Victory Van Tuyl
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Victory Van Tuyl Plays Sister to a Space Case on Nickelodeon's "Marvin Marvin!"
By: Susan J. Yeager
"It's a family sit-com," actress Victory Van Tuyl tells us when asked to describe her Nickelodeon series "Marvin Marvin." "It's about an entire family dealing with this alien who has just come into their lives. He has a human disguise but he still has all the alien traits. He doesn't really know social norms and things that humans do."
"I think it really appeals to people because it combines family humor and relatable story lines. It really molds the two together," she continues. "Even though it's kind of an outrageous circumstance, an alien living on Earth, there really are a lot of situations that all kids kind of go through. When you first start High School or even when you start Middle School, sometimes you have situations where you don't really fit in. You feel like kind of like an alien. So I think there are a lot of situations that a lot of kids can relate to."
Victory plays "Teri Forman" a smart, teenage girl who becomes a sister to an alien when he is sent to Earth to be protected from a war that is being waged on his home planet. He is "adopted" by Liz and Bob Forman and their two children. It's a far-out concept to say the least, but one that provides plenty of laughs to Nickelodeon's Saturday night line-up.
Playing "Marvin" is actor, Lucas Cruikshank, a talented young comedian who became an Internet sensation when he created and played a six-year old name "Fred" in a series of Web shorts and posted them on YouTube. His co-star has nothing but praise for her semi-famous alien brother. "He is seriously the funniest person I have ever met," Victory says with no hesitation. "He has such a witty and quick sense of humor. He's very, very sharp. We just have so much fun hanging out. We've actually become pretty good friends."
She admits that she wasn't quite sure what she was getting into when she met Lucas for the first time. "I knew that I was going to meet him at one of the callbacks. Obviously, I had seen the 'Fred' stuff. I mean... that's like huge! I thought it was hilarious. If anything, I was excited to meet him. I didn't really know what to expect. I was pretty sure that he wouldn't talk like he did in the 'Fred' videos. It's always interesting when you kind of know someone off of the Internet or off TV. He's the sweetest guy ever. You couldn't meet a funnier, more down-to-Earth, totally relaxed person. It's been amazing."
Speaking of callbacks, Victory says that the audition process for the series was fairly standard. "It was a normal audition. First I went in and read with the casting director. After that, I was really excited about it and waiting on pins and needles to hear something back. I went through kind of the callback process. For any bigger projects there are going to be a lot of callbacks and tests. I probably went back, in all, about six or seven times."
"Towards the end, they have like a mix-and-match where I went in with Camille who plays my best friend 'Briana' on the show. I went it with her and we read together for the producers and people like that. I read with Lucas. I went it with Jacob too who plays my younger brother. It was a long process but it actually went by pretty quick because it was pretty exciting hearing every time that you had gotten a little bit further."
Finding out that she had gotten the role of "Teri" turned out to be an early Christmas present for the teenager. "It was actually perfect timing because I found out, I want to say... the week before Christmas. I actually found out on the day that I was flying back to Ohio to visit my entire family. So of course, I was freaking out when I found out. I was screaming! It was actually the perfect Christmas gift, because I went home to my family and I got to tell my whole family. I still have the same excitement that I had when I originally got it."
After the holidays, Victory got to work on figuring out just who "Teri" should be and how she should play her. It's a never-ending process for the young actress. "We did the pilot in January and then we had like a summer break. We didn't actually start filming the entire series until August. I think in January, while doing the pilot, it was kind of like a discovery for me because, I had gone through the audition process and I had molded this character through the scenes I had gotten through the audition. Then once you have the whole show, you have so many more opportunities to sit down and think out 'how would Teri react to this?' and 'is she the type of girl who would do this?' or 'is she the type of girl who believes in this?' or whatever."
"The whole thing is kind of a discovery, even now filming I have moments where I'm like, 'Teri would definitely react like this because she believes that women can do anything that men can do!' It's even a discovery now. Along the way, you learn a lot of things about your character."
One thing Victory learned quickly was the similarities between her and the character she brings to life on screen. "I have a lot in common with her. 'Teri' is a real perfectionist. She's very, very Type A and I'm a little bit like that too. I like everything to be organized and I like to do things my own way. I'm a big, big perfectionist. I would say that she's definitely similar to me in that sense."
Most of the "Marvin Marvin" episodes take a week to film and Victory broke down the process for us. "We get the script on Friday night and we have the whole weekend to read over it and learn it and kind of get a feel for it. On Monday, we actually come in and have a table read with the network, and the producers and everyone. All the guest stars come in if we have guest stars that week. We sit down and do a whole read-through of the script. They'll kind of do their rewrites and tweaks. We'll rehearse on Monday."
