The sports-star-to-theatre-kid pipeline is the trope of Disney dreams, but ‘college jock with an underlying penchant for the arts’ was a reality for Noah LaLonde. Having spent his youth tearing up the ice-rink as a promising hockey player, LaLonde eventually decided to find his thrills elsewhere – swapping the locker room for casting calls. It’s a formative journey not too dissimilar to his breakout character of Cole Walter, bad-boy heartthrob of My Life with the Walter Boys, whose injury shatters his sports scholarship ambitions. Amidst a will-they-won’t-they love triangle that has sent fans into a frenzy since the publication of Ali Novak’s 2014 novel of the same name, LaLonde has delivered ‘the Cole effect’ in full force, slipping back into character for the hotly anticipated sophomore season.

Ella Joyce: Hey, Noah. Whereabouts are you right now?
Noah LaLonde: We’re in Calgary, in Alberta, Canada. I’ve got a beautiful view of the river, it’s amazing. We’re on location and in production. It’s public that we’re back shooting, so we don’t have to pretend that my hair’s not just blonde for my own sake. It’s exciting because we’re all patiently awaiting the launch of season two while making another one. There’s a good energy.

EJ: You’re originally from Detroit, can you tell me about what it was like growing up there?
NL: I reflect on it incredibly fondly. I had such a great childhood, and being from Michigan, I feel like you experience all of what the natural world has to offer in terms of the seasons. I always go to the weather because I find that it is the most different when I travel. Living in Los Angeles now, you have this great weather almost year-round but in Michigan, I feel that so much of life was defined by the ebbs and flows of what you were able to do based on the weather. Winter would stick around long enough so that the first spring day was such a life-changing thing to walk outside to, summer would come and you’d get these super hot days. It wasn’t a huge town in Michigan, so the community was a big deal – I love going back.

EJ: You were on the hockey team, right?
NL: I did do that. Detroit is very close to Canada, and the more that I work in Canada, that’s often a nice jumping-off point for me to find common ground with the people of Calgary because hockey is such a big deal there, as it is in Detroit. That was the most natural part of my upbringing, just always being in a rink or watching the Red Wings. Most of my friends growing up were on the hockey team.

“I always had that itch to want to do exactly what I’m doing now and, luckily, now I get to scratch that itch.”

EJ: While playing hockey, were you also a theatre kid? Was it a Troy Bolton situation? [both laugh]
NL: I’d like to think so. I don’t think it was quite as dramatic, but in elementary school I did participate in all the school plays and had enough of a good time doing it so that in middle we had something of an East High [the school in High School Musical]-style choir. [laughs] You have to make that choice between choir or band at some point, I picked choir and it was a lot of fun. I wasn’t the greatest singer at that age, as your voice is changing. I remember there was a crossroads because, at some point, an athlete gets so serious in their sport, you kind of have to pick between that and other things. When I was going into high school, my choir teacher from middle school told me to sign up for a drama workshop, and I did. I always had that itch to want to do exactly what I’m doing now and, luckily, now I get to scratch that itch. I signed up for a workshop before high school that I feel would have really set me on the trajectory to get involved in the arts – I paid the down payment, I was ready to go, I was so nervous and just before it happened a hockey thing came up and it was one of those moments where I had to choose hockey because I had so much invested in it. I didn’t do the drama workshop and I had to wait a few years before I picked it back up again.

EJ: Everything happens for a reason.
NL: Absolutely, I believe it.

EJ: Were there any performances from that period of your life which cemented the idea of wanting to become an actor?
NL: It’s funny, there are a lot of things I can clock in my life that triggered some version of a response at different times. I would watch a lot of Saturday Night Live with my dad and my friends. When I was young, I didn’t always know all the guests, so I would get really excited when people I knew came on. A few friends of mine from the hockey team would have big sleepovers, and there was a Jimmy Fallon skit we spent hours recreating, doing the song and the Justin Timberlake skits… impressions and all that stuff was a lot of fun. Classics from that wonderful age of comedy, Step Brothers and Superbad, I have those DVD discs that are probably as scratched up as some people’s Call of Duty video games, because I would just watch them endlessly. Remember the main menu music that would play?

EJ: Oh yeah, or when you’d fall asleep and wake up to the little logo bouncing around the screen. [both laugh]
NL: Yes! Before the logo came, I would have the Step Brothers main menu theme music playing in my head. [laughs] I think it’s funny you mentioned High School Musical because I do remember really liking it. Zac Efron’s Troy Bolton was probably the first person I remember being like, “Oh, this guy’s cool and he’s not doing what I’m so used to being ‘cool’.” Then you start to make that differentiation between cool in the hockey locker room, what’s cool to everyone else, and what’s cool to me? Someone like Troy Bolton is an easy one to latch onto. The next time there was a notable moment that I took action on was when I was playing hockey, and it was beginning to come to an end – even though I didn’t really know it – I remember feeling very conflicted and unfulfilled. I rushed to my laptop to put on a movie and to see things in myself that I wasn’t accessing, because the longer you get into a sport, the more ‘one path’ it is. I remember really enjoying being done with practice, being done with workouts, having nothing to do for the rest of the night. Lying down, propping up my laptop, putting on my noise-cancelling headphones and just being in another world. Being transported to another place was really impactful for me at that time. That’s when the seed of acting was planted. Every time I would feel something new or there was something happening in my life, whether it was to relate to that thing or feel comfort in it, I was finding it on a TV show or a movie. I remember watching Into the Wild and thinking, “There’s gotta be more to this.” Then going through heartbreak and watching ten seasons of Friends, being like, “I feel better.” Whatever it is, I felt very impacted by it, and I think every sign was pointing to me wanting to be involved in making that.

