It’s no secret thatSkylar Astinisa polished performer.
He’s got the voice of angel and the dance talent to match.
But what happens when he has to rein in his professional skills to sing a littlelessperfectly?
Credit: James Dittiger/NBC
That’s exactly what he had to do inZoey’s Extraordinary Playlist.
She’s seen Max declare his love for her through song multiple times now.
He’s hired a flash mob to help him declare his love for her in a grand romantic gesture.
James Dittiger/NBC
She freaks out and runs off without responding, and Max is left hurt and confused.
[Laughs] I was like, “You owe me another Shawn Mendes song, then!”
How did that change your performance, both in how you sang it and how you danced?
Sergei Bachlakov/NBC
That’s who he was with his movements, he was just this fun jelly bean.
I had to perform it more straight.
Do we make it seem really raw?
But I think that that wouldn’t be pleasing.
What was it like to have hold back to perform it?
Well, it hurt my heart!
[Laughs] Because there’s a lot of things I wanted to do with that song.
I think we laid down like four takes full-on, and that was it.
What did you think about how that allowed the show to do a musical number in a new way?
How does that change things for the character?
Any time you perform for somebody, especially privately, it’s very vulnerable.
You’re hoping for a reaction.
Even when you do this on a professional stage, you’re hoping for a good reaction.
That changes things forever.
Any time you broach the friends-to-more-than-friends line and you cross it, your friendship will never be the same.
How did this moment affect how you played him moving forward?
That’s when we started to make Max more three-dimensional.
And that song is where he gets that off his chest for the first time.
I just want it to be earned if they get together, you know?
I don’t want them to get together out of convenience.
They have nothing but time, and we have nothing but time to tell this story.
What songs do you want to perform in season 2?
There are so many artists that I want to sing.
But it has to make sense within the story, and that’s always the first rule.
So that dictates what songs we sing.
Do you campaign for songs you want to sing?
Do you reach out to Austin about that?
There’s communication, for sure.
[Laughs] So we changed it.
There’s just things you could pick up on.
And I’m up for the challenge.
What was the song that ended up getting changed?
I will tell you that the destination song was “Bye Bye Bye.”
But hey, we got N’SYNC out of it!
And we’ll see where they land.
We’re all very happy and we want it to be on for many years to come as well.
We’ll confirm that this season is important to us.
