater.

The way that producers and executives lavish attention on Lisa is typical of the way Nick and Disney treat their top-drawer talent, said longtime Hollywood child-talent manager T.J. Stein. But more important, he says, the young performers on the two major kids’ networks also get better roles.

Stein, who has clients on network and cable shows, and in feature films, said he finds that prime-time network shows commonly use young actors as “furniture"--that is, story lines don’t go through them very often. “I tell kids, ‘Do you want to be part of the furniture? You’re not going to Disney Channel or Nickelodeon for the money,’ ” Stein said. “You add it up, the experience you’re going to get and the exposure” on the cable channels is superior.