Chatting With Joey Lawrence About Melissa & Joey! #ABCFamilyEvent

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Hey All!

I recently had the amazing opportunity of chatting with Joey Lawrence star of the hit ABC Family show Melissa and Joey. It has been a life long dream to meet and chat with him since I’ve been a fan of his since his days on Blossom and Brotherly Love which he did with his brothers. Essentially I’ve grown up watch Joey Lawrence. He was so nice to chat with about this show as I’m actually a big fan of this show.

He started off the interview by sharing that he’s working on some music with his brothers. We of course had to know what kind of music he was working on.

JOEY:

We have our tastes you know. I mean I think, I think Andy comes more from like um the Rock sorta’ Indy Rock world. I come more from like the Classic Pop world and Matt comes more from like the urban Sam Smith’s vibe.

So I’d say coming together it’s a combination of like you know Cold Play meets probably Sam Smith I’d say. It’s probably like kind of where it’s landing. We’re using a lot of live instrumentation. It’s got great hooks and stuff, but it’s definitely got more of a Rock vibe to it, but it’s really good stuff. We’re gonna’ give it a shot and see what people think.

We wanted to know if they were actually writing it together?

JOEY:

We’re writing it all yeah. And if they hate it we’ll know quickly you know in this day of social media. You suck! you know. That’s my favorite. Thank you for sharing. Uh yeah.

I’m sure you’re all wondering if the album is going to be released or exclusively just streamed on You Tube?

JOEY:

Yeah we’re going to release it. I think by the time we’re done we’re gonna’ probably have about 10 songs and it’ll be up on iTunes and stuff for sure. And we’re talking to Target as a possible place to release the album. Starbucks too. They have a full rank disc that you can actually buy you know old school, something tangible. Instead of the virtual world of downloads you know. Yeah so it will be a combo.

 Is that you singing a theme song?

JOEY:

I wrote that theme song.

I told him “Good Job”!

JOEY:

Thank you. I wrote the theme song. You know it’s gotta’ be sweet and short and cute.

How does being a parent influence your role on the show?

JOEY:

It doesn’t really. I mean you know Joe Longo is obviously found out that he was a parent, but he’s not really a parent you know. You know this show is definitely not for kids.  I mean it really is for teens and for young adults and for people that are our age you know in their middle to late 30’s. So it doesn’t really affect it too, too much. I mean honestly I keep my private life and my work life pretty separate. I’m not one of those um Actors that loves to bleed the two together. I don’t think that one goes with the other. That’s just me personally. You know  I don’t take my kids to premiers. And you know uh I don’t post pictures on Instagram of myself, my kids. It’s all about me, my work and my fans, and the relationship that I have with them you know. I want my kids to live normal lives and I don’t know why they have to kinda’ go hand-in-hand you know. I mean a lot of the idols that I look up to they, they don’t. So that’s the path that I sort of wanna’ emulate is you know like the George Clooneys and Bruce Willis’s and Harrison Fords. And these guys you know they still to this day you don’t hear a lot about their personal lives. I personally just feel that my private life is private and I share personal things, but not about my private life or my family ‘cause that would violate their privacy and I don’t wanna’ do that you know.

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Photo By ABC FAMILY/ Eric McCandless

 

Speaking of decisions, how did the decision to go with a kind of the “Who’s The Boss” kind of show when he was approached to do a series with Melissa Joan Hart?

JOEY:

You know it was the brain child of ABC Family. I guess they were kind of thinking that that idea might work for the show, but the show is not that any more. I mean it’s completely changed. But started of there you know. It was an interesting starting point you know. I think that the flip was that the guy taking care of the domestic responsibilities was actually over qualified and actually in some ways smarter and more grounded than the person he was working for.  Tony Danza was was a baseball player just thrown into it you know. This guy was over qualified and was taking a job out of desperation ‘cause he couldn’t work anywhere else. He guilted his boss into hiring him and then she was the one that had to kind of find her way.  She was a party girl who grew up partying and drinking and trying to get her life together at this time. He already was successful. Got his life together. It fell apart. So I think that was the twist on it.

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Joey directed a couple of episodes. What’s it like being one of the main actors and directing the show?

JOEY:

I have. It’s tough you know. I’ve directed like 7 or 8 now. I mean it’s always tough man. I’m directing this huge episode we got coming up in January. ABC Family’s doing this whole like Frozen integration night with all their original programming. Where there has to be some sort of Frozen theme. And uh our Writers in the way that they did the Christmas episode cracked this fantastic sort of Frozen you know thing that we do with our show and it’s big, it’s big. It’s like there’s a lot of special effects and stuff and that’s, believe it or not, that wasn’t originally set to be done this season. It was a last minute thing. So it’s this huge episode that we’ve had like 4 pre-preproduction meetings for this thing already. It’s a lot of stuff that we do here for that kind of stuff. So that starts in January.  I love to direct. I don’t love being in it and directing. I don’t really love that. I think it’s super tough to do that. It’s a lot of questions and a lot of responsibility. So it’s just tough to keep it all, all together.

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At the end of the interview he was kind enough to take a group photo with us on the set of Melissa and Joey!

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Photo By ABC FAMILY/ Eric McCandless

He also took a one on one photo with me which I will of course cherish as a full circle moment in time. It was so great to meet him!

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Stay Tuned for my Melissa Joan Hart interview tomorrow.

The new season of Melissa & Joey begins Wednesday January 14th at 8:00pm EST. We were lucky to get an advanced viewing of the season premier and we can’t wait to see the whole season!

For more info on this amazing show visit the Official ABC Family “Melissa & Joey” website.

 

All photos unless otherwise noted were taken by thequeenofswag. Please only use with permission.

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