Christina Kirkman, who is known for her time on Nickelodeon’s ‘All That’, spoke out and revealed what it was like working alongside Amanda Bynes.
Amanda Bynes gained early fame as a cast member on the Nickelodeon sketch comedy show ‘All That’ and was part of the original cast when the show premiered in 1994.
Kirkman joined the cast of ‘All That’ in Season 9, replacing Jamie Lynn Spears as the youngest cast member of ‘All That’.
How Is It Working With Amanda Bynes?
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“I loved Amanda,” Kirkman said of working with the former child star. “Amanda was one of the nicest people I had ever met in my time. She was the person that I fangirled over because Amanda was a huge reason why I loved comedy and why I loved Nickelodeon and I loved ‘The Amanda Show’ and having her support was like the best.”
She then told Christy Carlson Romano that Bynes was someone who helped Kirkman in her childhood days and gave her parents a lot of advice about the Hollywood business.
“My parents talked a lot with her, and she gave us a lot of advice,” Kirkman said on the podcast. “She told my parents ‘If she loves this it will always be here for her. Let her go be a kid if she ends up wanting to go home and be a kid’.”
Amanda Bynes Is Christina Kirkman’s Idol
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When Romano asked Kirkman if she thinks Bynes was “projecting” to “save [you] from something she didn’t get” to experience, Kirkman said, “Exactly.”
“I remember her saying something like ‘Let her go to her prom’,” she continued, “and when you are raised in that, you miss out on all of that.”
Kirkman added that Bynes was almost like a mentor to her and was her “idol” so working with her was a dream come true.
The former ‘All That’ star said the Nickelodeon cast were all close regardless of what shows they acted on. “We all hung out on each other sets. I knew all the Nick kids,” she shared. “We did ‘On Ar Dares’ so a lot of the actors became “homies.”
Christina Kirkman Is ‘Grateful’ That She Left Nickelodeon
Instagram | Christina Kirkman
Kirkman left the network when ‘All That’ ended its run, which is something she is “very grateful” for. “The older I get, the more grateful I am that I made the decision to leave,” she told Romano. “Because I was a competitive gymnast at the time [and] all of a sudden, overnight, my life changed.”
“I picked up, I moved to California, I’m doing this show, I’m working full time, and when we had wrapped at season 10 and I was offered to work and to have my own show and to do other things, I remember looking at my mom and being like I want to go home.”
She went on to say that nothing happened at Nickelodeon to make her feel that way, it was just her dreams of becoming an Olympic gymnast that pushed her to stop acting and go back home to focus on her gymnastics.
“I was training with a coach in L.A., but it was so hard for me to do because I was working long hours. All of the things that I loved, I wasn’t able to do and I just missed being a normal kid,” she stated.
Christina Kirkman Talks Post-Acting Life
Instagram | Christina Kirkman
“It was horrible for many years. For many many years it was bad,” she said of going back home after ‘All That’ ended. “But I went home and I’m very grateful because I went to high school, I went to college, and then I made the decision myself to move back to L.A. to be an actor”
“And I felt I have friends now that have remained child actors through everything and to no fault of their own, they just lose the sense of reality,” she went on. “They’ve always been given everything to them like I’ve worked service jobs and I was able to go and live a normal life and then come back out.”
She said, “To make the decision as an adult on your own to go back into Hollywood you must really f-cking love it because who wants to do that?”
“You’re the hardest working unpaid intern. You ever know when you’re going to get your next paycheck,” she said of acting.
Renegotiating Contract At Nickelodeon
Instagram | Christina Kirkman
“I also got screwed over because they wanted to take advantage of me” because she was inexperienced and young.
But someone came over and told my parents that Nickelodeon was trying to pull one over on them and they needed to go back and renegotiate their contact, and they did.
At that point, you’re trying to exploit a child by not paying them what they’re worth,” Romano added.