Beck/Smith Hollywood

What’s it like to work with a puppet all day? “It’s insane!” says Disney kid Cole Jensen, who has the Disney XD show “Crash & Bernstein” debuting on Monday (10/8).

“But it’s not as hard as I thought. I was prepared for something hard, but the biggest thing is helping Tim stay out of the shot.” He’s referring to “Sesame Street” and “Muppets” performer Tim Lagasse, who performs the role of Crash, a puppet who comes to life after being put together in a “Build-A-Bestie” workshop by a boy suffering from too little male companionship in a house full of females. “They said to treat him like a normal human being and be completely natural. It’s really easy,” says Cole.

Adam Hicks, Doc Shaw

Just days away from completing production on his first season of the Disney Channel’s “Pair of Kings,” Adam Hicks admits he’s on a “countdown until it’s time to chill.”

The personable, red-haired actor admits coming into the show in its third season to replace Mitchel Musso, “I didn’t know what to expect, but everyone welcomed me with open arms, like a family.  And I didn’t know how the fans were going to respond, but the fans have been digging it.  It’s been great — keeping me busy.”

Former “Everybody Hates Chris” star Tyler James

Williams shows off an impressive range of capabilities in the Disney Channel Original movie “Let It Shine,” premiering tomorrow (6/15).  But he admits he ran into an unexpected challenge in the high-energy, Cyrano de Bergerac-inspired tale that’s set in the hip hop music realm.  “I lost my voice a few times.  You know, naturally my voice is pretty deep, so my rapping voice was deeper, so I had to push higher to get a younger sound out of the character,” he says.  “It’s tough to do.  At first you think, ‘Oh, this will be fine.’  But then you realize the toll it takes on your voice over time, especially recording essentially a whole album in two weeks.”

The “Let It Shine” soundtrack features Williams on eight of the tracks, a blend of hip hop, gospel and R&B.

“I’d been familiar with the Cyrano story before.  I’d kind of played around with it in my acting class, so I thought this could be interesting,” Williams explains.  “When I went in and I read for it, then I really became attached to it.  I really started to feel a part of the project from, I would say, the screen test, when we started mixing and matching the people together.  This is the first time I’ve ever had a mix-and-match when I wasn’t sure who was going to be cast.”

Coco Jones (Disney’s “Next Big Thing”) plays Roxanne and Trevor Jackson costars.  “I thought it wouldn’t work because of how tall they were, with my average height,” the 5-foot-8 Williams admits.  But he’s happy with the result.  “I’m really proud of how it turned out.  I feel like a proud parent and a kid who’s just graduated from college at once.”

Life is a whirl — and then some — for Disney Channel stars Bella Thorne and Zendaya, who are ages 13 and 15, respectively.   Their “Shake it Up” series is No. 1 with kids and tweens.  There are clothing and shoe lines fashioned after their CeCe and Rocky characters on the dance-themed comedy.  CeCe and Rocky dolls are coming out.   The two have a Disney Channel movie called” Frienemies” on the way.   Zendaya also appears on tonight’s (9/23) “PrankStars” — convincing the unsuspecting subject of her practical joke to help out at her family’s pirate-themed restaurant.  Aaargh!

Bella Thorne, Zendaya & friends Zendaya appears on 'PrankStars' tonight

“I’m still shocked about it.  To go into Target and see these clothes — it amazes me every day,” Bella tells us.

And Zendaya says that seeing her doll for the first time “was a surreal feeling.  I felt a whole bunch of emotions.  I felt excitement, and I also had a little tear in my eye.  I had to kind of absorb the moment and realize what is happening.  Little girls are going to playing with me.  I just remember that feeling, when I was  playing with dolls.”

Bella says that interacting with their young fans is her favorite part of the job.  “When the little kids come up to you, it’s so cute.  We were at Disneyland, and this one little girl was crying, because she didn’t know we were real,” recounts the young talent.  “That’s why we do what we do — to make them laugh and make them smile.  They come to the show and they’re so excited.  It warms our hearts to hear them laughing in the audience.”

 Between learning new dances and lines every day, doing promotional chores and keeping up with their schooling, there’s not much down time for the girls.  Have they learned to pace themselves?

 ”Not really,” admits Bella.  “But it’s not like I’m being held away from my friends and stuff.  They come to the set, and we eat dinner after the show.”

