Cameron Dallas and Nash Grier are in The Outfield

By: Lynn Barker

In The Outfield, three best buds on their town baseball team The Owls have to face big choices as their high school days come to an end. Will they make baseball a career? Are they good enough? Will they take other paths in life that mean new towns and new girlfriends? Will they risk parental disapproval of their choices? The film is packed with sports action, romance, comedy and some pretty hefty drama.

Mega-popular Viners Cameron Dallas, 21 and Nash Grier, 17 tell Kidzworld how very short filmmaking online served as a launching pad for their new acting careers. Now a high school grad, Nash talks about the stress of studying on set during the filming of The Outfield and Cam reveals why he chose a baseball-themed film after his successful comedic turn in Expelled. Both guys discuss how they handle dating and more!

Kidzworld: Hi guys. Why do a sports team movie? You must have had a lot of choices.

• Cameron: I wanted to try something new. I’d previously done Expelled and that was more on the comedy side so I really wanted to challenge myself and see if I could actually do a drama. As far as a sports film, I think I just related to coming of age and I was in to sports in high school. I did wrestling for a year and that was fun so I thought it would be a cool project.
• Nash: This was perfect for me because I grew up playing sports and I was told by my acting coach and everyone I tried to work with the last two years that more serious and dramatic stuff was probably the way to go. So this script, with my demographic and everything that is going on now, it was a perfect first step.

Kidzworld: Also, you both played baseball in school, right? You looked like you knew what you were doing in the film.

• Nash: Yeah, I played baseball for six or seven years growing up and Cam played a little bit too.
• Cameron: For one year.
• Nash: We did a bunch of training and went to the batting cages. We just really immersed ourselves in the baseball side of this because we wanted to respect the game and make sure everything looked as good as possible for a baseball movie and I grew up watching it so I wanted it to be legit.

Kidzworld: So which are your fave baseball teams?

• Nash: My home state (North Carolina) didn’t have a baseball team so I like the Braves and Cameron’s is the Angels because he grew up in Chino, California.

The Outfield Trailer

 

Kidzworld: At every shoot, there is always someone who is making jokes or pulling pranks. Who was it on The Outfield and give me a sample of what they did.

• Nash: Joey Bragg (who plays outfield teammate Austin and was in “Liv and Maddie”) was probably one of the craziest on set. I can’t even say some of the stuff he said to me between scenes to throw me out of character. It was definitely interesting.
• Cameron: He would just completely rearrange your thought process and throw you for a weird loop.

Kidzworld: Nash what is your favorite look for yourself, the short or the long hair? We’ve seen both now and heard different opinions.

• Cameron: (jumping in) Short hair!!
• Nash: That was Cameron talking. I like to switch it up.
• Cameron: Short hair!
• Nash: But I want it to get a lot longer. I want to have really long hair then shave it all off for like cancer awareness or something like that.

Kidzworld: Ooookay. Nash, Cam has already been in a full length film so did he give you any advice? Or did you just want to do it on your own?

• Nash: It’s definitely not a do it on your own type thing. I had been on sets before and done a lot of camerawork so it was really just kind of getting into character and staying in character for a couple of months and making that transition and doing that for longer than I ever had before. I’d stayed in character for a couple of days but this was like months. It was a crazy thing and Cam definitely had some advice for that.

Kidzworld: Did you really wake Cameron up in his trailer during your set-life video for the film?

• Nash: Oh yeah. I definitely woke him up.
• Cameron: I was just knocked out, unconscious. I just ate and was having a food crash. I came out of the trailer and the sun was shining right in my eyes and I was groggy. I don’t know if you could tell but it was real.

Kidzworld: I could tell. You’ll have to get him back for that one. Nash, you’ve now finished high school on the internet but how exhausted were you acting all day and still doing high school work during this shoot?

• Nash: It was very exhausting because as soon as we started shooting it went from doing school work on my own time and finishing at my own pace to every five hours I shot, I had to do two and a half hours of school work. I had a teacher right there with me on set so I would literally go from shooting one of the most dramatic scenes in the movie and if I had ten minutes to spare they would take me to study because I legally had to finish.
• Sometimes, it was ridiculous but as soon as the movie ended because I want to do a bunch more movies, I just said “Yeah, just let me finish this up” so I finished high school online and now I don’t have to do school work on sets anymore. That was hell.

Kidzworld: You both have a ton of fans so how do you know a girl likes you for you, warts and all and not just because you are stars on the net? Do you have a test to find out?

• Cameron: I give them the mama test.  My mom has to meet them and approve. Just in general she has to approve.
• Nash: I’ve always been like that with girls too. But I never really go out with the intent to make people like me or be a certain way because I always end up doing the opposite. I just try to be myself and if you like me, that’s great. It’s like I’m always saying, if you love and support me and genuinely want the best for me, then I want the exact same thing for you. That’s what I’ve been doing with my fanbase too for like two years now and that connection is really strong.

Kidzworld: Is it hard going from being your own bosses, in charge of your stories and videos, to having to listen to the input of directors and producers on these full-length films?

• Cameron: I think that’s what we like about it. It’s the challenge. Previously when we were filming our own stuff and producing it, editing it and acting in it, now we are taking the director’s vision for the scene and the character and translating that on screen so that was one of the challenges we had that drew us to want to do this. We’re glad we got to do it.

Kidzworld: Nash, your character is a good artist. Are you? Was that you drawing in the film or was any of the art in the movie actually yours?

• Nash: I’m an artist. It was me. I drew some of them. I didn’t do all of them though. I have art supplies all over my house.
• Cameron: We just did a video actually and did a portrait of each other. We drew in front of a crowd and it came out spectacular. Everybody was in awe.
• Nash: But I can definitely relate to my character in the art world. I’ve always loved art.

Kidzworld: Have you ever had a teacher really encourage any of your talents like your character has in the film?

• Nash: I don’t know that it was necessarily a teacher but my friends and the internet did. I would get wisdom once I got to a certain point but I’d have to make that initial leap. Like starting this whole career on the internet, we were like the pioneers of that. I really became an entertainer on the internet and started a career that way. There were a lot of questions about that in the beginning and I wasn’t sure if that was a thing I wanted to do so I ended up approaching my family, my parents and making connections with the right people.

Check out The Outfield from Fullscreen Films on iTunes today!

Have Your Say

Are you a huge Cam or Nash fan? Do you want to make your own movies? How do you feel about stars being created on the internet? Jump in with a comment.