![]() ![]() ![]() He had to reach out to contacts in the industry to find talented kids like 10-year-old Stacy Ferguson. For his first casting call, held at the Methodist church on Franklin and Highland, just northeast of the Sunset Strip, nobody showed up. “The idea was The Little Rascals meets MTV,” he says. Lynch, who had been producing music videos for artists like Hall & Oates, realized shortly after becoming a father that there was a gap in the TV market for kids who had outgrown Sesame Street and didn’t want to watch cartoons. Casting was challenging, because the vehicles for showcasing young talent just didn’t exist. “I’d say I created that pipeline and Disney perfected it,” says Tom Lynch, one of the cocreators of Kids Incorporated, which ran in syndication for a couple of seasons before getting picked up by the Disney Channel in 1986. After The All New Mickey Mouse Club went off the air in 1996, the Disney star-making machine carried on, producing shows like Hannah Montana ( Miley and Noah Cyrus), Shake It Up (Zendaya, Bella Thorne) and Camp Rock ( Demi Lovato and the Jonas Brothers). And, of course there are some big stars who are still around but have faded into obsolescence, like the one-name one-hit wonder Martika, an original Kids Incorporated cast member whose song “Toy Soldiers” hit number one on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1989 and was later sampled by Eminem. Brown is now the president of Sony’s TriStar Pictures. Sadly, there were also some promising careers that ended in tragedy, like the late Brittany Murphy, who guest-starred in a 1992 episode of Kids Incorporated in which she sweetly sang the Jackson 5’s “I’ll Be There” with a cast member named Nicole Brown, who can be said to represent the Executives. There are the Producers, like Josh Ackerman ( MMC, 1989–1994), who has a massive list of documentary and reality-TV credits. Slater on Saved by the Bell and host various television shows, and Nikki DeLoach, a Hallmark movie regular ( MMC, 1993). There are the Lifers, known for their longevity in the industry, like Jennifer Love Hewitt ( Kids Incorporated, 1989–1991), currently costarring in Fox’s first responder drama, 9-1-1, Eric Balfour ( Kids Incorporated, 1990–1991), who appears on the Paramount+ series The Offer, Mario Lopez ( Kids Incorporated, 1984–1986), who went on to play A.C. There are the Songwriters JC Chasez ( MMC, 1991–1994), a member of Timberlake’s 1990s boy band, ’NSync, Ricky Luna ( MMC, 1990–1994), and Rahsaan Patterson ( Kids Incorporated, 1984–1987). Then there are the Megastars, who have been topping the pop-music charts and tabloid newsstands for decades: Britney Spears, Justin Timberlake, and Christina Aguilera (all three appeared on the 19 seasons of MMC alongside Gosling), as well as Stacy Ferguson, aka Fergie ( Kids Incorporated, 1984–1989). First, there’s Prestige Actors, represented by Gosling ( MMC, 1993–1994) and Keri Russell ( MMC, 1991–1993), best known for her roles on Felicity and The Americans. These people are everywhere, in all categories of the entertainment universe. But looking back, it’s clear that they were instrumental in building what is now a professionalized pipeline for talented children to come of age as industry players. Both programs, which eventually ran back-to-back in an after-school time slot, may have seemed historically inconsequential in their day. And then Kids Incorporated, a more narratively driven preteen precursor to Kidz Bop and Glee (which gave a shout-out to Kids Incorporated on an early episode). MMC), a reboot of a popular 1950s variety show created by Walt Disney and originally broadcast on ABC. There was The All New Mickey Mouse Club (a.k.a. Gosling is part of that very first vintage of kids who broke into the industry on the then nascent Disney Channel, on one of two shows. On The Tonight Show, Jimmy Fallon said Gosling looked like “Draco Malfoy if he went to Barry’s Bootcamp,” while Conan O’Brien tweeted, “I’ll put my smooth mound up against his any day.” The image marked a full-circle moment for Gosling, who over the course of the past 30 years has evolved from kid star to teen heartthrob to box office kingpin to…Ken. His hair was Clorox blond and windswept, his facial expression (slight squint, half smile, pure camp) told us everything we needed to know: Gosling’s Ken is very much in on the joke. ![]() There’s Ryan Gosling, the Oscar-nominated star of Half Nelson and La La Land, in a Canadian tuxedo-light-wash denim paired with a frayed denim vest, opened to reveal a waxed, spray-tanned torso–leaning casually against a hot pink Colonial column. Warner Bros.’ live-action Barbie movie doesn’t hit theaters until next summer, but fans have been losing their minds ever since the studio dropped the first images of Ken. ![]()
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