Lizzy Greene on being a Nickelodeon Kid, Ransom Canyon, and Her Cats
Words: Rob Corsini | Photographer/Director: Hannah Fard | Lighting director/Video: Tony Adams | Styling: Elena Lark | MUA: Bex Marie | Hair: Karina Moreno
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For Lizzy Greene, living life in the spotlight is nothing new. The actress’s first role was over a decade ago, when she was just eleven years old, starring in the Nickelodeon show Nicky, Ricky, Dicky, and Dawn - and since then she’s never been off America’s screens. With over a decade of experience, all by the age of twenty-three, it would be easy to think that Greene might want a break—but, as she tells me over Zoom from a restaurant in New York, she’s not interested in slowing down.
Being a ‘Nickelodeon kid’, as Greene puts it, was every child’s dream - but it also meant that her young adult life was broadcast to the nation. For some people, this created preconceived notions of who Greene was as an actress - yet as she enters adulthood, she’s planning to shatter those expectations. Nickelodeon was a lifetime of, as she puts it, “acting big”. Now, if anything, her goal is to act small - to make her roles feel truly believable.
And it won’t be long before audiences will see her newfound style. Greene has just booked a lead role in Netflix’s The 99’ers, which tells the story of the US Football Team who dominated the 1999 World Cup - a dream role for an actress who grew up wanting to be a soccer star. Before that, she’ll be returning for Season 2 of Ransom Canyon - where she plays the ambitious, emotionally tumultuous, Lauren.
In conversation with Polyester, Greene talked about her reflections on a decade of acting, her plans to write and produce short films, and the creative outlets she’s keeping to herself.
If you were going to introduce yourself to Polyester, how would you do it?
My name's Lizzie. I'm 23. I am mainly an actress, but I love to write, I love to make art, I love to hang with my cats, I love fashion - I just love a lot of things. Mostly I’m just someone who loves life, I love new experiences, I love trying new things.
How many cats do you have?
I have two cats. Their names are Miso and Pepper. Miso is from China, and Pepper is from the gutters of Los Angeles.
You started your career as a child actor and remained an actor as an adult - how has that journey been for you?
I had a great transition, because I went right from kids' TV to a five-season family drama on ABC. That was really good for me, because I was the youngest on set, I didn't have anybody else my age, and so I was kind of forced to be nothing other than a sponge when I went into work. I was just learning from my castmates. I had no choice but to change but to grow and change. Leaving that show, I definitely had more of a sense of who I was as an actor.
And personally, I've become a bit more private with my life, because when you're on Nickelodeon everything is content. You have to tell Nickelodeon all of your interests and it helps them write for you and sell you more as an … entity? Once I had finished that show, I realised that I kind of want to keep more things for myself.
Speaking of your time on Nickelodeon - as you said, there are so many amazing things to come out of it, but there are many people that look at their teen years / pre-teen years and cringe in retrospect. How does it feel to have your teen years immortalised?
It's funny. When I was on A Million Little Things, one of my friends said: What was it like to go through puberty in front of the entire world? I guess that is basically what happened.Especially on Nickelodeon, everything is televised, everything - promos and press - there's kind of no privacy. I was totally cool with it and then I think, later in my life, I realised that is a very individual experience to go through and then I kind of reckoned with it a bit.
Everything has been a lesson, and while I do kind of sometimes cringe at some of this stuff—I was a kid, right?—I think that show has made a lot of people really happy and a lot of people really love it. I feel so blessed when people come up to me and they talk about how it impacted their childhood. I think that's really special.
“As an actor, you are so tied to what opportunities come your way that if you really want to do a certain role or do a certain story, it's kind of up to you to create it and tell it.”
One of the things you were talking about is how after A Million Little Things, you said you found yourself as an actress. Who is Lizzy Greene as an actress?
I've never been asked that before. You got me stumped! I just want to be real. That's my biggest thing in life. I would rather underperform than overperform, I think maybe that comes from Nickelodeon. Probably, my big goal is wanting to make things seem as natural as they can. But then again, that's why I love writing my super crazy, anxiety-inducing stuff in my free time.
You’ve got some amazing projects coming up that sound really cool. They’ve just announced that you’ll start in The 99'ers - about the US Women’s Soccer team in the 1999 world cup.
Oh my god, I'm the biggest soccer fan on Earth. Growing up, before I became an actor, I was a soccer player. I just wanted to go pro! I loved Alex Morgan, I loved the U.S. national team, and when I ended up getting on Nickelodeon, I told them how much I loved soccer, and then I got to work with Alex Morgan, which was really cool.
I think I'm more excited about this project than I have ever been about any others, because I think that this is so timeless, and you get to have the nostalgia of people who have known and loved this team and grew up watching them. And then you get to also introduce them to an entire new generation!
And Season Two of Ransom Canyon is out soon, what’s in store there?
Season two is gonna be spicy! I think [my character] Lauren is gonna get herself into a little bit of trouble, as she always does! But I think that there are a lot of really great things about the season. It feels bigger, the town feels bigger, and we have some great new characters. But specifically, Lauren is going through a bit of a crisis this season, internally, she’s wrestling with emotions. It’s going to make for some good tv.
I know you described yourself as an actress first, but I really want to hear about everything else you do! What do you like to write?
I mean, I've been acting for over half of my life, and so I think it's only inevitable that eventually—as someone who's on set pretty much 24-7—that you sort of gain an interest for things that are happening behind the camera. And so, in the last few years, I've gotten really interested in writing short films and features and I am in the process of wanting to get one short off the ground.
I really like writing things that are kind of a little bit anxiety-inducing. That tends to be my favourite thing to write, stuff that just kind of edges on high energy, high pace, high stress, but really artistic.
Where do you think that desire to create something anxiety-inducing comes from?
As an actress - especially at my age - it's rare that I get a script that’s just really artistic and arthouse and crazy. I get a lot of young adult pitches, but I think it's really interesting to challenge youth! I'm really fascinated with the idea of writing stuff that I don't think I will ever get to do unless I write it. As an actor, you are so tied to what opportunities come your way that if you really want to do a certain role or do a certain story, it's kind of up to you to create it and tell it.
I guess most of the roles that you’re going for are written by people who are way older than you - does it feel like that when you read a script?
I will say, when I read a script, I sometimes cringe a bit when they mention things like TikTok or Instagram, because—while that is a very large part of being young and growing up these days— I think that if you're trying to make a timeless piece, I think that that can sometimes really keep it in this time period. Maybe it's that I don't really want my generation to be defined with those as core qualities.
