Interview: Taylor Louderman Talks New Animated Series; MEAN GIRLS & More

Broadway's Taylor Louderman (KINKY BOOTS, BRING IT ON) lends her voice to the character of 'Blair' on Nickelodeon's brand-new animated pre-school series, SUNNY DAY, airing weekdays at 10 a.m. (ET/PT). The series centers on Sunny (Lilla Crawford), a 10-year-old master hairstylist and entrepreneur who uses creative problem-solving to tackle any dilemma that arises in her seaside town of Friendly Falls. The characters in the series celebrate individuality and self-expression, while the show's curriculum highlights leadership, innovative thinking and teamwork. The first season of the series will also feature guest voice appearances by Sutton Foster (Younger, ANYTHING GOES), Renee Elise Goldsberry (HAMILTON), Adam Jacobs (ALADDIN), and Shanice Williams (THE WIZ LIVE!).

Earlier this month, it was announced that Louderman will take on the starring role of Regina George in the Broadway-bound musical adaptation of Mean Girls. Today the talented actress shares her excitement over the new Nick Jr. series and explains why she might know a thing or two about Mean Girls!

SUNNY DAY looks so adorable and it's exciting to see all the Broadway talent who will lend their voices to it.

I know, it's so much fun! We're having a blast. And I feel so lucky to be working on a project that speaks to young kids, it feels really good.

How did you get involved with the project?

Well I auditioned, I have a voiceover agent just like I have a theater agent, and I think that Paula, our producer, saw me in PETER PAN LIVE and thought I was right for the part. So that really helped me out a little bit because with these voiceover auditions they don't see you, they don't get to meet you, they just hear your voice - until the callback of course, then they meet you in person.

What are some of the differences between doing voiceover work and live theater?

Well with the series, I will often ask them to play back the recording of my voice from an earlier episode

because you can lose sight of it. Sometimes we'll take three weeks off between recordings, so you have to reacquaint yourself a little bit with the character, and that can take a little bit of time. Luckily they have patience with us! So that's really different from doing a show every single night where you can go on auto-pilot as far as your character's voice. And it's also so much fun to be able to go in comfy clothes, you don't have to spend a half hour putting on make-up, you just go and record, and you can have fun as an actor and deliver five different takes of the same line and they get to just pick whichever one they want. Whereas on stage, you have to really do the same thing.

How did you come up with the voice for Blair?

Well they did give me a character breakdown. Blair has a very Type-A personality, she's also 9 or 10 years old, so right there I knew I should pitch my voice as high as it could go. I gave her a very crisp pronunciation and a very pointed sound, just off of that little description. Whereas you'll notice Sunny has a little bit more of the rasp and Rox is a little more tomboy, cool-sounding. And you also know that the three of them have to sound very different from each other since they're the main characters. So I hope that my experience has helped me come up with the right voice for her.

Are you actually in the studio alongside Lilla [Crawford] as you're recording?

Well we started off that way. And it was nice for us, especially since we're used to working that way, bouncing things off of each other. But now, since we're a year and a half in, we just go in on our own time because we're all on different schedules, we're all super busy, you know someone may have final rehearsal or be out of town, it just gets a little hard to get everyone in the room together. But as I said, it was really helpful at the beginning to be there with Lilla.

What do you think are some of the important messages that the show teaches to kids?

Well I think we focus a lot on leadership. One of the lines which we repeat in almost every episode is, "never say never!" So there are a lot of important messages in there. And then we're also super resourceful with our hair tools often saving the day, and that really encourages innovative thinking, which I believe is super important for kids these days. Each episode really has it's own special message. So for example, in the first episode, my character and Rox get stuck together and we have to figure out how to get unstuck. And we get very frustrated and we lose our patience, but we figure it out with the help of Sunny and the hair tools and our friends around town. So it's just a super-sweet show and each episode we all get excited. We do table reads for many of the episodes, especially when we have a new character, and we just always have so much fun, there's so much giggling and lots of 'awww' and it's very exciting.

What were some of your favorite animated shows growing up?

Oh that's a great question. I watched 'Rug Rats' and 'Spongebob' because my dad liked 'Spongebob' too, so I loved having that on. Oh, and I liked 'Doug', do you remember 'Doug'? [breaks into music from the show] They were all great, right?

Absolutely! So congratulations on your recent casting in Mean Girls. It's funny because you typically play the sweet ingenue in many of your projects. Are you looking forward to finally playing the villain?

[laughing] Yeah, I hear this a lot actually. I think people might be worried or are like, 'oh, she's never played this part before.' But I'm really excited about it. I'm excited to do something different. You know I've come across enough Mean Girls and I probably was a little bit of one in high school, so I think I know what I'm doing. I hope so. But it will be a lot of fun. And I'm going to have to be mean to some of my best girlfriends, which will be tough. I'm sure they'll be a lot of laughing involved in the rehearsal process!

I assume you were a big fan of the movie?

Oh my gosh yes, me and everyone else! And I don't think anyone will be disappointed in the show. Tina Fey is very smart about bringing it to the stage. It's not easy to do that, to bring a film onto the stage and raise the stakes, adding the songs, but she's so gifted. I mean look at her go - she's like on all entertainment media now. We just need her to write an animated series now! [laughing]

Taylor Louderman recently starred as Lauren in Kinky Boots on Broadway. She was last seen on Broadway starring in Bring It On The Musical, for which she received a Fred Astaire Award Nomination. Taylor starred opposite Allison Williams as Wendy in NBC's "Peter Pan Live!," and is a series regular on Nick Jr.'s upcoming "Sunny Days." She has also appeared on HBO's "High Maintenance" and Pop TV's "Nightcap." Some other credits include starring roles in Gigantic off-Broadway, The Muny's Aida, Grease at Paper Mill Playhouse and Footloose at Kansas City Starlight.

KINKY BOOTS Photo Credit: Matthew Murphy

Headshot: Walter McBride

Image courtesy of Nick Jr.

Sunny Day cast image - screenshot courtesy of Pix11