EXCLUSIVE | Stargirl's Cameron Gellman says his character Rick Tyler gets easily 'overwhelmed' but means well
On the latest episode of 'Stargirl', Courtney Whitmore (Brec Bassinger) encountered Hourman's son, Rick Tyler (Cameron Gellman), who will go on to become the new Hourman. Angry and frustrated with his life, Rick believes that life has nothing good in store for him. He's filled with a desire for revenge, when he learns that his parents were killed by Solomon Grundy and not in a car accident, as he had believed all these years. Fuelled by vengeance, he joins Courtney's Justice Society Of America.
In an exclusive interview with MEA WorldWide (MEAWW), Cameron Gellman opened up about his audition days, his experience of working on the show and his character on 'Stargirl'.
Speaking about his audition, he said, "I had a pretty conventional audition process with the show. I didn't know what it was or that they were making. The thing that was most exciting to me about it was just that Brec Bassinger was involved because we're fellow type one diabetics and we've kind of come close to connecting a number of times. You can't get your hopes up when you audition for things, because even if you love them and it's just not necessarily up to you."
Yet, it all fell into place, and he's thankful for that. Speaking about his character, he said, "He is well-intentioned. He's someone who genuinely wants to do the right thing but gets overwhelmed by his emotions. And I think he's an overthinker, you know? When he gets overwhelmed or when he starts to feel like he's drowning in his circumstances, he snaps. That's just a behavioral pattern for him. He's really longing for a sense of belonging and seeking out his identity. By the time we meet him, he's lost a lot and doesn't know who he is," he explained. "Rick is super lost and super frustrated about where he is, in his life."
Gellman said that he ensured to brush up on his comic book knowledge as prep for the show. "I learned how unbelievably complicated the multiverse is. These heroes and villains exist on different planets in different universes and all the universes are parallel or alternate to each other. It's very complicated. So I started really digging into that and I learned that there's a number of different elements out there and a number of different Rick Tylers and Rex Tylers. And I just started making notes. They went through losses. I kind of wanted to do a hundred things, you know, what's accurate to the show and [Geoff Johns] basically said, I'm doing my own thing here. You know, that my show is inspired by the comics and his, and his history, but that's also completely being reinvented. And so once he clarified for me. I had a lot of really deep conversations with Geoff about what Rick Tyler specifically meant to him emotionally."
Is the show adhering to the comic book storyline? Gellman answers, "Yes, and no. It has so many new touches, that Geoff has given."
Gellman also says that his new experiences included working with a stunt team that was fit for superheroes. "New experiences would be, you know, training with a stunt team that was fit for superheroes. I'm showing up and getting ripped up and sending super punches at people and working with the absolutely amazing stunt team that we worked with.
Gellman seems to have had a blast working on the set and bonded extremely well with his co-stars. "Each of these people was just a gift to work with honestly. And each one of them surprised me. I had already known about most of these actors and then wanted to work with them and then it happened and it was just like a super playful, collaborative, just trusting the experience, you know, it was a blast. It was like a very safe environment that Geoff worked really hard to cultivate. I love my job very, very much, and I get the vibe. I get the good vibe getting to show up for practically six months to play the same character."
