A boy struggling with drug addiction, a child suffering from PTSD, and teen cousins thrust into inappropriate scenarios. These are just a few of the TV roles that were way too mature for the actors who played them.
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00:00A boy struggling with drug addiction, a child suffering from PTSD, and teen cousins thrust
00:05into inappropriate scenarios — these are just a few of the TV roles that were way too
00:10mature for the actors who played them.
00:12Kiernan Shipka was only seven years old when Mad Men started airing, but it wasn't actually
00:17her on-screen debut.
00:19In fact, she was already a seasoned performer, as she already had years of commercials under
00:22her belt.
00:23It was the perfect blend of talent and experience, which is why she made Sally Draper one of
00:28Mad Men's most iconic characters.
00:30But before Shipka's range and depth became obvious enough to get her promoted to a series
00:34regular, her character existed partly to emphasize just how lax 60s parenting could be.
00:39For one, Sally gets lessons in mixing cocktails, especially her dad's beloved Old Fashions.
00:45She also runs through the house playing spaceman with her mom's dry-cleaning bag over her head.
00:49This prompted a rare moment of parental intervention.
00:52If the clothes from that dry-cleaning bag are on the floor of my closet, you're going
00:55to be a very sorry young lady.
00:59When MTV started airing Skins, an American remake of a British show, the outrage was
01:04immediate and unsurprising.
01:05It wasn't just that the show, like its predecessor, spotlighted teen turmoil and excess.
01:10It's that it did so while starring so many fresh young faces.
01:13Its cast was carefully chosen to be ages 15 through 19 only.
01:18Other high school soap operas, like Gossip Girl, have generally cast much older actors.
01:23That said, accurate youth casting was more often reserved for family-friendly shows.
01:27Then along came Skins, which was anything but family-friendly.
01:31In fact, the show was rated TVMA, meaning most of its actors were technically advised
01:35not to watch it.
01:37Pairing adult material with teen actors not only generated enough controversy to make
01:41advertisers eventually pull out, it also stirred up network concerns about being legally charged
01:45over the provocative content they were making.
01:48Interestingly, Skins went further than just having real teenagers in on-screen sexual
01:52situations.
01:53It had teens elsewhere in the production, too.
01:56The writers' room had 30 official teen consultants to help make the show a real portrait of high
02:00school's darker follies.
02:02The show didn't have long to make its case for realism, though.
02:05Between the outcry and its low ratings, it never made it to season two.
02:09Holly Taylor played Paige Jennings on The Americans, the daughter of Russian spies embedded
02:14in 1980s suburban America.
02:16In order to embody the role, Taylor needed to become a powerhouse performer, and she
02:20did.
02:21As Paige got drawn into her parents' world of secrets and lies, Taylor had to take her
02:25character to some dark, shattering places.
02:27It was a lot to ask of a performer who was only 13 when she started on the show.
02:31However, what the show asked of Taylor was emotionally exhausting.
02:35There was a stretch of episodes where it felt like all she did was cry, and that drained
02:39her.
02:40But, as she told The Observer, the crying wasn't as demanding as the sheer complexity
02:43of adult emotions she had to summon to play a girl whose whole life has been turned upside
02:47down.
02:48Ian Armitage first rose to internet fame doing YouTube reviews of live theater.
02:53That background in criticism — in separating fiction from truth — probably turned out
02:57to be especially good training for Armitage.
03:00His role as Ziggy Chapman on HBO's Big Little Lies required a sophisticated understanding
03:04of appearance versus reality that a lot of young actors couldn't have mastered.
03:08And given some of the dark places the series goes to, not having that understanding could
03:12have had high stakes.
03:14Throughout the show's first season, Armitage had to play Ziggy with real ambiguity.
03:18A large part of the plot centers on accusations that Ziggy has been biting a little girl in
03:22his class, and the audience has to wonder whether or not he's capable of those kinds
03:26of outbursts of unsettling violence.
03:28"...someone is biting our daughter!"
