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By Angela Lee (Age 22, Australia)
Known for its flashy glitz and glamour teen dramas and supernatural TV shows, The CW has made a refreshing change with Life Unexpected – a show with heart and about family dramas that viewers can relate to. For those that don’t know, Brittany plays Lux, a 15 year old girl who has been bouncing from one crappy foster home to another her whole life and has had enough. Just a few days shy of her 16th birthday, Lux sets off to find her biological parents to have them sign some papers so she can become emancipated and free of the system. Although they sign the papers, the judge refuses to request Lux’s emancipation and instead places her in the custody of her estranged biological parents who gave her up when they were teenagers. After 16 years, they connect and so the family hi-jinks ensue! The theme of the show according to Brittany is that “families aren’t perfect but it takes love and hard work to figure it out,” she said to Inspireteen.
“I think it’s very much a family-related show, but at the same time, we have enough things going on in the series that people who would normally tune into Gossip Girl or One Tree Hill, they’ll be able to relate to the show as well. The tone of the show seems very old WB, but at the same time, it’s incorporated a new CW feel, so I don’t think anyone is going to be too turned off by the show,” Brittany told The Wall Street Journal. The polar opposite of Lux, Brittany is the oldest of 7 children and takes her craft very seriously, and did some research in order to connect with her character. “I didn’t know any foster children, I hadn’t experienced group homes or people who had been adopted in their life, so I definitely had to do some research. I went online, I read a lot of blogs. It was important to connect with that side of Lux,” she told BuzzSugar.
The influence of the show has also infiltrated her own personal life – in real life, Brittany, who turns 20 next month, lives with on screen mom Shiri Appleby, who is actually only 31! “We have five different relationships in one relationship. She’s motherly and also like one of my best friends here and she’s my roommate. She’s my co-worker so we have a crazy relationship that I haven’t had with anyone else but, more than anything, we’re like really good friends,” Britt said to Teen Television. What’s more is that funnily enough, Brittany grew up watching co-stars Shiri and Kerr Smith (who plays Ryan) who were once the up and coming stars on popular teen dramas as well! “I was obsessed with Dawson’s Creek and I actually tuned into Roswell in the later seasons...so it’s weird, it’s like when I was younger these were the people I looked up to and watched and now that I’m older, they’re my parents! It’s kind of a bizarre thing,” Brittany told BuzzSugar.
Behind the scenes of Life Unexpected with Brittany:
Brittany Leanna Robertson was born on April 18, 1990, in Charlotte, North Carolina. She is the oldest of seven children and has three brothers and three sisters, who live in South Carolina. These days, Bee – as her friends call her, lives in LA when she’s not filming Life Unexpected in Vancouver, Canada. A few more little fast facts about The CW’s new IT girl - In her spare time she loves to go to movies and hang with friends. When it comes to fashion, Brittany is into vintage and bo-ho type styles. Her music tastes include John Mayer’s latest album and she is seeing him in concert this month in LA. She also loves Nora Jones’s work. “I love a lot of soulful, independent stuff and cool indie rock,” she told Teen Television.
Brittany also loves sports such as surfing and football, and is a massive sugar-holic! “It drives everyone crazy. I eat donuts three times a day and I probably go through four Mountain Dews a day. I’m on like a sugar high at all times, pretty much. Shiri is a Vegan and works out for two hours before she goes to work. When she sees me with my Mountain Dew, eating chips and a donut at 4 in the morning, she’s live ‘Wow. Wait until you’re 30...” Britt confesses to People Magazine. At least it’s good to know that celebs are just like us and not all of them are super healthy!
And just like us regular young people, she has her fair share of idols and celebrity crushes. Brittany admires Natalie Portman and the career she had had, and like Natalie, Brittany would one day like to return to her education and go to college. As for celebrity crushes- “My celeb crush for the longest time is Josh Hartnett and I still go ga ga over him. Then I sort of got into John Krasinski from The Office. I just want to be Pam in love with Jim. I have a stuffed monkey named Jim,” she said to Teen Television. However, being the leading star on the critic’s new favourite drama does tend to make you stand out from the rest of us! So what does one buy when they land the lead of a TV show? A shiny Mercedes C300 and a miniature dachshund named Foster, Brittany told USA Today. Brittany named Foster as homage to the show and also after her favourite desert: bananas foster.
But let’s step back a bit and see how Brittany got to where she is today – her acting roots can be traced back to the Greenville Little Theatre in her home town. Discovered at age of 12 by a visiting LA agent, she soon began making trips to LA to audition. She moved at LA at 14 to audition for pilots with her grandmother ‘Mama Schue’, while her parents stayed back home to raise her siblings. After about a year her grandmother returned home and so Brittany has been living on her own since she was 16!
Her first screen appearance was in the TV series Sheena in 2000. She then went on to guest star in shows such as CSI: Crime Scene Investigations and Power Rangers Time Force. In 2003 she played her first lead film role as Carrie in The Ghost Club and then starred in a few more smaller films along with more TV appearances, before she got her big break in the 2007 film Dan in Real Life as Steve Carrell’s middle daughter – the boy crazy Cara. She also landed lead roles in TV movies such as Jesse Stone: Night Passage, and The Tenth Circle, based on the Jodi Picoult novel.
In 2008 Brittany also had a recurring role in the CBS drama Swingtown as Samantha Saxton, and guest starred in episodes of Law and Order: Special Victims Unit, The Alyson Stoner Project, Three Rivers. She also starred in the film Triple Dog, and more recently, the independent film Mother and Child, starring Annette Benning, Samuel L Jackson, and Naomi Watts. It screened at this year’s Sundance Film Festival and featured Brittany as Violet, a blind resident. “It was super-difficult, and I had never done anything like that before,” she tells USA Today. Brittany is no stranger to small independent films. She had previously starred in From Within, a thriller starring Rumer Willis and Thomas Dekker, which screened at the Tribecca Film Festival in April 2008. According to IMDB, she has two more films in the works set for release - Cherry and The Family Tree, so there’s no doubt that we’ll seeing plenty more of this rising young star!
In the meantime, fans are continuing to enjoy Brittany’s portrayal of the sassy and conflicted Lux on Life Unexpected and are praying that the show will get picked up for a second season. If it does, what would Brittany like to see happen? “In season 2, I really want a karaoke episode. I sing horribly but I think that would be the most fun. I love to sing. I love to yell and scream at the top of my lungs,” she tells Teen Television. Let’s keep our fingers crossed for that second season then!
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