  As far as vacation time, “That’s usually the time we travel or do promo stuff,” Zendaya says.  “But either way, I’m with Bella and we’re having fun.  As long as it’s fun, it’s okay.” 

Still, she says, “I think the most challenging aspect of doing this is being able to balance school and work, and still be a regular girl.  That’s the most important thing, and the hardest thing to deal with.”  In the interests of regular girl time, “I have my fiends visit all the time.  They always come here, because it’s really hard for me to visit them.  We’ll do simple things like go to the movies.  I just had my birthday party and it was the best experience.,” she adds.  “I had friends from home and friends from out here that I’ve met, and had a big, fun celebration at my auntie’s house on the beach.  We had henna tattoos, and glitter tattoos and played volleyball.”

Colin Ford

Colin Ford, 14, reports that Matt Damon put him at ease right away after the juvenile actor was cast as Damon’s son in Cameron Crowe’s forthcoming “We Bought a Zoo.”

“He was really down to earth, one of the nicest, greatest actors I’ve ever met.  We got to do some general scenes together and got to know each other, before we did any scenes where we were arguing or really close or anything like that,” notes Ford, who also worked with Elle Fanning and Thomas Hayden Church in “We Bought a Zoo.”  The story of a father who moves his young family to the countryside to renovate and re-open a struggling zoo also stars Scarlett Johansson.

Ford’s voice is already quite recognizable to the Disney Channel’s preschool set.  He plays the title character in the daily animated adventure show, “Jake and the Never Land Pirates” — which is the highest-rated preschool show on the channel, ever.

However, the affable teen actor says, “I go to a normal school, 8 a.m. to 3 p.m.  Sometimes I’ll get out of school 20, 30 minutes early to record.  There are friends of mine who don’t really even know I do the show.”  He has been caught, “when a little brother or sister kind of recognize my voice — ‘Hey, are you kind of like the main guy?’ They laugh.  I didn’t really keep it quiet, but some people know and some don’t.”

Debby Ryan

Debby Ryan seems to be taking her designation as the Disney Channel’s newest It Girl in stride.  With her stint as a supporting player on “The Suite Life on Deck” wrapping up as the series airs its grand finale graduation episode tonight (5/6), she’s deep into preparing for her own “Jessie” series to begin production next month.  The question has been raised, can she be the next Miley Cyrus?

“No one will be the next Miley Cyrus,” responds the highly self-possessed actress, who turns 18 May 13.  “She’s had such an iconic journey, and she’s still on it.  Selena (Gomez) has the same thing, and Vanessa Hudgens.  I always say I don’t want to be the next anyone.  I want to be the first Debby Ryan.”

Not that she doesn’t admire predecessors in the Disney talent stable.  “It’s a small circle.  Of course I know these girls,” she says, referring to Miley, Selena, Vanessa, Ashley Tisdale, Chelsea Kane and others.  “Young Hollywood is a small circle, a small town.  You run into people like Abigain Breslin or Dakota Fanning and say hello.  It’s like being a theater kid in school, you have the same friends and tons in common.  I’ve gotten some great advice from these people.”

Such as?  “Someone said — and I’m paraphrasing it a little to make it my own — people are going to love you and people are going to hate you, and you can’t find your identity in it either way.”  She also, she says, gives advice to younger talents on the Disney Channel ladder, like Bella Thorne of “Shake It Up,” and her soon-to-be “Jessie” cast mates.

“Questions will come up and I might say, ‘I’ll meet you at Starbuck’s and we’ll chat it up,’ so it goes around.”

Debby has been spending “a lot of time in the writers room” as well as in casting sessions for “Jessie” — on which she’ll play the nanny to a multicultural brood of a wealthy and prominent New York City couple.  “Disney has thanked me for coming in to read with the kids, but of course I want to read with them     and see how we interact,” she says.  “Once we get the cast all nailed down, I want to take them all to Disneyland, which is going to be awesome.”    Of course.

Adam Hicks, Blake Michael, Bridgit Mendler, Naomi Scott, Hayley Kiyoko Disney Channel photo

Will tonight’s Disney Channel Original Movie, “Lemonade Mouth” establish the next generation of Disney Channel stars?  That is the hope of producer Debra Martin Chase, and you’d better believe, it’s the network’s hope as well — especially now that the stars of the “High School Musical” franchise, “Camp Rock” and “Hannah Montana” have all grown up and moved on.