03:30In season two, Ziggy also has to face the knowledge that he was conceived through rape.
03:35Luckily, Armitage seems to have a firm grasp on the boundaries of his part.
03:39He told The New York Times,
03:40"...Movies is basically just playing, but bigger, and with people watching."
03:45A regular on The Shield, Autumn Chickliss played Cassidy, the daughter of the show's
03:48compelling and often terrifying anti-hero Vic Mackie.
03:52Vic Mackie was portrayed by Michael Chickliss, Autumn's real-life father.
03:55Her role sometimes dipped into disturbing territory, especially as Cassidy grew a little
03:59older and had to confront some of the fallout of her dad's dirty dealings.
04:03Meanwhile, Autumn's parents had strong feelings about her being on the show.
04:07She told The Hollywood Reporter years later,
04:09"...I was on The Shield, and I was not allowed to watch it all six years because they did
04:12not want me to see him in that light."
04:14Thankfully, there was no danger of Autumn confusing her father and his character.
04:18She went on to add,
04:19"...I'm deeply close with my dad.
04:21He's my best friend in the entire world."
04:24The Wire's gritty, unsparing look at the realities of the War on Drugs means that pretty much
04:28none of the children who rotate through its cast get out unscathed.
04:32This was especially the case in the fourth season, with a character named Daquan Dookie
04:36Weems.
04:37Dookie was played by 12-year-old Jermaine Crawford.
04:40Dookie's life is marred by bullying and pervasive neglect, and even the attention and help he
04:45gets from new teacher Mr. Perez can't ultimately pull him out of his downward spiral.
04:49He's a sweet kid with loyal friends and genuine talent, but in the grim social order of The
04:53Wire, he's still doomed.
04:56The young Crawford had to show Dookie's gradual descent into homelessness and heroin use.
05:00His performance is heartbreaking, and Crawford's obvious youth only emphasizes how much Dookie's
05:04life is being wasted.
05:06One of the ultimate compliments on his tragic performance is that even as Dookie's childhood
05:10is stripped away from him, Crawford portrays him with such an essential innocence that
05:14viewers never see him as hardened or even an old soul.
05:19Deadwood is Brie Shana Wall's only screen credit, and when you look at her part, it's
05:23easy to imagine how the budding actor might have been scared off.
05:26She plays Sofia Metz, a Norwegian girl who is orphaned after an attack on her parents'
05:30wagon train.
05:32As a result of witnessing her parents' slaughter, Sofia retreats into terrified muteness.
05:37It didn't exactly help that Ian McShane's character, the local kingpin Al Swearengen,
05:41then spent much of the show's first season debating whether or not to have the child
05:45killed as part of a cover-up.
05:46It's probably good that Sofia spent so much time either not talking or unable to speak
05:51English because otherwise, a lot of her dialogue would have been heartbreaking.
05:55Few actors can provide as much terrifying, perversely genial menace as Ian McShane,
05:59and having him loom threateningly over little Sofia is enough to strike fear into our hearts,
06:04let alone Wall's.
06:06Dysfunction is the bread and butter of The Mick, the Fox comedy about an irresponsible
06:10slacker who gets unexpectedly saddled with caring for her wealthy niece and nephews when
06:14their parents go on the run from the FBI.
06:16The show's comedic masterpiece is arguably Ben, played by Jack Stanton.
06:20Can you at least put the leash back on?
06:22Why do you want the leash?
06:23I don't know.
06:24I just like it.
06:25Ben is as sweet and innocent as any kid could possibly be, and there was nothing The Mick
06:29liked better than having him stumble into R-rated situations.
06:33It's worse because they're all bad decisions and mishaps easily accessible to most children
06:37his age.
06:38We have to feel for Stanton's poor parents, who have to try to explain why their young
06:41son shouldn't lick a hibachi grill, gobble up birth control pills, and so on and so on.
06:47It's the kind of part that cries out for an actor old enough to easily differentiate
06:50between fiction and reality.