"Then on Tuesday, we rehearse pretty much the entire day. Around 3-ish our producers will come in and we'll have a producer run through. Then on Wednesdays we rehearse again most of the day. On Wednesday afternoons, we have a network run-through where our network people come in and do their notes and tweaks and stuff like that."
"On Thursdays we pre-tape, so we're filming basically the whole day. On Fridays, we have a live audience, so we don't actually film anything until about, I think we start at like 5. We have a live audience come in and we do our scenes in front of like 75 people. So it's really, really fun! It's definitely a busy week but it goes by so fast! We only have five episodes left after this one. Time flies when your having fun!"
Victory says it is hard to chose a favorite episode but there is one coming up that she is really looking forward to seeing on TV and it involves some very special guests. "It's so hard to pick because we have such a good time every episode. We've had a lot of really, really great guest stars. I really like the Big Time Rush episode that's coming up. That should be coming in February. I'm really, really, excited for that because it's an hour long special. There's a lot that happens! We got to meet the Big Time Rush guys. We got to work with them, which was amazing. I have so many favorites. I feel like every week I'm saying 'Oh... this is one of my favorites!' It's so hard to pick."
If the cast looks like one big happy family on TV, well, it's because they really are in real life too! "We are always together!" Victory says of her cast-mates. "Whether it's down on set or at craft services where all the food is, or one of our dressing rooms, we'll all be in there together. We just do normal stuff. We eat lunch together every day. They have a little outside eating area where we film. We go to Coffee Bean; they have a little coffee shop on the lot. We really enjoy each other's company."
Working on the show is an amazing experience for the actress who got her start in Community theater. "I'm originally from Ohio, but I moved to Atlanta when I was about 11. I did a few community theater shows and that's kind of how I started. So I started when I was about 11 or 12. I was doing like three or four community theater shows at once. I absolutely loved it! That's kind of when I fell in love with the whole thing."
"I had an interest in film and TV, so I started doing a lot of independent films around the Atlanta area like I would travel to North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee," she continues, explaining how she got her start in acting. "That was really great for me because I got the experience of being on a set. I got my first real filming experience. Then after I had done a ton of different little films, it was the right time as a family for us to make a move. We moved to L.A. After that, it kind of just got going. I was really, really, lucky to have the support of my family. I have a younger brother who was about 13 or 14 when we moved. It was really important to me that he was okay with it. I would never want him to move and not want to. He was game and my Mom was down for it, so it worked out really well."
Check out a clip of Victory in action here:
Victory loves being in California not only because of the acting opportunities but because of what she chooses to do in her down time as well. "I'm pretty much just a typical teenage girl," she reasons. "I like to hang out with friends and go shopping, ride bikes. I have two dogs so I always take them for walks. [It's] just normal, day-to-day fun stuff. I'm living in California now so I have a great backdrop to the outside so I try to get outside as much as I possibly can."
She admits to a few television addictions. "Currently, I absolutely love 'Nashville!' That's like one of my favorites right now. Every Wednesday, my Mom and I have a 'Nashville' night. I also really like 'Scandal.' I like 'The Bachelor.' 'The Bachelor' is totally like my guilty pleasure. I'll watch really anything but I absolutely love 'Nashville' right now. I love 'Revenge!' 'Revenge' is really good."
The actress doesn't think too far ahead about what type of roles might come next for her. "I'm really living my dream situation right now. I absolutely love playing 'Teri.' Although we have some similarities, we're different in a lot of ways too. It's so fun to explore her certain personality traits that I maybe don't have or certain things that she does that I don't. I have so much fun playing her and experimenting with her."
There is one job that she hopes comes along sometime though. "I know I'd really like to maybe do something in a different time period, I think that'd be really fun, like the 1800's or the early 1900's."
For now, the friendly and outgoing teenager is content to be on a network that has such a legacy with family programming. "Oh my gosh! It is so amazing!" she raves about being a part of the Nickelodeon family. "I can't say enough good things about it. It's just some of the sweetest people I've ever met in my entire life! I couldn't have asked for a better experience. I work with just absolutely amazing people!"
Tune in to "Marvin Marvin" on Nickelodeon, Saturdays at 8:30 PM. Check out Victory as "Teri" and see what trouble she gets in to with her out-of-this-world sibling.
For more on Victory... find her on Facebook at:
https://www.facebook.com/OfficialVictoryVanTuyl
Follow her on Twitter:
https://www.Twitter.com/VictoryVanTuyl
For more on "Marvin Marvin" visit www.Nick.com