Snack Shack is an upcoming film released by New Republic Pictures from director Adam Rehmeier. The movie focuses on two teenage boys in 1991, played by Conor Sherry and Gabriel LaBelle, who just want to hang out and earn money. When the duo’s attempt at brewing their own beer lands them in trouble, they get a legitimate summer job by opening a Snack Shack at the local pool. The movie features Mika Abdalla as Brooke, the new girl in town who gets a job as a lifeguard, and Nick Robinson as the boy’s older friend and mentor figure who also works at the pool.

Snack Shack looks to capture the magic of summer and the freedom associated with the season. Abdalla and Robinson sat down to talk with MovieWeb about Snack Shack, revealing the inspirations behind their characters and their experiences in coming-of-age stories. They also revealed which of their cast members was the best at improv.

Mika Abdalla Has Many Connections to Her Characters

Native Texan Mika Abdalla has had a busy couple of years. She got her start as a child actress in Project Mc2, which ran on Netflix from 2015 to 2017. In 2022, she was featured in two major projects that made viewers take notice. First, in January 2022, was the humorous and overlooked comedy Sex Appeal. Two months later, she had a recurring role on the hit CW series The Flash, playing Tinya Wazzo, a reimagined version of the popular hero, Phantom Girl.

In Snack Shack, she plays Brooke, the new girl next door who becomes the crush of both A.J. (Sherry) and Moose (LaBelle). Many of the characters in the film are based on people from director Adam Rehmeier’s own childhood growing up, but Brooke is a little different. “Brooke is one of the few characters that’s not based on a real person or like one specific person. So it was a little different creating her,” Abdalla said regarding her character. Yet when it came to developing her, she drew close to home:

The way that I’ve always worked is I just find the pieces of myself in the character or like the piece of me that is the character and kind of go from there. It felt very, very low stress, very low, like not a lot was required of me, I felt like, to find Brooke.

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Having been the lead in Sex Appeal, which was another teenage coming-of-age story, Abdalla said there was a lot less pressure here to be able to take on a supporting role. “It was nice to have maybe more freedom to play around and try different things out because you’re not carrying the whole movie on your back.”

Snack Shack is going to be a movie that reminds viewers of their own summers, and everyone has a specific memory or activity they associate with the season. For Abdalla’s role as Brooke, whose job in the movie is as a lifeguard, her favorite summer activity certainly prepared her for the role:

“When I was little, it really was always about walking to the pool. My best friend lived a few houses down from me, and so we would just walk back and forth from each other’s homes, and we’d jump in her pool and then run over to mine and jump in my pool and then jump on the trampoline. That is what summer has always meant to me, and that is really what we did while we were shooting. We just walked across the street to the pool.”

Nick Robinson Steps Into the Mentor Role

It might be hard to believe, but it has been over a decade since Nick Robinson burst onto the scene with his role in the 2013 film Kings of Summer. That role was one of many in which Robinson was cast as a young man in a coming-of-age story, from being the older brother growing closer to his little brother in Jurassic World to the LGBTQ+ romantic comedy movie Love, Simon.

Now Robinson is playing the older mentor figure (even though he is still young). Robinson embraced the new role. “It was fun for me because I have been in coming-of-age films before but never as sort of the older brother figure, the adult. And so it was fun and nostalgic in its own way to revisit that. Sort of the same story, but just from a different perspective.”

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Robinson commented on how similar the making of Snack Shack was to Kings of Summer and how it feels fitting that he has now stepped up to the mentor role. Robinson said:

“It did remind me a lot of the Kings of Summer, honestly, which is a movie that I personally love so much. It was my first sort of experience making a feature film, and we shot it in a small town in the summer, and it felt really similar in a lot of ways. It was a good feeling. It sort of is nice to be brought back to that time and place and reminded of that feeling of coming of age, growing up.
“And then getting to play one of the older characters this time and being the character that had a little wisdom and had a little experience to share, also felt somewhat true to life. I don’t know if I had that much wisdom or experience to share, but just being a little bit older than the kids going through it was a fun perspective shift for me.”

Robinson’s character, Shane, is a former Gulf War veteran, one whom everyone in the town looks up to. He is cool, laid back, and gives the two lead boys encouragement when even their own family members don’t. Many of the characters are based on real-life people, and Robinson said filming on location in Nebraska, where director Adam Rehmeier grew up, really helped the whole process.

“Shane is based on a real character, very much so, and as the shooting progressed, I got to meet more of the people in town that remembered him and interacted with him, like his parents and his friends. He was this sort of larger-than-life figure,” explained Robinson, “and the intimidating part is it was big shoes to fill. It felt like he made a big impact on this town. So I got to know Shane or the person that he’s based on, as well as Adam’s experience and other people in the town too.”

Improv and the Kings (and Queens) of Summer
Snack Shack 3.5/5 Release Date March 15, 2024 Director Adam Rehmeier

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A film like Snack Shack, with all its summer funtime vibes, certainly can lead to some fun both on and off set. There is a carefree nature to the film; one would assume there was a lot of improv. Yet most of the actors stuck close to the script. “We all had the freedom to improv. Adam [Rehmeier] never stopped us from going off-script. But he does write everything with a certain rhythm. So I think a lot of the improv was really done by the parents, specifically, Gillian Vigman, who plays AJ’s mom, is like the Queen of Improv.” said Abdala. “I never really got to work with her directly, but the stories that I heard of her on set, just like riffing, were amazing.”

Gillian Vigman also starred alongside Nick Robinson in The Kings of Summer, and he said, “I can confirm that she’s a brilliant improv artist. So funny.”

Regarding summer and why the season is so appealing and makes for such a great setting for movies about youth, Robinson gave a great comment about the joy of summer. He said, “I think growing up, it’s like summer means you’re out of school. So, it means autonomy, and it has a different meaning when you’re younger than it does now, because there’s a certain level of freedom. You’re just like, ‘Wow, I can do whatever I want all day.’ So that feeling is one that I miss, even though I can do that now a lot of the time. It feels different when you’re a kid, when it just feels like the world is your oyster.”

Snack Shack opens in theaters on Mar. 15, 2024. You can watch the trailer below: