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By
Krista

Interview with Derek Theler of "Baby
Daddy" on ABC Family 5/22/13
ABC Family’s Q&A with Derek Theler
Baby Daddy
Moderator: It's great to see Baby Daddy back. Can you talk a
little bit about what the trials and tribulations Danny will
be going through this season?
D. Theler: This is a great season for Danny. There's a lot of
great storylines happening with him. He's trying to figure
out what he wants to do with his love life. He's
experimenting going out with different girls on dates, and
he eventually finds a girl that’s more of a steady
girlfriend for him, and there's more hockey stuff.
It's really great to work on a sitcom where they actually
bring big sets in and try to make it look like Madison
Square Garden. So, that’s really fun. You get to experience
the boys trying to figure out how to raise a baby together.
It's pretty fun just to see the three boys together. Since
we have the first season out of the way, now you get to
understand them a lot more and we even get to go through an
episode—a flashback episode where you get to see all the
boys in high school and Riley in high school and their mom
throwing a birthday party. It was actually one of the most
fun episodes to shoot.
Moderator: Was there anything about Danny that wasn’t
originally scripted for you that you’ve added to this
character?
D. Theler: I've heard from the writers and producers that my
character off the bat wasn’t supposed to be very sweet. He
was supposed to be kind of a womanizer, kind of like a
professional athlete that didn’t have as much of a heart I
guess, and so, I really like the way that he's changed and
the way I've been able to try to bring him to life because
he's really likable. You feel for the guy. He's a sweetheart
and he never means to do any wrong. He just accidentally
kind of makes the wrong choices sometimes and it takes a
little bit longer for him to get it.
Moderator: How does it feel to have the show be such a hit
that it gets renewed for season three before the second
season even airs?
D. Theler: I feel so blessed. It's really an amazing feeling
because I wasn’t working consistently going into all this.
So, it's still great to be able to work at a pilot, have the
pilot picked up, which is a first season and have people
really respond to it and then work on the second season
which we just finished which was absolutely amazing because
everyone's so close with the cast and the crew and then to
get re-upped for the third before we were done filming, it
was the very last day of our second season shoot, the day
where everyone was like oh, we're really upset and sad and
we don’t know if we're ever going to be able to work with
each other again, the cast and the crew, and we get the word
that we have a full season three pickup, it changes that day
and the rest of our hiatus dramatically. We're not waiting
by the phone to know if we're going to go back to work with
our family. So, it was an amazing experience, and I can't
tell you how grateful I am to know that I get to go back to
work with my best friends.
Moderator: What originally attracted you to the role of
Danny?
D. Theler: Originally, I really wanted to work on a sitcom.
It's fun. The hours are great. You get to stand up and tell
jokes all day, and Danny specifically because he's a
professional athlete. I consider myself an athlete. I played
sports my whole life and I try to keep myself in really good
shape, and I thought it would be so cool to play an athlete
and be able to tell jokes all day and also, to play a
character who's kind of pining for his best friend. I don’t
really have any way to relate to that. I didn’t really have
a crush on my best friend growing up or anything, but I
thought that it was cool and I like to see the stages and
how we was developed throughout.
Moderator: Are you guys going to have any guest stars next
season?
D. Theler: We have a great lineup of guest stars. We have
Matt Dallas coming with Jean-Luc from Kyle XY and Lacey
Chabert from Party of Five who plays one of my love
interests. Greg Gunberg comes back. It's going to be a
really exciting season with all the guest stars that get to
come, we were pretty excited.
Moderator: Which guest star was the best on a set, who you
had the most fun on set with?
D. Theler: That’s a tough question because I don’t want
anyone's feelings to get hurt. I'm going to have to go with
Lacey because she played my love interest and she was just a
sweetheart with everybody on the set.
Moderator: When did you decide to go into acting?
D. Theler: My story's a lot different than a lot of actors
out there. I'm born in Alaska, grew up in Colorado, went to
college in Colorado, went to Colorado State and I actually
finished my degree. I got my degree in pre-medicine because
the plan was to actually go to med school but that did not
happen obviously.
So, I just didn’t want to have any regrets. I didn’t want to
not take a chance on something I wanted to do because midway
through college—my whole life I wanted to act, but through
college, I decided that this was the thing that I really
wanted—my dream was to work in LA as an actor. So, I started
saving up money through college and my parents were helping
me through college. So, I finished my degree for them, and
as soon as I saved up enough money, I moved to LA and just
kind of went for it and moved here without knowing anybody,
and I got very lucky with a couple of commercials and then
found great representation and fell into this and I couldn’t
be happier.
Moderator: You did mention that you played sports growing up
and being that you're a professional hockey player on the
show, did you actually play hockey?
D. Theler: Hockey wasn’t one of my sports. I'm not a good
skater, believe it or not. Everything we do on set is with
inline skates, and I'm not a great skater. I kind of fake it
honestly, but I did play floor hockey, and my sports growing
up were football and basketball, basketball especially. So,
that's the answer to that.
