Emily Osment Dishes on the "Young and Hungry" Summer Season Finale!
Will Gabi Cook Up A Scheme to Keep Josh from Marrying Caroline?
By: Susan J. Yeager
*Please note that Young and Hungry is recommended for our readers 16 and over!*
For the last nine weeks, Emily Osment has been making TV audiences laugh by playing the lovable, yet not-quite-pulled-together "Gabi" on the ABC Family series "Young and Hungry." The summer season finale, titled "Young & Thirty (and getting married!)" airs on August 27th at 8:00PM.
Emily gave us a quick call recently to chat about what we can expect on the finale, her biggest hobby and what other ABC Family talent she thinks is making all the right moves. Read on to find out more about Emily and "Young and Hungry."
"I'm so excited for this finale!" Emily gushes when asked what she is allowed to say about it. "It is definitely, one hundred percent, my absolute favorite episode that we shot, in this first season. It's a tearjerker! It's so, so good! It's so well-written! It leaves you hanging! It throws a wrench in things that you don't expect."
"Basically, it revolves around Josh's birthday and the wedding getting moved up so it happens on the same day and he's a little overwhelmed," she continues. "His staff is trying to help him settle with the fact that he is getting married a little sooner. The person who is not ready the most is probably Gabi because she realizes that she still has feelings for him. She doesn't really know where to go from there. She makes very important decisions in this episode that affects the longevity of what she may or may never have with Josh."
"We got a really good song for this one too!" she teases. "I remember the producers coming on set, being like, 'I think we're going to spend some money and buy this song to put it in the episode because it's one of our favorites and it would go so well!' I can't tell you what the song is because it would actually sort of ruin it. It's an 80's classic and it's awesome! They came down and we're like, 'We wanna use this song in the last piece of the finale' and I was like, 'Oh my God! Can you afford that? Let's do it!'"
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It's hard to believe that it's already time for the viewers to see the season finale because Emily vividly remembers hearing about the show for the first time. "It was smack in the middle of pilot season and pilot season can be very overwhelming because every network is sending out multiple scripts and multiple pilots and you're auditioning quite a lot," she recalls. "This one came in and I remember reading it while actually being at an audition for something else, just because I had no time. I was also in school and I was doing finals and was right in the middle of so much. I remember sitting down and being like, 'Okay, I know I'm auditioning for this other show,' I don't even know what the other show was. I sat in the middle of the waiting room and I was on my phone."
"I was sort of reading the script on my phone. Pilot scripts, well, sitcom scripts are only about 43 pages, so after I got 22 pages in and they called me to audition for this other thing, I was just like, 'Oh shoot.' So I went and did the audition and came back and I couldn't wait to finish it. It was so good! It was a character I wasn't seeing. Nobody was writing a character like this right now. We need original, relatable girls. We don't really see that on TV anymore. I think Gabi is such a fresh character and David Holden; this has been his dream to write this role for so long. She's great! I think she's so well-written and I have a really great time with it."
We asked if Emily was becoming more like "Gabi" or if "Gabi" was becoming more like her? "I think that with every role that you tackle, you definitely try to put as much of yourself into the character as possible. The last time I was given the opportunity to sort of develop a character over a period of time was on the Disney Channel with my character 'Lilly' on 'Hannah Montana.' I took her from being 13 to 18. You got to see her grow up. That was really cool. That was a character that definitely became more like me. "
"With Gabi, she's her own animal. This is somebody who's starting off as being my same age, well; she's about 22 or 23. You can stay the same age mentally, in your twenties, as long as you want! Some people age a lot differently in their twenties and for Gabi, we get to see, how fast is this girl gonna learn that she has a lot to learn? I'm really happy with the way they're writing it. She is maturing pretty fast. It helps that she's working under the wing of somebody who's so successful and really cares about her."
Speaking of people behind-the-scenes, new fans of the series might not know that Ashley Tisdale, another former Disney Channel star, serves as executive producer of "Young and Hungry." Does Emily have any plans to move to the other side of the camera one day? "I don't know if I would be producing. I write on my own time and I took a directing class in college. I've always wanted to direct, even just direct to help my acting. A lot of the times if you study multiple facets of whatever you're doing it can help you in one corner. So I feel like if I study directing it will help me in a certain way. Throughout the years, fortunately I've been doing this for a little bit, learning technically what's going on in a scene, sometimes help so much in my performance than anything else. Knowing that this where the scene is going to end, knowing that this is the angle that we're going for, knowing how close up we're going to be, and what I need to focus on. It really does help when you know technically how they're shooting something, that's more so for film, I guess, than a sit-com. I've always wanted to direct."
"Producing could be really fun. I don't know if I have the stamina for the stress that you get from producing because you are handling so much at once. With directing, it's more of an artistic stress. I feel like I would be more comfortable with that."
And if she had her pick, what show would she want to direct? "I would love to shadow the Cohen brothers on 'Fargo.' I know it's over but I enjoyed that show! Since 'Breaking Bad' I don't think I have looked forward to watching a show so much. It was so well-directed, it was so well-written. You just wanted to stand there, in the cold in British Columbia and watch how they shot it because it was brilliant."
When she isn't hard at work on Young and Hungry, you might find Emily unwinding by writing a song or playing music. We wondered if her day job inspired any new material? "Music has always been a really big hobby; it wasn't ever supposed to be a career. I got the opportunity to work with some professionals when I was about 15. That launched itself into writing for the radio, and really exploring, doing a tour. It was always supposed to be something that I came home at the end of the day and I worked on. My favorite part was touring! That's amazing! That's what I would love to do for the rest of my life."
"Coming home from 'Young and Hungry,' when you do something for like nine hours a day, you want to do something else for the rest of the day. That's what I usually do, I come home and write. I don't think they've crossed over because it's such a different world. It's definitely something I come home and distress with. "
The fate of "Young and Hungry" has not been decided yet so be sure to email, tweet, send a facebook message, or break out the old fashioned stamps and send a letter to ABC Family saying you would like to see more of Emily and the "Y&H" gang. Emily would love to do a series on this network for a few more years and looks to a recent ABC Family alum as inspiration. "I think the best example is Shailene Woodley. She was on that 'Secret Life' show, I don't even know how many seasons they did. She's doing it right. She's taken all the right career moves. She's doing really important films right now. She's doing stuff that's in her own maturity range and in her own age range and I think that's really smart. That, I don't think would have happened if she didn't have all of the experience that she had on a show for however many years that she did it and created a fan base. That's really important. A lot of the times, I'll lose out on an audition just because there is somebody else who will fill more seats than me. That's so important in filmmaking and who's going to be a part of your movie that's going to make it sell, more so than you?"
"It's cool to see that. I'm hoping to do as much film as possible in between seasons, after seasons, whatever we're doing. That's where I want to end up!"
Don't forget to watch Emily and the rest of the hilarious cast of Young and Hungry in the summer season finale on August 27th at 8:00PM. Then tweet ABC Family and tell them you want to see more! Sometimes we forget how nice it is to have Emily back on TV, making us laugh from week to week. Any project that features her comedic talents already has the recipe for success!
For more on "Young and Hungry" visit http://abcfamily.go.com/shows/young-hungry
Follow Emily on Twitter: http://Twitter.com/EmilyOsment