If Chase’s track record with fresh talent is any indication, the new gang will be well worth following.  Her “Princess Diaries” movies gave us Anne Hathaway and Chris Pine.  “Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants” introduced Blake Lively and gave America Ferrera a teen following.  Lucy Hale,   so hot in “Pretty Little Liars,” got an early career boost in “Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2,” as did “Grey’s Anatomy’s” Jesse Williams.

What does Chase hunt for?  “I hate to sound like a cliche, but you really do look for that ‘It’ — that very special quality that makes someone stand out.  Sometimes I call it, people have light in their eyes, something that shines from within, coupled with intelligence,” she says. “They need to be attractive, but an interesting attractiveness.  They need to have some soul and depth to them, you know?  That’s how it happens, they just come in and you say, ‘Okay. that person is special.’”

As Chase points out, both Bridgit Mendler (“Good Luck Charlie”) and Adam Hicks (“Zeke and Luther”) are already Disney Channel stars.  Other members of the title high school band of “Lemonade Mouth” are starting to take off as well.  Hayley Kiyoko has opened for Justin Bieber.  And, “Subsequent to the filming of our movie, Naomi Scott was cast by Steven Spielberg as one of the leads in his new Fox series, ‘Terra Nova,’” points out Chase.  “She has already shot the pilot in Australia.”

Heartthrob-to-be Blake Michael “is really the Cinderfella of this whole thing.  He sent in a self-made tape with his mother reading lines with him in Atlanta.  The tape just popped.  We knew we had to have him,” Chase recalls.

Casting was a three-month process that made good use of new technology.  Rather than going city to city looking at candidates for the roles, Chase and her team viewed video posted to their website.  British actress Scott “auditioned via Skype.  That’s the first time we’ve done that.”

As for whether there will be a “Lemonade Mouth 2″ — Mark Peter Hughes, who wrote the popular novel, is writing a sequel now — Chase smiles.  “It all depends on how we do Friday night.”

TRAFFIC ADVISORY:  L.A residents who want to catch a glimpse of a classic style pop superstar mob scene can drive over to Sunset Blvd.’s BookSoup book store in West Hollywood tomorrow (4/15) around three p.m..  (Others, take note and avoid.)  Janet Jackson will be there to sign a few hundred copies of her No. 1 best-selling book, “True You,” and it doesn’t take much imagination to predict what the scene will be like.  Miss Janet will have to tear herself away to perform at Universal City’s Gibson Amphitheatre in the evening.  All three of her concerts there sold out in ten minutes.

THE VIDEOLAND VIEW:  Tim Allen’s pilot is sounding like a better and better prospect now that Nancy Travis is aboard as Tim’s wife, and Hector Elizando’s in the mix, playing Tim’s boss at a demolition company — at least for awhile.  (The character steps down, moving Tim’s character up.)  Elizondo automatically confers quality upon anything in which he appears, as his buddy Garry Marshall would be first to agree.  Garry insists on using Hector in all his movies as his good luck charm.

Sounds like HBO’s planned television treatment of Femme Fatale magazine will be sexy stuff.  The producers (who have “NCIS” and “Castle” in their collective credits) put out a casing call for a “hot ethnic woman in her twenties, a hot ethnic woman in her thirties, a hot caucasian woman in her twenties” and four good-looking guys in their twenties and thirties.  Nudity required for everybody.

Hayley Kiyoko Disney Channel photo

Serving as the opening act for Justin Bieber — the female opening act, mind you — might seem to be one of the most thankless jobs on the planet right now when you think of all those thousands of tween girls breathlessly awaiting their teen idol crush.  But Hayley Kiyoko, who’ll be seen starring in the Disney Channel Original Movie “Lemonade Mouth” come April 15,  insists that she and her bandmates in the girl pop band The Stunners had a great time.
 ”A lot of times when you’re an opening act, you play to 20 per cent full arenas,” points out the guitarist and drummer, who’s been seen on “Wizards of Waverly Place.  But with the Beib, she says, “We’d see girls lined up outside the venues at 2 o’clock for a seven o’clock show.  By the time the lights went up and we came out, they were so anxious to see anything they were happy.”

 Touring with Bieber was truly a baptism by fire.  As Hayley notes, she and her band “went from playing for 20 people at City Walk to playing for crowds of 17,000 — no warm up, nothing in between.”  Fortunately, “Everyone in Justin Bieber’s camp is wonderful,” she says.  “He’s extremely talented and a really nice kid.”