EJ: It’s all a form of escapism at the end of the day. You’re listed as a producer on the short film Summer Flings & Funerals, is producing something you’d like to explore?
NL: Producing at that scale and producing as I now understand the job title is very different, however, the bones of it are the same – putting together the project before it’s made and then being there to make sure the pieces are still together the whole time. I’m glad you brought that up because I’m still proud of what we made in that little Airbnb in Detroit with my friend and a very small group of people. We didn’t know what we were doing. We put the pieces in place and trusted each other to have fun. Being part of the whole thing is definitely something I’m interested in, whether that’s producing or directing. Having worked on two seasons of a television show with different directors, I’m very fascinated by different styles and choices that come together in that process. I’ve had a lot of time to observe and learn about what goes on around me, and I like to be involved with anything on a set.

EJ: What was it like entering the world of My Life with the Walter Boys? When something has a large following prior to release because of a book, is there a sense of pressure or was it more excitement?
NL: I was excited, and nervous, for sure. The fact that it was a book or Wattpad original that had 80 million readers was nerve-racking, but it wasn’t any more so than the fact that I was about to do this job. All of the things I worked for every year since I had decided to become an actor were finally going to be tested and seen to a level where, if I did a terrible job, someone would tell me or make sure that I didn’t do it again. I was nervous for that, and then the specifics of a character like Cole Walter, the description of him in the book and his introduction are so intensely descriptive. Even in our scripts, the way they describe him slowly getting out of the pool, it instils a bit of fear into you, thinking you’re going to have to justify those words! I was nervous for a lot of reasons, but only after the fact, never during. ‘The Cole effect’ [how Cole’s charm has been dubbed] is a pretty big idea to accept as a viewer. When that started to get thrown around, I started to think to myself, “God, we better do this right because if we don’t, this could sound kind of silly.” I think for the most part I don’t feel overwhelmingly silly. [both laugh] We’re back making more, so somebody let me do it again.

EJ: When you’re doing a series like this, it must really allow you to get under the skin of the character. How did you work between the books and the scripts to bring Cole to life?
NL: The book was a great way to get a fast track into the type of world we were going to be in. Then the script took its own liberties and changes. As soon as we got into the episodes I saw what was similar and what was different, went back to the book and asked, “What is definitely consistent and what can I carry over into the process of the show?” After I made those determinations, I set the book to the side, and then as the scripts were coming in, the work that I was doing filled in all the pieces. You want to pay respect to the readers, the writers, Ali Novak, and you mine for ways to do that, then you stay in the moment with the script. Having a big cast, having this beautiful scenery in Calgary, it’s a world that really sucks you in.

EJ: When season one ended, audiences were left on a cliffhanger. What was your reaction to the script for season two?
NL: We wrapped season one in August of 2022, and it didn’t come out until the following December. It was nearly a year and a half before we’d really seen it in full, with the actors’ and writers’ strike that went on, there was a lot of not knowing. I had all that time to stew over what might happen and I remember anytime I’d talk to somebody from the show, you would go through these scenarios. I had all these ideas – I felt like a fan. My grandma would say, “I hope you go to New York and get Jackie,” and I’m like, “Grandma, it’s not me, it’s Cole, I don’t get any say.” [laughs]

“Finding the light at the end of the tunnel and making peace with what you have in front of you is always a really fascinating tale.”

EJ: We’re left on another cliffhanger at the end of season two, what do you hope for Cole in season three?
NL: The hope I have for season three is oddly enough very similar to the hope I had for season two. I can only think about it from Cole’s perspective, he’s in such a fragile time in his life where he’s having these feelings for the first time, these adult feelings that are not just something he’s going to forget about. Losing football, the family going through issues, that type of stuff leaves a mark on you. I’d hope he continues to work on his ability to handle the things that are happening in front of him. Slowly but surely, from season one, he sees this version of a person who can go through the worst thing that can happen to you in Jackie, and he’s able to be inspired by her ability to get up every day and continue toward her goals. I think without her, there’s a bit of self-sabotage that happens, so it’s almost like she saves him from the part of himself that wants to let everything get ruined. When you have the love triangle, where it’s will they, won’t they – if they do, it will upset; if they don’t, it will upset.

EJ: It’s interesting that you mention the love triangle because it seems to be a recurring trope at the moment. It feels like romance and the rom-com are making a comeback, most recently with the release of Materialists. Were you a fan of the genre before stepping into this?
NL: Very much so. I love Materialists, by the way. I was a big fan. Love is always a topic in the most impactful movies that I’ve seen. Some of my favourite movies that come to mind are Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, La La Land, these movies where just the thought of the person you love is so intense that it can alter everything in your entire world. That subject is so real and so potent. Everybody at one point in their life feels it and I think that’s why there are so many iconic examples of it in film, television and theatre. It’s so palpable, and it’s always my favourite thing to watch.

EJ: What kind of stories do you want to tell in the future? Are there any roles or genres you’re keen to explore?
NL: I always try to keep an open mind because it’s so easy to grip very tightly on the wheel of your own life and career. There are so many stories to be told, and I think something like Materialists is interesting because it’s a love triangle, but it’s a version that feels like it’s happening in ten thousand different towns across the world right now. The idea of romance, falling in love, longing and surviving in a world that increasingly gets harder to survive in, for a lot of different reasons. Finding the light at the end of the tunnel and making peace with what you have in front of you is always a really fascinating tale.

Interview originally published in HERO 34. 

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