What’s in store on the show’s season premiere and his writing and directorial debut<\/p>\n\n\n\n
By Lie Shia Ong<\/em> Charlie McDermott plays Axl, the eldest son of Mike (Neil\nFlynn) and Frankie Heck (Patricia Heaton), on the hit ABC show \u201cThe Middle.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Axl hasn\u2019t really been the perfect son (remember the nail\nclippings in the potato chips bag episode?) or the best older brother to his\nsister, Sue (Eden Sher), and younger brother, Brick (Atticus Shaffer), but at\nthe end of last season he managed to pull it together and graduated from high\nschool.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Now as Season 5 is about to premiere, his entire family\nsends him off as he begins college.<\/p>\n\n\n\n MSN TV spoke with the actor about what\u2019s coming up for\nAxl and the Heck family this season, as well as his writing and directorial\ndebut in the upcoming movie \u201cImagiGary.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n MSN TV: The Season\n5 premiere of \u201cThe Middle\u201d is a big episode for your character, Axl. What can\nwe expect from the Heck family as you head off to college?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Charlie McDermott: He has a new roommate (laughs), which\nis not what he was expecting, which is nice. Basically for Axl, you\u2019ll be\nseeing him out on his own for the first time ever, which is interesting. It\u2019s\ndifferent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n How is the dynamic\nof the show going to change now that you\u2019re not living in the Heck household\nanymore?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Actually, it\u2019s not going to change much at all. I\u2019m still\ngoing to be in the Heck household for part of each episode. Luckily, he lives\nonly 40 minutes away, so he goes home to do his laundry, or comes home for the\nfree food pretty frequently. So there\u2019s that separate maybe half of the episode,\nand then at the house the other half, so not so much will change, which is\ngreat because it would be a bummer not to be filming with everybody each week.\n[Laughs.]<\/p>\n\n\n\n Your fans sent in some\ngreat questions for you. Tiffany wants to know: Your interactions with Sue and\nBrick have provided for some pretty funny moments on the show. Did you draw\nupon your own experiences with your siblings in real life, and are you anything\nlike Axl?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n I have two sisters who are both younger. I never had a dynamic\nwith them that Axl has. I\u2019m really close with my sisters and we\u2019re not mean to\neach other. [Laughs.] I mean, we\u2019ll joke around and rib each other, but that\u2019s\nabout as far as it goes. My relationship with my siblings are not very Axl-based.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Jon wanted to know\nif it is difficult playing a character who\u2019s actually younger than you in real\nlife?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n No. Axl\u2019s not that much younger. Axl\u2019s life is pretty basic\nin the sense that it\u2019s all about him, so as long as you keep it in your head\nthat it\u2019s all about you, you\u2019re pretty much at that age where he\u2019s at.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Sharon wanted to\nknow, do you have a favorite co-star?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Everyone is pretty great. Everyone kind of has their own\nthing that makes them awesome. Neil [Flynn] is fun to goof around with. Eden [Sher]\nis fun to kind of like rip on. Atticus [Shaffer] is great because there\u2019s this\ncool video game lingo he\u2019s always talking about, and Patty [Patricia Heaton] is\njust really awesome to be around. It\u2019s just great. It\u2019s fun on the set.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Is there a funny\nstory from shooting this season you can share?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n We all got\u2014this isn\u2019t necessarily about filming\u2014but the\ncreators were nice enough to give us all bicycles, so the entire cast and crew\nhave had these bicycles and we\u2019ve been riding them around a lot for the past\ncouple of weeks, so that\u2019s been pretty fun.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I\u2019m trying to think to think of something acting-related\u2014funny\nstories. My new roommate has been pretty fun to share the screen with. I don\u2019t\nwant to give away too much, but it\u2019s been a lot of fun working with him. He\u2019s a\npretty funny character.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So far everything has been very, very good. Very fun.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Sophia wanted to\nknow: What is your all-time favorite scene you\u2019ve filmed for the show?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Probably the sequence\u2014it wasn\u2019t one scene\u2014but the\nsequence where Axl saves Sue from failing our project together was definitely my\nfavorite thing. You know, it wasn\u2019t one specific scene; it was a couple scenes\ntogether, but that was definitely my favorite.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And there\u2019s a scene this season where I\u2019m trying to talk\nto my roommate Kenny and keep it going the entire time. It was like two pages\nof me just speaking. So that was a pretty fun one as well. That\u2019s like the\nsecond or third episode this season. Might be the third. So, those are probably\nmy top two favorite moments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n You also have a\nmovie coming out, \u201cImagigary,\u201d in which you\u2019re making your writing and\ndirecting debut. What can you tell us about that project?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Right now it\u2019s submitted to a bunch of festivals. It\u2019s going\nto be wrapped up in about a month\u2014it\u2019ll be completely finished post-production.\nThey\u2019re fixing color correction right now, so we\u2019ve got a few more weeks left\nof just minor tweaks and then it\u2019s done.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Hopefully the first festival I\u2019ll hear back form will be\nin early December and the rest should follow shortly thereafter. I\u2019ll know what\nfestivals we\u2019re in at, and I\u2019ll be sure to post that out there, and tweet it.\nWe\u2019ll see where it goes from there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Is writing and directing\na direction you want to take in your career?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Yeah, definitely. That\u2019s what I first started going\nbefore I started acting. I was making shorts back at home, and I was acting in\nthem as well, but that is what I was drawn towards. I always wanted to act\nalso, but it didn\u2019t seem like it was reachable. It seemed kind of unrealistic,\nwhereas writing and directing was kind of like if you can write something and\nget it to somebody and direct it, you\u2019d get hired, and it seemed like a more\nfeasible career path.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And at the time I was in middle school, M. Nigh Shyamalan\nwas my favorite director and he filmed his movies in my hometown, or right\naround it in Westchester, Pennsylvania. When I was in eighth grade, there was\nan open casting call\u2026 for his movie \u201cThe Village.\u201d So I went just hoping to\nmeet him and he wasn\u2019t there since it was just a casting call, which at the\ntime I didn\u2019t realize. I had thought he would\u2019ve been there. I was fortunate\nenough to get cast and I got lines. I got to work with him and meet him, and\nthat\u2019s what kind of kept the acting going, so I just ran with that. Once I got\ninto this place with the show, I felt comfortable and kind of put my focus back\ninto writing and directing. The first three seasons of \u201cThe Middle\u201d we were\nwriting it, and between seasons 3 and 4 we filmed it. Season 4, and now Season\n5, I was editing it, and now it\u2019s almost done.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Anything else you\nwant to add or say to fans of \u201cThe Middle\u201d?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n I hope you keep watching. This year has by far some of\nour best episodes yet. Hopefully everyone enjoys what\u2019s coming up.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" What’s in store on the show’s season premiere and his writing and directorial debut.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":492,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-490","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-msn-entertainment","category-portfolio"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lieshiaong-sintzel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/490","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lieshiaong-sintzel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lieshiaong-sintzel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lieshiaong-sintzel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lieshiaong-sintzel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=490"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/lieshiaong-sintzel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/490\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":877,"href":"https:\/\/lieshiaong-sintzel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/490\/revisions\/877"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lieshiaong-sintzel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/492"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lieshiaong-sintzel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=490"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lieshiaong-sintzel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=490"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lieshiaong-sintzel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=490"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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