![]() ![]() Miriam McDonald (Emma Nelson): So I never really watched Junior High. But when I did get on the show, I remember recognizing, you know, Joey and Mike and stuff, and like seeing them in these old videos. Sarah Barrable-Tishauer (Liberty Van Zandt): When I auditioned, I had kind of heard of it, and I kind of knew the history, but I wasn't like this very big fan. Some you just know from the first moment they walk in the audition rooms, some you need to see them two or three times. Less romantic, sure, but that's not to say that casting age-appropriate grade-schoolers is easy. were rebooting the series, the independent film and television scene in Canada had grown substantially, and they were able to use actual casting agents to find the talent. The original Degrassi actors were cast through auditions that were literally advertised on the walls of their schools. They had to be there more in a role that will support to the young people because the whole key to Degrassi is that we are-the perspective of all of our stories is from the young person's point of view who is at high school. Linda Schuyler: It was a bit of a challenge because our stories are always full of perspectives from a young person so, it wasn't that we could really tell Spike and Snakes' stories per se. … And also Bruce McDonald was going to direct the pilot, and I just love the guy, so it was kind of just a perfect storm of awesomeness at that time. It just became very exciting and real to think that you could actually bring back that emotional attachment to a show with a brand new generation. And I was more likely to go, "Ah, it's just a rumour." You know, this is not actually happening, until the day I think I got a call from my agent saying that Linda wanted to do to dinner. I think I'd heard this a couple of times since. Simpson, aka "Snake"/executive producer of Degrassi): There was an interest of bringing back the show. It wasn't until Yan said to me, "You know, Linda, if we do the math here, Spike was pregnant in eighth grade, had her baby, kept it, that baby would be about ready to be going into junior high." That's kind of how we ended up in developing it. My writing partner, Yan Moore and I said, "Let's think about developing a new show for teenagers." We weren't thinking it would be Degrassi. It was really fascinating to us that we were not producing the show but we were still striking a chord with young viewers. The original generation of viewers had grown up with our show, but now, there was a whole new group of kids who are very much interested in it, and the fan mail-and in those days, it was all snail mail-never stopped coming. Here in Canada, it played on Showcase, and then it moved-it was re-bought by CBC where they would run it daily after school. The interesting thing that happened was even though we stopped producing Degrassi, Degrassi never went away. Linda Schuyler (co-creator of the entire Degrassi universe): When we wrapped on School's Out, I thought that we were doing a wrap on Degrassi forever. But for all the high school melodramas and comedies that hit the airwaves in the decade after Degrassi's finale ( Freaks and Geeks being the obvious successor), few captured that lo-fi realism or, more importantly, reflected the lives of their viewers. A mere mention of Joey's hat or that goddamn Zit Remedy song was lingua franca for anyone who either grew up in the late 80s/early 90s or spent any time watching reruns on Canadian television (or, if you happened to be Kevin Smith). Though the original series ( Degrassi Junior High and Degrassi High) only ran for five seasons, concluding in 1992's downer of a made-for-TV-movie School's Out, it left an indelible mark on Canadian culture. ![]()
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