Moderator: Has Danny really taken a step back in going after
Riley and letting Ben go after her. Is Ben not even going to
go after her this season? What's going to happen with that?
D. Theler: That’s a good question. There's a lot happening
with the whole love triangle this season. Riley's never,
ever out of the picture for Danny. He does get a real
girlfriend and he does go on several dates with other women,
but I think it's just him kind of trying to defend himself
and take his mind off something that he doesn’t think he's
going to be able to obtain and he's always there. He's
always there for Riley if she need anything and the whole
Ben question, it is a couple of very interesting episodes
where Danny needs to decide if he's going to help his
brother out because he may have some feelings for his dream
girl or if he's going to hold him back. So, you're going to
have to tune in for that.
Moderator: Could talk about your relationship with Melissa
and Tahj on and off screen?
D. Theler: It's great. I just saw them two days ago. I just
went on a trip to San Francisco with Tahj. We did a little
bit of work for the show and then we had some fun together,
but I see Tahj about once a week probably. We'll go grab a
drink together and catch up.
Melissa has a family and she's working on 18 shows right now
it seems like, but we keep in contact, all of us do, the
whole cast does. We're very close. We have emails and mass
text and we always know what each other is up to and we
really care about each other and we can't wait to go back to
work with each other. Specifically, Melissa and Tahj, I
would say that I keep up with them via e-mail, text and I do
see Tahj quite frequently.
Moderator: Did you guys play pranks on each other?
D. Theler: Pranks, everybody asks these prank questions
because we were such a close cast and it's funny. There are
several things that we like to do. I don't know if it's
specifically towards the rest of the cast, but one thing
that we always like to do on our Friday night tape night is
steal the golf carts from Hot in Cleveland together. We park
them all over the lot and just kind of leave them. It's
pretty hilarious.
We have golf cart races and we mess with each other's
dressing rooms sometimes, steal things out of—especially the
three boys. We steal things out of each other's dressing
rooms and it's fun. It's a really fun set to be on because
it's not only the cast, it's the crew too. They really mess
with us.
When we have props and things, they always try to throw us
off during our scene by writing funny things that only the
cast would know about like on all of our props, and it's
great. I promise you this next season since we've had so
many prank questions, we're going to come up with a lot more
for you.
Moderator: For Danny and Tucker's characters together, are
there any kind of funny, comedy stuff that the two of you
guys will get into, some hijinks or anything?
D. Theler: The bromance is still definitely there. These two
characters are pretty much the only ones who didn’t know
each other going into this pilot episode, but yes, they're
buds. They have a cool like bromance connection and I try to
set up in the—especially the first episode coming out in the
second season, I'm forced to set up Tahj's character with a
supermodel friend of mine and he gets pretty excited about
that. So, we go out on a double date, and of course,
supermodels are pretty tall usually and Tahj is not. So,
that’s pretty funny.
Then, another episode coming up soon, we lose one of Emma's
favorite toys and Tucker and Danny have to find a way—it's
pretty much like a Mission Impossible episode to find a way
to get this toy back and we think that the neighbor above us
stole it, so we actually break into her apartment to try to
steal it back for Baby Emma.
Moderator: Are there any other big things with just your
character and Emma's character, and how much did you work
with kids at all before this?
D. Theler: Before this, I actually—I have quite a bit of
experience with kids. I worked at a daycare for a couple of
years going through high school and college. I did youth
sports camps. I ran all the camps through my college.
I was pretty much a camp counselor. I made all my money
working with kids while I went through college and tried to
put myself through college. So, I have experience. I was
very comfortable with kids.
As far as storyline with Emma, Danny's always kind of there.
I had several really nice scenes with Baby Emma and just
everybody always gets a couple of big scenes with Emma every
couple episodes and it's pretty much the same as far as
evening it out, the baby time, with all the rest of the
storyline. So, I don't think I have any real stories I can
remember right now with Emma, but I just know I was holding
her at least once almost every episode.
Moderator: Do you have any additional pleas for your fans for
the live tweet off next week. We love your campaign video.
It's hilarious.
D. Theler: I'm so proud of my campaign video. They begged me
for followers with my shirt off. I do though; I've taken it
as a competition and I'm expecting to win this.
If you guys don’t know, we're having this Baby Daddy tweet
off campaign and we want to see who can gain the most
followers by the time the premiere is over, and I think I
have a real shot at this. I think I do. I made my campaign
video. I have some strong points, but I want to win. I want
to gain as many followers as I can and I want to see the
rest of the cast humiliated because that’s just the way I
am.
Moderator: This morning you were talking about the tweet off.
Will you guys all actually be getting together while you're
doing that?
D. Theler: To my knowledge, yes. We're going to be at the
studio together during the tweet off, the whole cast I
think, as the show premieres.
Moderator: Can you let us know where were you when you found
out you got the role of Danny?