Kiyoko, who’s been accepted into the Clive Davis School of Recorded Music at New York University, just loves to perform.  Going out in front of arena crowds, she says, “The best analogy I can come up with is, it’s like that feeling when you’re on a roller coaster, at the very top, when it slows down, and you know you’re about to go down, but you don’t know when.  I was like, ‘This is it.  This is what I love to do.’”

And as if doing 20 concerts with Bieber wasn’t enough of a rush, she was also getting ready to film the “Lemonade Mouth” movie about a group of less-than-popular high schoolers comes together to form a powerhouse band.  “The great thing was that, in-between the travel days, I would fly to New Mexico for preproduction on ‘Lemonade Mouth.’  It was pretty rock star.”

Adam Irigoyen, Zendaya Coleman, Cat Deeley, Bella Thorne Disney Channel photo by Craig Sjodin

Cat Deeley admits she was afraid of taking on the role of a vice
principal in this Sunday’s (1/9) episode of the Disney Channel’s “Shake It Up”
series.  However, she notes, “I think when you feel scared of something you want to do, you should definitely do it.  Throw some obstacles in your way when you feel too comfortable.”

The bubbly “So You Think You Can Dance” hostess says “I hadn’t done any comedy in awhile, though it’s something I remember fondly.”  Back in her earlier years of working on TV in the U.K., she performed “topical skits of things that had happened during the week, pastiches of comedy shows.”

The “Shake It Up” part, she says, demanded physical comedy — and
contained an even bigger challenge.  “I had to play strict and stern.  It’s my first character like that, actually — very different for me.  I found it difficult to be stern with these kids.  They’re so much fun and so talented, they’ll absolutely blow you away, every single one of them.  I don’t know how they handle all the demands of the show and also deal with school and agents and everything else they have to do.  They’re so good I really did feel a little intimidated,” she says with a laugh.

The storyline has teenage dancer Rocky Blue (Zendaya Coleman) getting the idea that she’ll get more out of life if she hangs up her goodie two shoes image and breaks a few rules.  “She’s sick and tired of being the good girl.  She bubble wraps my entire office, the phone, everything.  When I came in and tripped and fell, I really, really did it,” adds Cat.  “I face-landed.  I said, ‘Be sure you use that one.’”

So, will we be seeing more comedy from the willowy Brit?  She’s certainly open to it, she says — including potential return trips to the “Shake It
Up” set.  “Doing this show was a combination of the right place, the right time and the right people involved.”

Bella Thorne Disney Channel photo

Bella Thorne is making a splash on the Disney Channel’s new “Shake It Up!” – in fact, the network is banking on the fetching 13-year-old becoming a breakout star as Miley Cyrus moves on into adulthood.  Thorne tells us that, along with the high jinks of the comedy, in which she plays a teen backup dancer on a fictional TV program called and “Shake It Up Chicago,” there’ll be a few serious moments ahead on the show.  “We deal with teen issues like having friends, and dealing with learning disabilities.”  Her character, CeCe Jones, she says, “is dyslexic, like me.

“She just, like, tries her best to stay in school, to stay on the show.  Sometimes it’s really challenging.  Sometimes she handles it kind of rough.”

How does Bella handle it?  Does she have someone read lines with her?

“I do that with my brother sometimes.  I do it with my mother.  She will say a line, read a word, and say ‘That’s how it’s supposed to be pronounced.’”

Bella is glad that her series alter ego is dealing successfully – albeit not always easily — with her learning challenge.  She says, “I would love to reach out to kids with dyslexia, or actually any learning disability.  When I found out that CeCe has it, I thought, ‘That’s a great way to show that it’s normal.’  Kids can see how she works through it.  Her mom is encouraging her, helping her out with it.  She has to balance her school with work and friends and do good in school in order to stay on ‘Shake It Up Chicago.’”  She adds, “These characters on the show, they’re not perfect, they’re real-life kids.  They get in trouble.  They get grounded.”

The actress tells us that the character’s condition was never specifically spelled out up front.  The casting breakdown said, “’CeCe struggles for C’s in school.’  It is a big part of her life like it is mine.  I have to deal with it every day.  School work is not really my thing.  It’s hard, but you just get through it.”