By her own admission, Eden Sher lives in an almost perpetual
state of hyperbole.
“That’s why I always have to try and keep myself in
check,” this 24 year-old actress admitted during a recent phone interview.
“Otherwise — whenever anyone asks me what I’m working on now — my
automatic response is that it’s ‘ … THE BEST THING EVER!’ “
Mind you, it’s easy to understand why this Critics’ Choice winner (Sher took
home the Television Award for Best Comedy Supporting Actress in 2013) is so upbeat
these days, given the year that Sue Heck (i.e., the character that Eden
plays on ABC‘s long-running sitcom, “The Middle”) has been having. Between
the stresses that this college-bound senior has been facing while applying to schools
— not to mention being blindsided by a surprise marriage proposal from her
boyfriend Darrin — Heck, as a character, has been giving Sher a heck of a lot
of fun stuff to play over the past year.
Eden Sher as Sue Heck on ABC’s “The Middle.” Copyright American Broad-
casting Companies, Inc. All rights reserved
But since “The Middle” just finished shooting its
sixth season this past Friday, Eden
is now pouring her over abundance of enthusiasm into her next project,
“Star vs. the Forces of Evil.” Which is this brand-new animated
series which will debut on Disney XD tonight at 8
p.m. ET / PT.
“As someone who just loves animation and comic books, I
have to say that I have never seen a character like Star Butterfly before. She
is Disney’s first-ever kick-butt princess. And I am just thrilled beyond words
that they chose me to voice this character,” Sher said.
Mind you, when Eden
originally auditioned for this part back in 2013, she wasn’t sure that the
show’s producers actually did want her to be the voice of Star. Who’s this
wand-toting teenage princess from another dimension who’s been sent to Earth to
live with the Diaz family.
Copyright Disney Enterprises, Inc. All rights reserved
“I come from the live-action world. Where if you audition for a part, you
typically find out that day — at the absolute latest, by the end of the week
— whether or not you got the part,” Sher explained. “So when I went
in and auditioned for ‘Star,’ it kind of killed me that, by the end of that
week, they still hadn’t called. Because from the very first second that I got
the breakdown for this character, I just loved Star. I so wanted to be the
voice of this character. But when I didn’t hear back from Daron (Nefcy, the
creator / producer of ‘Star vs. the Forces of Evil’), I just assumed that I
didn’t get it. So I was like ‘Well, that sucks. It wasn’t me. I guess that it
will be someone else.’ And then I just forgot about it.”
But then two months later when Eden
found that she had in fact been cast as the voice of Star Butterfly, Sher began
bouncing off the walls with glee. Which proved to be a bit of a problem once Eden
got in the recording booth.
“You have to understand that this was the very first
time that I had voiced a character for animation. So since I didn’t know what
the hell I was doing, I began jumping around the booth while I was recording
Star’s lines for the pilot. And they actually had to stop this recording session
to explain that the mics that they use are so sensitive that they can actually pick
up when you’re moving around inside the booth. So I had to then teach myself
how to stand still while I was recording Star’s lines. Which is tougher than
you might think because Star Butterfly is such an active and awesome
character,” Sher enthused.
Copyright Disney Enterprises, Inc. All rights reserved
And clearly animation fans agree with Eden.
Given that — just based on the title sequence of this new Disney XD series
(which was shown once just before a Disney Television Animation panel got
underway at Comic-Con last July but wound up being captured on someone’s iPhone
and then get uploaded to YouTube) —
“Star vs. the Forces of Evil” fan art began popping up all over the
Internet last Fall.
“I remember coming in for a recording session about
that same time and seeing all of this Star fan art up on the walls at Disney
Television Animation. And I asked ‘Does stuff like this typically happen before
a show officially goes on the air?’ And they told me that this almost never
happens. That animation fans usually have to see a few episodes before they
then decide whether they want to embrace a new show or not. But in ‘Star vs.
the Forces of Evil’ ‘s case, that title sequence was all they needed to see.
Once they saw Star & Marco jumping from dimension to dimension, they then
realized that this show was going to be something special. Which is when they
started sending in all of these drawings of the show’s characters,” Sher
stated.
And it wasn’t just animation fans who liked what they saw
with “Star vs. the Forces of Evil.” Disney XD officials were so
impressed with the finished episodes of this new animated series that they’d
received that they actually renewed “Star” for Season 2 back on
February 12th of this year. Which was a full six weeks before the first episode
of “Star vs. the Forces of Evil” was officially scheduled to air on
Disney XD.
“And news like that would have normally freaked me
out,” Eden admitted. “But
I believe so strongly in this show and the character of Star, who’s this
vaguely aggressive girly princess. Honestly, I’ve never identified so much with
a cartoon character before. I mean, Star is so much like me in that she’s always
wrong. She’s always messing up. But at the same time, this character has such a
good heart. Star is fiercely loyal when it comes to her friends and never backs
down from a fight. There’s so much going on there. And that’s what makes this
character so much fun to voice,” Sher concluded.
“I just wish that — when I was growing up — that
there would have been a television show on with a character like Star
Butterfly. Because if I were a little girl and had a character like Star that I
could have idolized, I would have …,” Eden
paused and then laughed. “Well, I probably would have turned out exactly
the same. But if there’s a generation of little girls who actually do wind up
being inspired by this character that Daron has created, Disney’s first
kick-butt princess … Oh boy, I am more than ready for that. I would love to
be associated with a project like that. That would be a dream come true for
me.”
If you want to see if Sher’s dream really does come true, do check out
tonight’s premiere of “Star vs. the Forces of Evil.” Which airs on
Disney XD starting at 8 p.m. ET / PT.
This article originally appeared on the Huffington Post’s Entertainment page on March 30, 2015