A World Of Her Own
By Vicki Jo Radovsky
The cat's out of the bag : Larisa Oleynik, star of The Secret World of Alex Mack, works magic with audiences... She's obsessed with J. Crew clothing and the rock band No Doubt, says the "raddest" person she knows is her teacher, and writes a monthly teen-advice column, fielding questions about boys with the uncanny aplomb of an adolescent Ann Landers (even though she says she's never had a "date date"). She names such diverse women as Claire Danes and Jessica Tandy as role models, and, when she calls the entertainment industry "the biz," she scrunches up her face and laughs at herself for using the gone-Hollywood term.
Like every other girl her age, 15-year-old Larisa Oleynik, the precocious yet unspoiled star of the hit Nickelodeon series The Secret World of Alex Mack (which recently moved from Saturday nights to Tuesdays and Thursdays at 8 PM /ET), is a study in contradictions. Endearingly earnest, exceptional yet refreshingly "normal," Oleynick, like her TV alter ego, is a reminder to teens everywhere that even the perils of puberty can be navigated with savvy and grace.
So it's no secret why Alex, now starting its third season, earned the kid-friendly cable network some of its highest ratings and brought in the most fan mail ever. Seen by nearly two and a half million young viewers every week, the adventure/comedy is about an outwardly ordinary girl who -- unbeknownst to everyone, including her clueless parents -- happens to possess the superpowers of a gen-X I Dream of Jeannie. Only her overachieving older sister, Annie (Meredith Bishop), and best friend, Ray (Darris Love), are in on it.
Alex Mack storylines are creative and engaging. The two-part season-opener, for example, pitted a good incarnation of Alex against an evil one: the saccharine Pollyanna (who spends most of her time trapped in a well) against the selfish, bratty monster in a miniskirt. All of which offered Oleynik a rare opportunity to show off her bad-girl chops. "It was soooo cool! I never get a chance to be like that, and I really had a lot of fun -- maybe too much fun!" she says, words pouring out in a tumble of enthusiasm. "Good, evil, good, evil -- by the end of the two-week shoot, I could turn it on and off like that," she adds, snapping her fingers. Nonetheless, she insists that despite her obvious relish for the evil role, it never spilled over into real life.
Fictional dualities aside, real life for the actress, who's been playing TV's favorite telekinetic teen since she was 12, is remarkably mundane. Neither stick-in-the-mud serious nor Drew Barrymore decadent, Larisa -- the only child of Roman and Lorraine Oleynik, a doctor and a former nurse who have a home in Northern California -- is already alert to the pitfalls of her profession. "If I spent too much time here in Los Angeles, I could probably get a little messed up," she admits. "It's not real here, being on a set with only actors. I've worked with people who were totally cool, then once they got all the publicity and attention, it just went to their heads. If I did anything like that, my friends would say, 'What's up with you? That really doesn't fly here.' I'm lucky I have a really strong network of people I'm close to, so I try to keep as grounded as possible by going home every weekend, where I'm just normal."
Things seem pretty normal on the Alex Mack set, a converted warehouse in the industrial town of Valencia, about an hour outside L.A. "It's a very protected enviornment here," says Ken Lipman, the show's co-creator, producer, and head writer, whom Oleynik affectionately refers to as "Knuckles." "Even though Larisa works long hours and is under enormous stress, it's a really nice, informal atmosphere. With Nickelodeon behind us, we've never had to worry about ratings or cancellation or executives coming down, so we live in this sort of insulated world of support."
On this Thursday afternoon the cast and crew, who've been at it since 7 A.M., are involved in the painstaking hurry-up-and-wait process of shooting -- on film, unlike most half-hour TV shows -- take after take of an upcoming episode called "The Creeper." That's the nickname of the oddball new kid at Paradise High who becomes so enamored of Alex that, to her utter embarrassment, his show-and-tell project is a video biography of her.
The struggle to stay true to oneself while wanting desperately to fit in is the theme of the episode -- a theme that's true to the spirit of the series, which explores all aspects of growing up. Alex has proven itself to be so adept at illuminating the tragedies and triumphs of pubescent life that The Atlanta Journal and Constitution was recently moved to call it "a wonderful show, both breezy fun and a fine little empowerment fable for adolescent and preadolescent girls, who usually get nothing from television except sales pitches and snide jokes about their bodies."
Oleynik, in the backward baseball cap that's become Alex's trademark, has zapped her way into viewers hearts so convincingly that children often think she really does have superpowers. "Sometimes I don't know whether they're old enough that I can say it's done by computer," she says with a grin. "If they're really little and totally believe, I'll go along with it and say, 'You know, I can't morph in public or I'll get in trouble!'"
The actress takes her success in stride, weighing its pros and cons with suprising wisdom. "The only time it really hits me is when I'm at an event and there are all these kids around who know who I am and want my autograph and stuff. When I'm waking up at five o'clock in the morning and coming to work every day, sometimes I feel like I'm missing out, but basically I'm like, Yeah, this is a pretty cool deal!'" she says with a giggle.
Now in her sophmore year of high school, Oleynik spends three hours of her nine-and-a-half- hour workday with a tutor who coordinates her lessons with the small private Northern California school the actress attends on hiatus -- a situation she deems "totally cool." (So cool that Oleynick is allowed to satisfy her chemistry lab requirement by studying the special effects on her show.)
Without the combined challenge of school and career, "I think Larisa would be bored," observes her mother, who accompanies the actress to the set each day. "This business is a wonderful growing opportunity for a child, and Larisa's facing a lot of life decisions. I'm grateful I can be part of that."
Oleynik's decision to act professionally "just evolved," notes her mother, recalling how performing in school talent shows led to an open casting call for "Les Miserables" when Larisa was 8. "She wanted to go and we took her. Frankly, I thought it was a parks-and-recreation play," she chuckles. "I had no idea it was a legitimate San Francisco production and would run for a year."
Today, Oleynik's credits include the films "The Swan Princess" and last year's "The Babysitter's Club," as well as guest spots on other TV shows like Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman and Boy Meets World. "I definitely want to start auditioning to do a movie," she says, "but we don't finish filming Alex until December, so I'm kinda tied up till then."
Actress or not, precocious or not, like any average 15-year-old, she's also tied up with thoughts of the opposite sex. She may be in "the biz," but Oleynik's still not immune to the charms of the current crop of hot showbiz heartthrobs. On her dressing-room wall, make-believe name tags form a fantasy montage: "Mrs. Johnny Depp," "Mrs. Chris O'Donnell," "Mrs. Gavin Rossdale" (the babealicious lead singer for the rock band Bush), "Mrs. Jeremy and Jason London" -- yeah, both of them. Where are those superpowers when you need them?
Vicki Jo Radovsky is a freelance writer living in Los Angeles.
TV Guide October 1996
From www.larisa.com
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