“People just like Brick because he follows the beat of his own drummer,” Atticus said. “He’s different, and he’s quirky, and people seem to think that’s adorable. Trust me because I know. It’s my life.”

Brick, right down to the whisper, is based on the son of Eileen Heisler, who created “The Middle” with DeAnn Heline. (The two women, whose credits include “Murphy Brown” and “How I Met Your Mother,” have been writing partners since meeting in college.) “The funniest things come from reality,” Ms. Heisler said.

…

“All I know,” Atticus said, “is that I feel extremely blessed to be on TV. It’s a hard job, but real life is harder. Truth be told, playgrounds can be war zones.”

Read the full story on LA Times

ABC’s The Middle is about to wrap up its season, and they will have acting icon Betty White in their season finale. The cast and creators of the show say they were thrilled to work with such a legend.

The Middle follows the Heck family as they struggle with life in the Midwest. Brick is the youngest, and then there is Sue the middle child played by Eden Sher and their sibling Axl played by Charlie McDermott. These crazy kids cause all types of problems and who better to solve them than their parents? Patricia Heaton plays supermom Frankie Heck and Neil Flynn plays her husband Mike Heck.

Patricia told On The Red Carpet that she loves working with the cast but pointed out Eden as the one to watch.

“I predict that she will be the first Emmy winner of our show,” said Patricia.

Source: On the red carpet

How has your relationship with The Middle’s child actors changed over the course of the show’s first season?
It’s so interesting when you start a show. You’re supposed to be playing a family and nobody knows each other. Even hugging each other is weird! They’ve been terrific since the beginning, but it’s great to have gotten to know them over the course of 20-some episodes. And I’ve seen everybody grow as actors as their characters expand, [and] as the writers find more for them to do. They’re just so up-to-the-challenge, and it’s really fun for actors to see where characters go and what their relationships are. Because when you start something, you don’t know anything about them other than that one script you have.

What can we expect from upcoming seasons?
I’m not sure if this is going to happen, but at my house this year, we had a foreign exchange student stay with us for ten days, and I kept going into work and talking about it and how awkward it was. [laughs] And we were joking about what a foreigner would think of the Heck family. So there’s a good chance that the Heck family might be hosting a foreign exchange student next year.

That would be really fun, especially in a Midwestern setting.
It’s funny because my producer was saying, “Wait a minute, [your foreign exchange student] is going to think every American kid has a mom on television and a swimming pool and this glamorous life. He’s going to go back with a completely skewed view of America!”

The hardest role we had to cast on “The Middle” was Sue, the daughter, and that had to do with the fact that “The Middle” was a pilot that had already been shot two years before with a different cast. It didn’t quite come together as ABC had wanted it to, but they really liked the story. It was a situation where the writers kept thinking about the girl they had from the first pilot, and it was hard for them to get her out of their heads. Eden Sher came in and pre-read for me. She was one of the very first girls we saw for the role. Brought her to producers and she went through that process, but at that time, I think the producers still had in their minds the performance from the previous actress, so they kind of dismissed everybody. I ended up bringing Eden back in again at the end. By that time, they had seen so many actresses for the part, they really started to look at her with new eyes. Eden was the only actress who came in and played that character with exuberance and zeal. Everybody else played her more goth, kind of down and mopey. Eden makes you remember and root for a character that nobody ever roots for.

Read the full story on Backstage

Radar Magazine has an interview with Eden. Here are some of the highlights:

“I wear jeans and t-shirt every day so I am in desperate need of some sort of a fashion identity,” Eden confesses to Viviana before they start browsing the expansive store filled with luxe threads from decades past, including colorful t-shirts, hippie print dresses, beaded and embellished red carpet dresses, vintage Chanel jewelry and acid washed jeans.

Watch the video here.

“But the show is not so much about the bad economy,” says Heaton. “It’s about the American attitude of resilience, and trying to find a new way to do things and put a positive spin on it.”

“It’s from the mom’s point of view, and it’s not with a bumbling dad who can never do anything right [compared to "Everybody Loves Raymond"],” she says. “It’s about trying to keep the marriage lively and raise the kids right, but not having enough time and energy to do any of those things.”

Read the full story on cincinnati.com/

Read more: NY Post

They’re not precocious. They’re not the brightest kids in class. They’re not smart alecks. And they’re sort of shockingly real, in a somewhat exaggerated sort of way.

“We really set out to … not make them cliches,” said executive producer DeAnn Heline. “And I honestly think part of being a parent is you would do anything for your children. You love them so much. Of course, you think they are perfect.

“Yet there’s always something where you are going, ‘Really? Did you have to do that?’ They also sometimes have quirks that can drive a parent crazy.”
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Having been Axl’s age just a couple of years ago, McDermott said he can relate to his character.

“I think we try to keep it as grounded and realistic in as humorous a way as possible,” said McDermott, 19. “There’s some stuff that is exaggerated, but like they said, there’s a lot of stuff that is taken from … people that you’ve met.”

Sher said she has no complaints about her character.

“She’s always happy. And even when she’s not happy, it’s always an extreme emotion with Sue, pretty much,” the 18-year-old said. “And to play anything to the extreme all the time … it’s awesome.”

Eleven-year-old Shaffer said he’s not even really acting.

“For me, playing Brick is actually playing me, only with a different family and a different name,” he said in total sincerity. “Because I love almost everything that Brick loves to do — read, talk to myself. So I like thinking of Brick as me, which he is.”

Californian Atticus Shaffer plays Brick, the younger son in the family comedy starring Northeast Ohio’s own Patricia Heaton. According to ABC, he began acting in 2006 and has appeared on The Class, My Name Is Earl, Days of Our Lives, Carpoolers, Out of Jimmy’s Head and Human Giant — as well as sharing a bus stop with Will Smith in Hancock and doing commercials. Other films include The Unborn and An American Carol. He is home-schooled, a Boy Scout and an avid Yu-Gi-Oh player. And he does all those things while dealing with osteogenesis imperfecta, also known as brittle bone disease; Shaffer has Type IV, which according to the OI Foundation’s Web site leaves people ”moderately affected.”