Summary

Welcome to a new episode of Collider Ladies Night with Heart Eyes star Olivia Holt.

During her Ladies Night conversation with Collider’s Perri Nemiroff, Holt looks back on her Disney days, and explains how her experience making Kickin’ It and Cloak and Dagger continues to tee her up for success.

Holt also goes into detail on making Heart Eyes alongside Mason Gooding and director Josh Ruben.

We have a wealth of wonderfully talented actors who got their start making Disney shows and films. But, as often discussed on Collider Ladies Night, this is an industry with a habit of boxing artists in to the first they do well. One particularly popular box? The Disney box, and that’s the one I focused on with Heart Eyes star, Olivia Holt.
Holt’s star started to rise with not one, but two Disney shows and a Disney Channel Original Movie. First it was Disney XD’s Kickin’ It, then came the movie Girl vs. Monster, and after that it was the Disney Channel Original Series, I Didn’t Do It. All fantastic opportunities for a young actor getting a foothold in the industry, but all projects that would wind up labeling Holt as a particular kind of actor. When the time came to grow beyond Disney projects, Holt cared a good deal about that carrying label – until she didn’t. “I just couldn’t care anymore. I think I cared so deeply about people not wanting to view me as a Disney star, and now I just embrace it.”
Embracing it has served Holt exceptionally well since the end of I Didn’t Do It. While making the most of the invaluable lessons learned on those Disney sets, Holt has gone on to headline the short-lived but beloved Marvel series Cloak & Dagger. She also delivered big starring in the Hulu series Cruel Summer. She starred opposite Kiernan Shipka in Prime Video’s horror comedy Totally Killer, and now she leads yet another slasher movie that’s a total blast, Heart Eyes.
Holt plays Ally in the Josh Ruben-directed romantic comedy slasher film. After a setback at work, Ally agrees to have dinner with Jay (Mason Gooding), the hotshot designer her boss brought in to oversee her assignment. Trouble is, it’s Valentine’s Day and the Heart Eyes Killer is out for blood. When HEK suspects Ali and Jay are on a date, they become HEK’s next target.
With Heart Eyes now playing in theaters nationwide, Holt took the time to swing by the Collider Ladies Night studio to recap her journey to becoming an undeniable force in the genre space, beginning with the foundation she established for herself while working at Disney.
Olivia Holt Had “No Idea What [She] Was Doing” When She Started ‘Kickin’ It’

But she did have an A+ mentor in her corner.

As a young actor, Holt did gain some experience working on commercials, but when Kickin’ It, Disney XD’s karate comedy, came her way, she was essentially back to square one. “I had no idea what I was doing.” Holt continued:

“My family wasn’t a great help because they didn’t know either. We were all just kind of winging it. Luckily, we had each other, and we have such a great relationship that it always felt very supportive and nice to have them there with me. Obviously, they had to be there with me, I was a minor, but it was still really nice to have them there with me. But they didn’t know, and I didn’t really have a lot of friends. We didn’t have family there. There was no one really guiding us.”

Help came in the form of a Disney Channel veteran, a skilled comedic actor who also happened to be an ideal mentor and leader for his young Kickin’ It co-stars.

“I think when I started on Kickin’ It was when I really kind of grasped what I was doing. We had an actor in the show, his name is Jason Earles, and Jason Earles was previously on Hannah Montana, and he played Miley’s brother. He’s a sitcom veteran. He knows what he’s doing. He’s so brilliant and so funny. He really became my mentor for four years. He made it feel less new. He always made it exciting, but he just made it feel familiar in a way that I don’t even know how he did it. He felt like an older brother, and he just took all of us kids under his wings and just helped guide us, and it was the most fun time of my life.”

Olivia Holt Wanted to Break Out of the Disney Box, But She Also Needed to Embrace It

“I just couldn’t care anymore.”

Ultimately, the time came for Holt to graduate from Disney projects, and she’d forge forward with a wealth of skills because of them. She explained:

“I learned such an insane amount about Hollywood and television-making so quickly and so easily because I was so immersed in it. You’re on set every single day with the same crew, pretty much the same cast, and you fall into a rhythm and you fall into a routine. Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, you’re doing a table read, rehearsing all the scenes. They’re coming in with new notes, new dialogue, changing scenes left and right, and you have to be on it. And then, on Thursdays and Fridays, we film the episode, then we get the weekend off and start again the next week. And in between all of that, I’m doing schoolwork, which is a whole other beast we don’t even have to touch! It was the ability to catch on to that sort of rhythm, and it’s not an easy thing to do. You’re having to learn new lines almost every other hour, and it has to be engraved in your body because you don’t have all day to film, you know, seven different scenes. I would say that was probably the most rigorous thing that I could have ever done, and that definitely helped me with any other job that I have done since then.”

While those acting skills certainly did translate to other types of projects, getting those other projects was a different story.

“It’s very difficult because, especially when you do not only one, but two shows, and I did a Disney Channel Original Movie in between doing those shows, there is a rainbow above your head that says ‘Disney Star,’ and it’s really hard for people to break you out of that. Honestly, even for myself, I didn’t know who I was. There was so much of me that was engraved in that company and in those shows and in that part of my life that when I was getting auditions for other things, I had to kind of rewire my brain in a way, and learn how to be more grounded and to tone it back and to be a real human. Not that those characters weren’t, but there is a level of energy that comes with being on a sitcom. I guess to make a long story short, you gotta keep pushing the barriers and breaking down preconceived notions about yourself. And I think, ultimately, I just couldn’t care anymore. I think I cared so deeply about people not wanting to view me as a Disney star, and now I just embrace it. And it was like the most fun time of my life! I just try and push myself to choose roles and to choose projects that excite me and make me challenge myself.”

Olivia Holt Made a Major Career & Life Leap on ‘Clock & Dagger’

“I had to show up for myself because no one else was going to.”

Image via Hulu

Holt did just that on one of her next series, Marvel’s Cloak & Dagger. “I had come off both sitcoms on Disney, and I went to go do a Marvel show called Cloak and Dagger, and that show really challenged me in a lot of different ways.” She continued:

“It was the first job I had ever done without having a parent there. It was the first job I had done outside of LA. I drove myself, did a little road trip, and drove from Los Angeles down to New Orleans, and I lived there for five months to film the show. So there were a lot of firsts in that world, but also, it was my first time leading an episodic, and I had never done episodic before. I’d only done a sitcom, and when I led I Didn’t Do It, it wasn’t foreign territory to me. I had done a show prior to that, but this was new territory that I was stepping into, and there were multiple times when I had to show up for myself because no one else was going to. I didn’t have a mom there anymore. I didn’t have a set teacher there anymore. There was no one else except for me that could handle any of it. And there were multiple times when I was like, ‘I’m not comfortable with this. I won’t be doing that.’ I think I was like 18 or 19 at the time, so it was all just a very big shift for me. I loved that show so much, and I feel like everyone really respected me and took me seriously, even with how young I was, and I just really appreciated that. I feel like it elevated our show, because we all just felt so comfortable to really push ourselves. I think that that show was the first time that I ever felt that way.”

While Cloak and Dagger significantly helped Holt find her own voice and carve her own path on a set, she also continued to find phenomenal veteran artists to look up to who’d ultimately inform her own approach to the work. On Kickin’ It, it was Jason Earls, and on Cloak and Dagger it was director Gina Prince-Bythewood.

“The director of our pilot on Cloak and Dagger, her name is Gina Prince-Bythewood. I love that woman, and she really helped me understand the gravity of being a woman on set. I don’t even think she knows this. It’s not something I think that she probably sought out, but I watched the way that she carried herself as a woman on set, and the way she spoke to her crew, and the way she treated her actors, and the way she was just so collaborative, and it all came from a very passionate place. She loves filmmaking. And I think I’ve just always taken that with me on every job that I’ve done since then, and it’s taken the pressure off of everything, especially on a job like that, because there are so many people who, you know, have loved a character for so much on a page, and breathing life into it, you want to make people happy. You want them to be excited about something that they’ve loved for so long, but also, you want to love it too, and you want to feel proud of it. So I really owe a lot of that to Gina Prince-Bythewood for helping me really hone in on that, and just be excited about what I’m making, too.”

Olivia Holt Fell in Love With Her ‘Heart Eyes’ Character

And wants the opportunity to play her again …

7:59

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Holt would find that enthusiasm for the work on the set of Heart Eyes, a project that demanded a pitch perfect balance between the film’s horror and romantic comedy elements, a combination that Holt absolutely nails while playing a character she instantly loved.

“Ally’s arc through the whole story is so much fun. It’s so much fun to watch. She’s one of those characters, I’ve always said when I first read the script and I read the description of Ally, and also just sort of understood her trajectory through the whole journey, she is giving Sally, Meg Ryan’s character in When Harry Met Sally, so much, and I really leaned into that. I kind of like her neurotic energy, and I also really love that she’s so passionate and so opinionated. She also puts a lot of pressure on herself to be at a certain place in her life and in her career, and in her love life as well. She has this pressure umbrella over her all the time. And I really like that Jay comes in and offers her perspective, and that she doesn’t immediately take it yet. She still has her boundaries, which I like, but I just love the way that she chooses to open up, and she chooses to learn something new about herself. She’s also incredibly badass. She’s in [better] shape than I am! I mean, I don’t know how I did that much running in that movie, but I really do love that character, and I hope I get a chance to play her again.”

Given what a joy and blast Heart Eyes is to watch, my fingers are crossed mighty tight that Holt will get the opportunity to return to this role and world down the line.
Looking for even more on Holt’s experience making Heart Eyes, Cloak and Dagger, and more? Be sure to check out our full Collider Ladies Night interview in the video at the top of this article, or you can listen to the conversation in podcast form below.

Heart Eyes

Release Date

February 7, 2025

Director

Josh Ruben

Writers

Michael Kennedy, Phillip Murphy, Christopher Landon

Heart Eyes is now playing in theaters nationwide.
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