Get ready to fall in love with the cast of Saturdays! The Disney+ series produced by Marsai Martin follows an all-girl skating crew called “We-Be-Girlz,” that includes Danielle Jalade as Paris Johnson, Daria Johns as Simone Samson and Peyton Basnight as Ari Stevens. On top of that, the show includes actors Golden Brooks as Deb Johnson, Omar Gooding as Cal Johnson, Jermaine Harris as London Johnson and Tim Johnson Jr. as Derek Troy.
J-14 sat down exclusively with the cast of Saturdays, where they spoke about their characters and what “skating camp” was like!
On Their ‘Saturdays’ Characters
The show’s title comes from the skating rink called “Saturdays” where “We-Be-Girlz” performs in Chicago, which serves as the setting of the series. Saturdays follows the girl crew as they attempt to win the same award that Paris’ parents won as a skating crew back in the day.
“So Paris, she is a big-hearted girl,” Danielle told J-14 exclusively of her character, who serves as the main character of Saturdays. “She has a lot of energy, a lot of ideas running through her, and she has this big love for roller skating and I feel like she just shares that connection with her friends and her family, especially being that Saturdays and skating is a part of her family legacy. So that’s just a little bit about her.”
Omar, who plays Paris’ dad, spoke about his role and Golden’s character (who plays his wife) and explained a little bit about that “skating legacy” that Danielle touched on.
“I play Cal Johnson, one half of the team of Cal n’ Deb,” he said of the name of his and Golden’s characters’ skating team and bakery business. “Cal n’ Deb own a home-based bakery business. ‘Saturdays’ is the local skating rink that Paris, our youngest daughter, has a skating crew called We-B-Girlz, and they compete all season long to become ‘Goldens,’ which — coincidentally — Cal n’ Deb used to be Goldens. We became Goldens back in the day. So, she’s striving to achieve what her parents have.”
On ‘Saturdays’ Skating Camp
When it comes to skating, some of the cast members had their work cut out for them. However, that wasn’t a problem for the main three girls of “We-B-Girlz”!
“I skated a little bit with my friends,” Danielle told J-14, “but not as much and as well, as Paris.”
Nevertheless, the Disney actress was able to “immerse herself” into “skating culture,” which led her to have a deeper connection to skating after learning moves she never “had the courage to try” before.
“It was just a lot of fun. And we worked hard, we worked a lot, but at the end we all learned a lot. And now we are like the best skaters ever,” she gushed.
Daria also knew how to skate before Saturdays, and even admitted she went to her local skating rink “almost every” Friday and Saturday before joining the skating show. She added that learning new tricks was “pretty cool.”
“I skated a little bit when I was like four and my dad took me to the roller rink,” Peyton revealed of her own skating experience. But actually learning how to do tricks and not fall over was definitely for the show.”
Jermaine, who plays Paris’ older brother London who works at Saturdays as a DJ with his best friend, Derek (Tim Johnson Jr.), said the cast called the skate training “skate camp” — and it was “super cool.” Plus, the young actor had a “full circle” moment that he exclusively told J-14 about while training!
“If you didn’t know, the creator of the show is Norman Vance Jr., and he made a film called Roll Bounce (2005) that a lot of us had grew up on watching,” he explained. “And I really initially wanted to learn how to skate because of that movie growing up. So it was a cool full circle moment going to skate camp. Cause we knew he did the same thing for Roll Bounce.“
While Jermaine already knew how to skate before Saturdays and proclaimed he can now go to the rinks “proudly,” one cast member had … not the same experience.
“Yeah. I wasn’t good,” Tim who plays London’s best friend, admitted to J-14.
“I would be very, very wobbly,” he explained. “But yeah, so I knew a little bit and we started skate training in L.A. and then in Chicago when we filmed out there. And like Jermaine was saying, skate camp and that was really fun. We got to learn some different type of tricks and different things and that kind of gave me confidence once I could do that.”
Scroll through the gallery below to meet the cast of Saturdays.
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