D. Theler: I did the test like a lot of actors do going
through the network test, which is a pretty tough
experience, and I was hungry. I went to KFC, I think. I was
in KFC drive through and I got the call from our executive
producer, Dan, that I got the role, and that was very
exciting, so I basically just squealed tires out of the
drive thru and got home and I live in a house with all my
buds, a bunch of boys and I took them all to a steak dinner
to celebrate. That’s the story of me getting the Danny role.
I think dinner was at Sizzler. I didn’t go that big, but it
was still exciting.
Moderator: What do you think has made this show such a huge
success so quickly?
D. Theler: I think I know exactly what it is, and I think
it's honestly the chemistry between the cast and the crew
and how much we like each other. We truly, truly care about
each other, the entire cast, and I'm sure everyone's said
this before, but we're very close. I actually live with
Jean-Luc, my TV brother. I live in a house with him. I see
him every single day and we know a lot about each other,
almost everything about each other.
I see Chelsea very, very often and we catch up, and it's
just an amazing thing to have. It's such a close-knit cast
because we know so much about other and we care about each
other and there's nobody that’s on the outskirts of the
crew. We all really love to come to work and get to see all
of our best friends. We're really that close, and it's just
amazing that we get to keep doing it and I hope we do it for
a lot longer because up until this point, there hasn’t been
a single day where not everybody got along like a family.
It's amazing.
Moderator: How do you think Danny has grown since Baby Emma
came into their lives?
D. Theler: Well, he's grown a lot. Danny has grown a lot
because he, as a character, didn’t really know much about
babies especially. He's always kind of been a team player.
He's on a hockey team, but it really is the baby coming into
the equation really brought the whole cast together. It
brought all the characters together because they needed to
come together for this one human being, and nobody really
knew how to handle it and all of them just converging as a
family learning the important parts of raising a baby, and I
think that also helped him learn how to express his feelings
especially with the whole Riley situation like he's
maturing. He's becoming more of an adult even though he has
a long way to go, but he's starting to take some chances and
realize what he wants in life as well just because his
little brother had to grow up so fast.
Moderator: Could you tell us how Danny is similar or
different from yourself?
D. Theler: That’s a good question. Danny is very similar to
me as far as his intentions, and like I said before, he's
such a team player. He's always there. He's the guy that you
can really rely on. He's always the guy that if you're in a
jam, he's going to come through for you if he possibly can,
and I think that’s pretty similar to me.
One of the differences is definitely how long it takes him
to get the joke. He's the slow one of the crew when it comes
to understanding the plan, but he always eventually gets it
together, but it's funny. He has a lot of great moments
throughout this next season about everybody else
understanding what's happening, understanding the plan and
he gets it a scene later. I'm glad to say that that's not
one of my personality traits.
Moderator: Is there anything you're working on during the
hiatus, other projects that have come about after the
success of Baby Daddy?
D. Theler: The funny thing about this hiatus is it was very
short because we're going back to work here in like a month
and a half and I feel like we just got done, so I didn’t
have quite enough time to really do something that I wanted
to do. One of my goals is definitely break into film and I
want to do action movies as well. I want to do thrillers and
action, like a superhero movie would be exactly the kind of
thing that I really want to work on eventually, but at this
time, it's basically just a lot of promo work for the show
and interviews and a lot of photo shoots.
I have a photo in UsWeekly coming out today, which is cool
and traveling too. Time off is good. It's good to see your
family, and I've traveled a lot in the last few weeks just
gearing up to go back to work for a long time for the third
season.
Moderator: Do you have a favorite behind-the-scenes moment or
memory or something that you could share with our readers?
D. Theler: What I love about our show is if you come to the
live tapings, we are there for the fans, and a really cool
thing that we almost try to do for every episode is just
completely blow a scene, and we'll throw a character that’s
not supposed to be in that scene until the very last take,
we'll throw a character that’s not supposed to be in the
scene in there and we'll just improvise throughout the rest
of it and that’s probably one of my favorite things about
our show is you never know when that’s going to happen. So,
you have guest stars or main characters even popping out of
the closets or coming out of the bathrooms and just blowing
the scene and then we just work through it and keep playing
it up for the audience. That’s my favorite thing that we do
on our live tape nights for sure.
There was a moment when I have a date at the house, at the
apartment, and I have a very intense emotional scene with
Riley, and then, my date is supposed to reveal herself, and
during the last take, it turned out to be Matt Dallas and he
pretended to be my lover and we just played it up to the
audience and we went through the scene way longer than we
should have, but that was a pretty fun moment.
Moderator: If you had to be one of the Avengers, which one
would you be and why?
D. Theler: Tough question. I'm a huge, huge comic book fan. I
love the superhero movies so much. If I had to be one of the
Avengers, I would go with Thor. I would have to. I just
think I look the part too much and I'm a fan of all of them,
but Thor would be something that I think I could put on. I
think I could make it happen.
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