In the last decade, Disney has ascended to gain almost complete dominance on the teenybopper market, generating sensations like Hillary Duff, Lindsay Lohan, Miley Cyrus, and The Jonas Brothers. However, one of the many Disney stars that is still looking to go on to bigger and better things is Aly Michalka. She ascended to Disney teen pop stardom as Keely Teslow in the Disney Channel TV series Phil Of The Future. She has parlayed her Disney teenybopper fame into a variety of TV movies including the Disney Channel’s Now You See It… and Cow Belles as well as Super Sweet 16: The Movie. Now Michalka stars in her first theatrical film in the new teen comedy Bandslam. In the film, she plays Charlotte Banks, the lead singer and guitarist in a teen rock band. The now 20 year-old shared with us her first impressions of the character. “Well, I thought she’s kind of a version of me and that girl that you want to be your best friend because she’s so fun, like let’s fly by the seat of our pants and have a good time and forget about thinking and just live life the fullest,” Aly says, “She’s really passionate about what she does and she loves her music. She’s a good friend of Will, even though she ends up hurting him and being forgiven thankfully by him. She learns a lot through the movie and she has a great arc and I always look for that in characters.” “The character stays the same, that’s just boring, because us as people always change. I don’t think it’s natural for a character to stay the same through the whole film,” she continues, “We go through changes, we learn new things throughout the story, events happen and therefore, at the end, you’re somebody new, you’ve learned your lesson or you haven’t learned your lesson. And I think Charlotte does.” Aly goes on to note that what she particularly liked about Charlotte is not as easily caricatured and pigeonholed as the typical teen characters you find in movies. “It was good because it wasn’t shallow and with these kind of teen-based movies, it’s like you save the day and it’s all happy and there’s no sadness,” Michalka notes, “Charlotte deals with death, she deals with lying, she deals with hurt, she deals with a breakup with her boyfriend, and pretty much a breakup with Will and breaking up the band. So she goes through a lot and yeah, that’s a great point. She does go through these changes that could have been shallow if they weren’t written properly or directed properly and portrayed right.” Bandslam, which revolves around Charlotte and her friends being in a rock band, seemed a natural fit for the teen star, not only as step within the world of her familiar surroundings of TV teen fare, but of her familiar surroundings musically as one half of her band Aly & A.J., which she’s formed with sister. However, Michalka insists the musical surroundings of Bandslam wasn’t the only factor for doing the film. “I prefer to keep them separate,” Aly believes, “I fully believe in being able to combine the two since it’s a natural talent that I feel comfortable with, but at the same time, I want to be able to separate my music from my acting. I have always said that. But this script in itself was really different. I had a special personal connection with it and I said, hey, forget about it. “There’s all these preconceived ideas I had of this script, maybe not really being honest or maybe being kind of cheesy and all those went away once I read it,” she continues, “That’s when I was like, OK, this is the real deal, this is a script that I can’t overlook just because it has music in it and I want to separate the two, so this was special for me.” Being involved musically, both with the band in this movie and her own band Aly & A.J., we asked Aly to share with us her musical influences. “The bands that have influenced me growing up would have to be Heart, they were a huge influence on me musically,” she says, “The Police, The Beach Boys, Sting, Seal, they’re such amazing artists. I’ve never been able to see them in concert, but I’ve always wanted to see Sting in concert and Seal. They’re supposed to be amazing performers.” “Also, there’s U2,” Michalka continues, “And mainly gospel and country music, which is kind of a trip because I, myself, play rock music with my sister, so country and gospel is where I get the storytelling and the soul in my music and the rock music comes from acts like Heart and The Police and the Beach Boys.” She goes on to share with us how her band Aly & A.J. came to be. “Band name-wise, it’s funny,” Aly says, “Because when I was younger, with my sister, we always wanted to have a band with a name and it was like yeah, like Double Vision and we’re trying to think of something clever and there’s nothing cute and clever about Double Vision.” “At first, we tried to do pop music a little bit,” she adds, “And our tastes started to change and once we picked up the guitar and started writing, that’s really when we found out sound. We’re like OK, we’re leaning more towards the rock than the pop and we kind of figured out that we need to name ourselves and we just are like, ‘How about Aly & A.J.?’ And we’re like, those are our names, that’s us, and it was like, that’s good.” Aly also shared with us what she believes was her favorite scene in Bandslam. “You know, it was so funny,” she recalls, “We were laughing a couple of times during rehearsal and we were like what was really making Gaelan [Connell] laugh was me driving, because we did that whole driving scene down the hill. He’s like, ‘You’re going too fast! You’re going too fast!’ And there was like this huge canvas that we had to stop in front of. And I felt really cool, we took some driving lessons for the movie, because they had me peeling out on a lot of scenes, stopping quickly. And I had a stunt driver who did burnout stuff in this random parking lot. And I was like, I can smell the asphalt like burning! And the tires, you can smell the tires.” “Me and Gaelan had a really good time on that scene,” Michalka continues, “It was the last scene that was shot for the movie. It was the last day, which actually was an interesting choice. It just worked out scheduling-wise. I was like, this was so cute, that it worked out like this. We’ve got this great scene that’s actually a big turning point in the movie because it’s when Will’s like, well, I am not a little kid anymore and I’m going to put myself out there and try to let Sa5m know how I feel about her, so that was a big part of the movie.” She also spoke fondly of her experience getting to work with Lisa Kudrow, who co-stars in the film as Charlotte’s friend Will’s mother. “I love Lisa,” Aly says, “She’s like the sweetest person. We’re doing a movie actually right now together, another one, called Easy A. We don’t have any scenes together. She was in the hallway, she was like, hey, how was set? But we didn’t have any work together.” “She’s so great,” she adds, “She’s such a giving actor. I feel like that’s so important, someone who is there connected, looking at you, you can feel what they are thinking. She’s just great with comedy obviously. Being a comedian myself, I just love to make people laugh. It was a treat to be able to work with someone who’s so seasoned.” However, the biggest regret she experience doing the film was she was unable to meet rock legend David Bowie, who has a cameo role in the film. “You know what, I didn’t, it’s such a bummer, too,” Michalka says, “I think everybody else kind of met him, except me, because I went back to L.A. and they were filming in New York when they did all the Bowie stuff. And my scene wasn’t in New York, that was the time when I was chilling, so that’s when I went back to California.” “I was like, man, I was like, I could have flown to New York, but I was like, whatever, you know, I went and saw my family,” she adds, “Everybody said he was really cool and he seems like a really nice guy and I hope to see him at the premiere.” We asked Michalka if she herself ever wrote a fan letter to any of her rock idols. “I’ve never written a fan letter, no,” she answers, “I was never really that kid who had posters on my wall or anything. I was very much like listening to the CD all the time. I went to a lot of concerts, but I was like the kid who got the glow stick and the keychain. So I didn’t really do too well for the artist when it came to merch (merchandise). And instead, I’m like, ‘Buy our merch!’ No, yeah, I was never really like…I was always a fan and appreciated their music, but I think, with all due respect, instead of a fanatic way, which is interesting, being in my position now today, looking back, going, ‘Oh, that’s interesting.’” “Because I was respecting the artist in the way I would be respected,” Aly continues, “You have your space, like I appreciate your work, but you’re not God. I think we all are normal people and being in the public eye doesn’t make you anymore special than somebody who is doing another job. I think that we’re not changing the world like doctors and nurses and firefighters and our troops, those are the people, that should be praised and fully admired for sure.” Being a popular Disney teen idol, we touched with Aly the notion that she must get a lot of fan mail from kids. “Yeah, and it’s really cool,” Michalka exclaims, “I try to answer as much of it as I possibly could directly, towards my management. It’s so neat, especially getting mail from Japan and I’m like, oh my gosh, they have all the little stamps and everything. And they say, can you please send it back?” “And their English is a little like mixed around, but you can completely understand what they are saying,” she adds, “You can definitely tell how much time they put into making the letter like it looked neat and had little stickers in it. It’s just amazing what people do. It’s really flattering.” Michalka is as self-aware as any teen idol, that as she gets older, her fans get older. She gave us quite the surprising twist when we asked her whether she and her sister plans to make new Aly & A.J. records. “Just recently, we have made a big change and we are no longer Aly & A.J., which, to a lot of people, is kind of a big surprise., like, ‘Ugh! You’re known as Aly & A.J. and now you’re changing!’ Aly reveals, “And I think it’s a natural progression for us because we always wanted to have a band name from the start, except it would have been something lame like Double Vision, since we were 12 and I always wanted to be in a band and separate. Well, definitely, I’m Aly, she’s A.J. as people, but as a band, together, we’re kind of, you know, let’s think of something new, different, the music is really involved from what the first and second record was, so we wanted to be called 78violet, so that’s our new band name.” “This record will come out possibly late fall, sometime next year,” she adds, “We’re really taking our time just setting it up and really releasing it properly. We got to work with some amazing artists that I loved ever since I was young like Nancy Wilson from Heart, we got to write with her, and it was such an incredible experience. She’s like a mentor and an aunt, which is so crazy to think of because I was such a big fan. I was kind of nervous to write with her at first. A.J. and I were like, ‘Oh, my gosh! I’m freaked out! This is Nancy Wilson! She’s amazing!’ And we got to work with Rivers Cuomo from Weezer and I was a huge fan of Rivers. And he was a very interesting person, kind of shy and very creative, and we hit it off immediately and he’s a real genius. So it was fun. We had a blast.” We asked whether the name change was an attempt to shed her Disney teen idol image, as Aly & A.J. had received a surprise crossover hit in 2007 with the platinum single “Potential Breakup Song”. However, Aly insists that the name change was more than a mere marketing ploy. “I definitely feel like it’s a natural progression for us, really to be able to grow up,” she believes, “But in a way that’s graceful, not pushed or forced, like hey, we’re older, you know. I mean, I am 20 now and A.J.’s 18, which means our fans are now 17 and 18 and 19 and they are with us and we’ve been able to gain older fans as well.” “So I don’t definitely think it’s anything with pushing away, it’s us wanting to experiment and having a new journey to our music,” Michalka adds, “And especially since the music will speak for itself and it sounds like 78violet. It sounds like a revamped version of what Aly & A.J. used to be.”