06:52FX's Kentucky Crime series, Justified, rarely required the casting of child actors, which
06:58makes it even more impressive that they wound up with such a standout.
07:01In season two, it introduced Kaitlyn Dever's Loretta McCready, a practical, enterprising,
07:06and vulnerable teenage girl whose life gets tragically caught up in the crime empire run
07:10by Mags Bennett.
07:12After Mags kills Loretta's father, she winds up taking her in, encouraging her to think
07:16of the Bennetts as her family.
07:18Dever's tenure on the show required her to play heartbreak and betrayal as Loretta runs
07:21an unbelievable gamut of emotions until she hardens enough to start the work of becoming
07:26a criminal queenpin in her own right.
07:28Dever was only a young teen when she started playing Loretta, and she wound up being one
07:32of the emotional linchpins of what many critics regard as the show's best season.
07:36Her high-octane emotions in that part helped lead her to her role in the film Short Term
07:4012, where she played a troubled girl in a group home.
07:44After multiple dramas specializing in girls who had to grow up too fast, it was probably
07:48refreshing for her to land the part in 2019's Booksmart, a comedy where her character is
07:52finally an ordinary high school girl dealing with ordinary milestones.
07:56It was the best shoot I've ever been on.
08:00HBO's Rome is equal parts tragedy and romp, fueled by violence, raw sexuality, and political
08:05gamesmanship that often involves all of the above.
08:09And in the middle of all that is a child.
08:11We're talking about the young Octavian, the eventual Caesar Augustus, who's first played
08:15by 16-year-old Max Perkis.
08:18Octavian looks harmless, but the show quickly reveals that he has a natural talent for political
08:22scheming.
08:23But Perkis was asked to do more than just show Octavian playing all the angles.
08:28Rome often leaned on the squirmy dissonance it could provoke in its viewers when ancient
08:31Rome's different and sometimes appalling norms — including slavery, animal sacrifice, and
08:36sexual assault — were put on screen.
08:38But few were better vehicles for that than Octavian, who even before the show's time
08:42skip aged him up, had slept with his sister, been ordered to visit a brothel, and been
08:46extravagantly praised for having the foresight to seduce his uncle.
08:51Being a sitcom about a family never made Arrested Development a family sitcom.
08:56One of the ways the show liked to gleefully emphasize that was by repeatedly teasing the
08:59possibility of incest between cousins George Michael Bluth, played by Michael Cera, and
09:04Maybe Fionke, played by Alia Shawkatz.
09:07Shawkatz was only 14 when the show started airing, and Cera was 15.
09:11While they were old enough to probably have a sense of humor about their characters' will-they-won't-they
09:15arc, it's still odd when you think about the show repeatedly making jokes about how they
09:19might wind up doing some taboo breaking kissing.
09:22Arrested Development was adept at testing boundaries in the name of comedy, so it smartly
09:26used Cera and Shawkatz's youth as another barrier to nudge to get laughs.
09:31While Millie Bobby Brown's role as Eleven on Stranger Things is demanding, most of its
09:35ups and downs involve things like hitting the limits of her telekinetic powers or needing
09:39to hide from sinister government agents.
09:41They're the kind of dangers that are separated from reality by a few degrees, and that can
09:45be enough to make them fun instead of harrowing.
09:48But while Eleven gradually embraces her powers, the show starts with her in a low and heartbreaking
09:53place, one that really hurts.
09:55She's playing an abused, terrified, and dehumanized child whose early emotional support comes
10:00only from Matthew Modine's sadistic Dr. Brenner, the man she's been taught to call Papa.
10:06Her screaming and asking him for help during horrific experiments is a painful and familiar
10:10echo of ordinary child abuse.
10:12The most adult thing Brown has had to tackle, however, has just been the extreme stardom,
10:17which has opened her up to a barrage of internet trolling and tabloid criticism.
10:21Brown has had remarkable grace in handling it, however.
10:24The actor told Harper's Bazaar,
10:26"...internet trolls have never bothered me.
10:27I honestly actually feel really bad for them because who knows what they're going through."