Not long after its December 7, 2023 premiere, the YA drama series My Life With the Walter Boys joined Netflix’s exclusive billion-minute club alongside the likes of Squid Game and You. The show—which is based on the 2014 novel by Ali Novak about an orphaned teen who moves from New York City to rural Colorado to live with her godmother and her 10 children, the titular “Walter boys”—was an instant hit for the streamer. With all eyes on the messy love triangle at its center, the show racked up 20 million viewers, a spot in the top 10 in 88 countries, and over one billion views on TikTok. But it wasn’t just the show that saw near overnight success. Its cast of promising young newcomers, including Nikki Rodriguez, Noah LaLonde, and Ashby Gentry, quickly took over.
“They’re really staggering statistics, which are hard to conceptualize when you stack a bunch of them,” LaLonde says of The Walter Boys‘ meteoric debut. With only a few acting credits to his name at the time, it was a surreal experience for the 27-year-old Michigan native to watch the numbers, not to mention his social media following, rapidly tick up. “The whole time, you’re thinking two things: When am I going to hear about when it comes out, and when am I going to know if I’m going to need to get another job?” he says. Lucky for him, he didn’t have to wait long to get an answer to the second question because, 12 days after its premiere, the show was promptly handed a season 2 renewal.
Here we are, a year and half later and a little over a month out from the show’s anticipated return on August 28. It’s a period of calm before what will surely be a frenetic storm of media days for the cast, rabid fan discourse online, and more staggering statistics. It’s enough to make any actor buzz with excitement and nerves, but LaLonde is cool and collected when we meet. It’s his second go-around, after all. Plus, he knows he doesn’t have to go into it alone.
A special bond was formed quickly between LaLonde and his costars Rodriguez and Gentry during the filming of season 1 and the rapid fame whirlwind that followed. We’ve seen this bond between young breakout casts of TV shows before. When things start really getting crazy, it’s helpful to have others who are going through the exact same thing. Growing up with tabloid gossip, LaLonde knows how easy it is for rumors to start flying about cast dynamics and feuds, but he assures me the trio is as tight as ever. “I have text messages right now from our group chat,” he says. “I referenced this a lot during season 1, but the experience that was so personal in meeting these people and getting to be on this journey with them was enough. I love them dearly. They’re some of my greatest friends in the world.”
As for Cole Walter, the handsome yet troubled, brooding older brother who stole our hearts, LaLonde was pleasantly surprised to see the positive reception to the teen following season 1. “He has a tendency to self-sabotage, and the self-sabotage isn’t really always contained,” he says of Cole’s actions. “Going to the awards dinner and getting drunk and ruining your mother’s night, saying some really hurtful things to Jackie and fighting, it wouldn’t have been that crazy of a turn of events for me to pop on Instagram and see ‘Cole’s an asshole!'” While LaLonde says those comments do exist, he also says they are outweighed by those who have compassion for what Cole is going through. He adds, “I’m ultimately happy that people saw through to his heart because I think his heart is in the right place, and I think he’s a good person deep down.”
Team Cole fans will be happy to know that season 2 is one of growth for the character. Picking up after the fallout of “the big barn kiss” between Jackie and Cole that left us wanting more, the season opens with Jackie having fled to New York City without explanation and Cole at home trying to pick up the pieces of a tumultuous junior year.
“We find Cole in a different version than we’ve really seen him,” LaLonde tells us of season 2. “I think he gained a lot of perspective from what happened. He had a lot of time to stew over what went on at the end of season 1. … When [Jackie] comes back, he wants to not feel like he is the same self-sabotaging person that ruined a lot of moments. If he had just swallowed his pride and been upfront about how he felt, things maybe could have been different.”
Because of the shift in how Cole is feeling this season and the perception of him, LaLonde says that he’s almost been replaced in a way. We now see Alex having his glow-up moment, and for the first time, Cole is taking a back seat. Digging into that side of Cole’s psyche, which LaLonde says he inhabits for a lot of season 2, was a fun new challenge for him. “I think an exciting part is, as an actor, the slipups,” he says. “When you slip back into your former self and get in that kind of blowup, [it] is a lot of fun. Every time you start to evolve and then slip, you grow, and you broaden the perspective and the dynamic of who we’re watching.”
LaLonde has long felt a deep connection to his on-screen counterpart. It was easy to find his way to Cole in the beginning because the two have a shared experience of having to walk away from a sport that was a huge part of their identities at one time and then ultimately having to redefine themselves. For Cole, it was an injury that ended his dreams of a football career; for LaLonde, it was retiring from competitive hockey to pursue a career in acting. That mirroring of each other’s journeys expands even further this season as Cole figures out his reentry to the game of football. “This is really this kind of heady, synchronistic thing between us,” LaLonde says, adding that he and some of the cast attended a Calgary Flames hockey game while filming in Calgary, which presented a similar question—how does he come back to this thing he used to be inseparable from?
LaLonde wasn’t sure how he would enjoy being at a game in the context of his former relationship to it as a player. He’s since had a few opportunities to work with the National Hockey League via charity games and appearances, things he could have only dreamed of as a kid, so he could relate to Cole’s journey of reacclimating himself to football.
“I always liken it to [how] Cole feels like an iteration of a younger version of me,” LaLonde says. “Some of his path is very similar, so I get to reflect on my own life. … Why did I do some of those things that I did? How would I change them? That whole reflection process is really enlightening and getting into the mind of Cole Walter.”
With a third season of The Walter Boys already in the works, we can’t help but look ahead to what’s next for the teen. LaLonde knows it’s easy for him to say that he hopes Cole gets the girl in the end, but really, what he wants for Cole is for him to continue growing and learning from his actions and to know that losing the thing you love isn’t the only thing about you. “It’s just continuously trying to grow and take those hits but get a little stronger from them. I hope he can keep that perspective in mind, and of course, I hope a little bit he gets the girl,” he says.
Catch season 2 of My Life With the Walter Boys streaming on Netflix on August 28.
Photographer: Isaac Anthony
Stylist: Daniela Romero
Groomer: Ben Jones
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