Grant Hall Talks ‘Night & Day’ Differences of His ‘Grown-ish’ & ‘Trigger’ Characters
Q&A
In Season 5 of grown-ish, we see the black-ish spinoff continue after Zoe’s (Yara Shahidi) graduation from Cal U with Junior (Marcus Scribner) beginning his freshman year journey at the same university. Just as quickly as he starts to make friends, he learns its equally as easy to make enemies. After getting tapped into a prestigious secret society called The Crest, Junior learns that their reasons for selecting him weren’t without motive. At the initiation, he confronts and storms out on one of the members, Kyle (Grant Hall), whom he later learns has had a relationship with one of his good friends, Annika (Justine Skye).
The sixth and final season of Grown-ish premieres on Wednesday, June 28 on Freeform. Viewers will get to see Hall reprise his role as Kyle, one of Cal U’s most prominent member of high society. This summer, we can also see Hall move from television to film as he stars in the independent film, Trigger. He plays Daniel, a boy who is lead down a dark path after coming face face-to-face with his father’s murderer; the film premieres on Tubi this summer.
Below, we chat with Hall about grown-ish and his transition from television to film.
What initially drew you to acting?
Grant Hall: First of all, I didn’t really know it was like a job. I didn’t know it was something that you could do until I was in an orientation class my freshman year in college and we were going through those pamphlets where it’s this list of possible jobs for the future. So I was just going through one of those and everything I saw, I was like, “No, maybe, eh…probably not.” Then I got to acting, and it said that you appear in TV shows and movies. I was like, “That’s a thing? That’s a possible career path?” So that was the first time I realized that it was something that you could do as a job, and it just stuck with me. I had always been entertaining my entire life, but I never channeled it into acting until I had a teacher who told me he thought I would be good at it.
Freeform
What can you tell us about this new film? What excites you about it?
The best thing about it is, from my own perspective, it’s a character that people who follow my career have never seen me in. So, it’s totally different in that regard. We shot [it] in Detroit, which is very close to where I’m from, which is Toledo, Ohio. So that was very special to me. In general, the story is very heartfelt and it’s very deep, and I hope that it’ll connect with people.
Have you taken away any lessons from previous projects, like grown-ish, that have helped you take on this new role and in this kind of new process of film?
For sure, especially with grown-ish, because a lot of the people who work on this show have been in the industry for a long time, much longer than me. So to be able to work side by side with them, you’re just constantly learning. It’s a bunch of different things. It’s like how they talk to other cast and crew members. It’s how they go about working their lines, and how they prep for their scenes and just a bunch of little stuff. It’s not even the things that you think it is. So when you’re on set with those people who are vets in the game, you’re constantly pulling information from them, which is super valuable. So the grown-ish experience has been tremendous for me in a bunch of different ways.
Did you have any role models or were you learning from the experience in its entirety?
Both, definitely. I think Anthony Anderson is a person that I would really love to work alongside; he was in the grown-ish world, but also not in it. So his appearances were kind of scarce. But the times where he and the other people who have been in the industry for a super long time were there were very valuable. So there were a ton of people who I learned a lot from.
What has been the main takeaway from your grown-ish experience?
I learned a lot about how the best sitcom episodes are made because there’s just like an energy that everyone is in. It’s so different from doing genre. I learned that if you want to make a good sitcom, you just have to live in this upbeat energy for the entirety of the day, which I didn’t know beforehand.
So how would you compare going to a set for grown-ish to Trigger? Are there different ways that you prepare?
Yeah, definitely. On the contrary to grown-ish, Trigger was more subtle. It’s a dark kind of drama, so, I had to go much deeper with it. And I actually was staying at home while we were shooting it. I don’t know if I necessarily call myself method, but I do try to access characters’ feelings, emotions, and thoughts, and so I’d be eating breakfast and not speaking. I’m at home, so my grandma’s there and she’s asking me, “Are you OK? What’s going on?” And I’d be like, “No, no, no. I’m just trying to focus.” I’m used to preparing for movies by myself. So it was the first time that someone gave me a third party opinion where they told me that I get in a weird space when I’m acting. [Laughs] I didn’t think about it like that.
Audrey Slinger
Who would you have loved to see Kyle interact with more on grown-ish?
There’s really two fraternities involved in the show: the one that Kyle is in, which is the higher echelon, more aristocratic, and then there’s the fraternity that the majority is Black people. So I would’ve liked to see those two worlds collide more. I just think that it would’ve made for good episodic television. I think it would’ve been fun.
What do you connect to most, like when it comes to your grown-ish character and your character in Trigger? Was there anything specific that you were able to tie in that helped you relate more to that character?
They were definitely different. They were night and day different, but it is all the same when you’re building a character, you just gotta figure out motives, like why someone acts and feels the way that they do and find the empathy for that. For Kyle, he was more of an antagonist, so I really had to dig into why he feels the way that he does and find the justification behind that. And then, with my character Daniel in the film Trigger, finding the empathy was easier because the situations were harsher and it made more sense. But it was still just finding ways to understand both of them.
What has been your favorite scene to film on grown-ish?
I’m always a fan of the party scenes when there’s just a bunch of people who you don’t normally work with in the same room. So on grown-ish, it was Episode 7, Season 5, and we filmed a party scene for a week straight. It just felt like we were at a party for five days straight. That was awesome.
What was your favorite scene to film in Trigger?
I don’t even know if it’s gonna make the movie. It was during reshoots. We shot a scene and it was a group scene. [Laughs] It was stupid. It was me and a couple other people playing poker or something. It was just a good time because the rest of the movie was kind of dark. So, it was one of the very few scenes where it was like jokes because it was a flashback.
Grown-ish, Season 6A Premiere, Wednesday, June 28, 10/9c, Freeform
