At the moment, though, Smith is looking a teeny bit tousled. It's 11am and he's seated in his room at Toronto's Four Seasons Hotel, scarfing down the remains of his breakfast eggs. At 19, he looks young enough to play 15-year-old Ephram Brown on the show, but exudes the confidence of someone who has been in show business all his life- which he has, having stared in his first commercial
"I read this script and it was just good. It was neatly tied together, the characters were so well-rounded. I read it and it stuck with me," Smith says of his decision to take the role. "The last few movies I've done have all been based on action or visual effects." Those films include American Outlaws, The Patriot, and A Wrinkle In Time. "This has none of that. It's all about the relationship between the characters and that's what I've been trying to get."
The story unfolds in Everwood, Colo., the small Rockies town famed Manhatten neurosurheon ANdrew Brown moves his kids to after the accidental death of his wife. The stunning lack of a relationship Dr. Brown has with his children- as well as Ephram there is seven-year-old Delia (Vivien Cardone)- provides the tension in the story; resettling New York City- bred kids in small-town America provides the drama and the humor. Equal measures of strong writing and strong acting make it a compelling family drama.
"I really feel fortunate," Smith adds, curling up on the sofa and tucking one leg under the other, "to be playing this role, especially with Treat Williams. On the pilot I could tell we were trying to challenge each other, raise the bar."
Ah, Treat Williams. The other hot actor on the show, although it's not a description he'd likely be happy having applied to him. And while middle-aged women don't usually discuss their feelings about the veteran actor in chat rooms, mention his name to pretty much any women over the age of 30 and the response is generally a sigh of desire.
"I was very, very lucky. I read the script and called my agent and said I really want to do this," says Williams, who adds that he'd been looking for a television series so he could spend more time with his two young children and less time on location filming. The irony is that Everwood is filmed in Utah; Williams' family remains in New York. "It's everything that I am as an actor. It's funny, It's charming, it's unpredictable and it's great storytelling."
It's also one of the rare shows on television in which the core relationship is between the father and the son. That was a deliberate choice by creator and execute producer Greg Berlanti, "and I also felt it was [a topic] I had something to say about. I see so many fathers and sons go their whole lives without really ever knowing each other.
"So, what would drive two very dissimilar men, who happen to live in the same home, to have to get to know one another? It just seemed to me that to honor the memory of this woman they both loved in equal measure, that it just sort of made sense that [the father-son story] would be the device."
Funnily enough, neither Smith nor Williams claim to watch enough television to know that the father-son relationship is unusual. When he's not working Williams stays home with his kids or spends time at his Vermont farm, and Smith does what teenagers everywhere do: play sports, goes to movies and hangs out with friends. Their real lives, both say, give them the tools to play their characters- only with a lot less tension.