On stage, on camera
Mountain Brook residents might see a familiar face on TV this fall. Anna Grace Barlow, a 2012 Mountain Brook High School graduate, has played roles on recent episodes of Scream on MTV, Young and Hungry, Faking It,The Middle, and I Didn’t Do It on Disney Channel.
Barlow and her family moved to Mountain Brook in 2006 from Jackson, Mississippi. While growing up here, she was highly involved in Into Red Mountain Theater Company, playing Margot in Legally Blonde after her senior year as well as roles in Hairspray, Big River and youth program showcases.
“Red Mountain Theatre influenced everything about the journey I’m on,” Barlow said. “It prepared me for the real world.”
After graduation, she studied musical theater for a year at Pace University in New York. The following summer, she went out to Los Angeles for a call back and to take headshots with the guidance of Lynne Marks, a teacher Red Mountain who now represented her.
“I fell in loved with it and stayed,” she said. “I was scared, but at the same time they say a musical theater degree is useless. It won’t get you an audition. I might go back to school one day, but it would be for nutrition or something.”
Barlow gave herself a year time limit of auditioning in LA, and within that time she landed several TV and film roles.
Still, she has continued in musical theater with Prom, a production she said has “Broadway dreams” for the 2016-17 season in New York City.
“I like that I can go back and forth and exercise both musical theater and film acting muscles,” she said. “The hours are very different. In TV you film one scene for a whole day, versus doing the whole thing together.”
Prom, directed and choreographed by Tony-winning director Casey Nicholaw, is set in Indiana. Barlow plays a closeted lesbian cheerleader who struggles with the relationship with her mother and wanting to come out to her.
“It’s super challenging,” Barlow said. “I feel like I am really upset every time I’m on stage. It’s been really fun to play though.”
Barlow’s favorite role so far was in a feature film, Summer Forever, which released in September. It follows three best friends the summer after high school and also features Disney stars Alyson Stoner and Ryan McCartan and YouTube star Megan Nicole.
“I’m the very funny, academic dork quirky one,” Barlow said. “My character is going to study to be a doctor, which is funny because both my parents are doctors. The character is basically me but a little dorkier.”
The film, rated PG, is currently available for download on iTunes and Amazon and is due to come to Netflix soon.
“It’s so good for young girls,” Barlow said. “The producers have daughters that age and wanted to create a movie that’s a good example for their daughters. All three of them are trying to find themselves, but I think it’s about girls staying together and sticking up for each other.
Filming Summer Forever was distinct of both theatre and TV, Barlow said.
“It was crazy,” she said. “I had gotten used to how quickly TV moves. You rehearse for two days sand then you tape for two days. But in a movie it’s shot over one or two months, and it was a good learning experience for me because you shoot half a scene a day. You are in the mindset of that one part for that entire day so it’s easier to get into that character and what you are doing. Spending all that time together we become close friends. It takes more time, but it’s so much fun to watch.”
This fall she also plays a different sort of recurring character on the new Fox show Scream Queens, which follows a series of murders that happen in a sorority house. She describes it as a “horror comedy,” “like Mean Girls meets Friday the 13th.”
Barlow’s “mean girl” character is part of flashback scenes about what happened 20 years ago in the sorority that influences the contemporary plot.
“Mean girls are so fun to play and [I] tend to go out for them since I’m blonde,” Barlow said, noting its contrast with her experience in Summer Forever. “The nice blonde girl is also an emerging type, and that’s the type I want to play.”
She also got to work alongside Jamie Lee Curtis, who plays the dean of the school.
For now, Barlow is back to auditioning.
“I’d love to do film or be on a sitcom like Friends,” she said. I want to do film really badly, but I’m not going to be picky about it. Living out here is my main dream, so I’m just enjoying it.”
You can follow Barrlow on Twitter at @therealagbarlow. Her profile clarifies, “Yes I go by both names,” as she has had to explain many times since moving away from the South. Barlow’s parents, Polly Anna and Mike, still live in Cherokee Bend with her sisters Abigail Ross, a MBHS junior, and Aliza Kate, a seventh grader. Her older sister, Arabella, is in nursing school.