Lester stars in ‘Prom Dates,’ streaming on Hulu now.
The Big Picture
- Julia Lester’s experiences on
High School Musical: The Musical: The Series
helped her learn how to speak up and be a leader in the industry. - In
Prom Dates
, Julia Lester and Antonia Gentry star as two best friends navigate a last minute prom date crisis. - The movie is streaming now on Hulu.
High school is the part of life in which you learn about how human interactions are complex and that there are some responsibilities you just can’t hide away from. For Julia Lester, the “high school” years in which she learned valuable lessons happened in plain sight for all of us to see. In an interview during Collider’s screening of her new comedy movie Prom Dates, Lester talked about her four-year stint on High School Musical: The Musical: The Series and how they shaped her as a professional actor.
During the interview, Lester explained to Collider’s Perri Nemiroff how her psychological growth happened over the years while in High School Musical, as well as what she could take away from it and apply to other TV and film sets she’s been in. She stated:
“I feel like I experienced what technically would have been, like, my “college years” on ‘
High School Musical: The Musical: The Series
,’ so it was a lot of growth in the four years that I was on that show.
I learned how to take care of myself and speak up and be a leader and take care of those around me. That was such a beautiful collaborative family environment that coming on to this movie and seeing how American High is also like a collaborative family environment, I was able to take some of the things that I had learned from the show and carry it over to this movie.”
Julia Lester’s Lessons Mirrors Other Outspoken Actors
More often than not, you’ll see actors — especially female — talking about the importance of learning to speak up. Doing so always comes at a great personal cost for whoever does it, but a shift in the status quo can only happen when somebody does it. Hollywood has a pattern of systematically silencing the voices of those who don’t have the clout to put their foot down, so while Lester’s statement might seem simple, it stresses the importance of people in and outside the industry being seen, heard and taken care of.
In Prom Dates, Lester plays one half of a duo of best friends that decide to have the best senior prom ever. The problem is, they can’t score dates and they don’t have much time to find one — which means that they’ll enter a spiral of bad decisions that vary from cringe-y to downright embarrassing.
Prom Dates premieres is now available to stream. Check out the full interview below:
Prom Dates
- Run Time
- 1 hr 25 min
- Director
- Kim O Nguyen
- Release Date
- May 3, 2024
- Actors
- Julia Lester, Antonia Gentry, JT Neal, Jordan Buhat, Zión Moreno, Terry Hu, John Michael Higgins, Chelsea Handler
