Milo Manheim on the power of heart and humanity
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Milo Manheim describes the enduring impact he hopes to have on generations of young viewers through his role as Zed in Disney’s Zombies. He also explores the transition from stage to screen, life lessons he’s picked up along the way, and his underlying motivations as a creative: to make and indulge in art that can be appreciated universally.
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Milo Manheim has the kind of contagious charisma that even extroverts can only dream of. But his optimism isn’t boundless — it’s securely rooted in the wisdom of someone who’s tried to live, learn, and love to the extent of his existence. He has a quote prepared for every possible scenario, from moving between Los Angeles and New York to rebounding from disappointment. And at only 23, Manheim has already determined that no day can truly be wasted: everything happens for a reason, even if you don’t know why just yet.
Manheim never anticipated the success of Zombies, the film that would launch his career as an actor and become a stepping stone toward stardom. Even though he started out chasing the spontaneity and controlled chaos of musical theater, it was at Disney where Manheim found success. As he passes the torch to the next era of talent, Manheim reminds himself of the lessons he walks away with. “It’s taken me lots of movies to realize the power that we each individually have to spread positivity and accept others,” he says. “It’s reminded me of all the good, important things in life and to value what’s right.”
“Hi, did you get the call?”
Manheim recalls picking up Meg Donnelly’s frantic call in the middle of watching Modern Family. From the fragments of their brief exchange, Manheim quickly pieced together that Donnelly had already been offered the female lead of Addison in Zombies. Disney broke the good news to Manheim not long after, while he was in the seclusion of his friend’s treehouse.
Prior to Zombies, Manheim was already familiar with how unapologetically cutthroat the industry could be. His mother is Camryn Manheim, an Emmy-award winning actress with appearances on 2000s television mainstays like Law and Order, Criminal Minds, and How I Met Your Mother. After witnessing the overwhelming nature of a film set firsthand, a young Manheim opted to first build his skill set through local community theater productions like Rent and Footloose.
In high school, Manheim briefly grappled with the urge to fit in with everyone else. He joined clubs and befriended as many people as possible — ultimately deciding to follow his heart and find his own place in the spotlight. Many of his projects have allowed him revisit high school, a time in his life that Manheim now looks back on with nostalgia. “I’m happy that I was never really ashamed of doing theater, because there was a time where I was a little embarrassed,” he says. “Once I got over that, my life became so much happier.” While he also dabbled in sports like volleyball, singing and performing on stage proved to be an “unbeatable” experience. “I love the energy of theater,” he says. “I love that we go from beginning to end consecutively. You never redo it. I love the beauty of the show must go on.”
From the second he started acting, Manheim found his calling — running around backstage in the dark and feeding into the audience’s energy, working with real time reactions as they laughed and cried with him. He goes on to say that he “would make every single day a musical” if he could. “I definitely enjoyed doing theater. I felt like I was totally in my element, but I’m also not naive. I know that there are kids all over the world doing exactly what I’m doing, loving it just as much. I really owe it all to [casting director] Amber Horn, who saw me in a show at my school and told me to audition for Zombies.”
Manheim explains that he often refused to ask for his mother’s help as a teenager, wanting to earn his own independence. Although they had always been close, it was exclusively with acting that he sought her advice.
“When I was auditioning for Zombies, I don’t think my mom ever had the fear that I was getting into it for the wrong reasons, because she always saw how much I loved it,” Manheim says. “If I’m shooting a self tape and really want to understand something better, I’ll ask my mom. Acting is a really weird occupation, and everybody learns about it differently. It’s a blessing to have my mom who I know so well [since] we think so similarly. It’s almost like peeking into the future of having sat on this for a little bit. The best part about my mom being an actress is the conversations that the two of us get to have.”
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In Zombies, Manheim plays Zed — a teenage zombie who joins a soft-hued world of traditions and uniformity at Seabrook High School. Seabrook’s small-town society fears coexisting with supernatural creatures, but Zed is persistent about joining the local football team and pursuing a relationship with cheerleader Addison. Zombies is a sci-fi rendition of High School Musical except, unlike Troy Bolton, Zed’s conflict extends beyond his love of the game and the girl. Star-crossed lovers are just the foreground for running commentary on topics like community, acceptance, and discrimination.
While Manheim recognizes that audiences may be initially captivated by the spectacle of the elaborate musical numbers, he believes they stay for the themes, which are just as important. “It doesn’t matter what age you are, or if you like football and cheerleading, because I think that’s where humanity comes through,” Manheim says. “We’ve all felt like outsiders, and we’ve all been in a position where we can welcome someone in. Shooting these movies are always a great reminder to me about how much I value positivity, acceptance, and lifting people up.”
With the next Zombies movie in post-production, Manheim anticipates that viewers will be “pleasantly surprised” by the new look. He also hints that the fourth installment in the franchise, Dawn of the Vampires, will have the most urgent message. “Simply put, the fourth movie is my favorite,” Manheim says. “Zombies 4 [has] the most well-rounded, solid soundtrack. We had the choreographers from [Zombies 3] come back to do [Zombies 4]. They really stepped up to the plate and said, ‘now we can go to all the places we wanted to go in the third movie.’”
Manheim has also acted as a mentor, guiding new dancers and cast members as they “carry the franchise forward.” He speaks highly of the refreshing tenacity and talent of younger co-stars Malachi Barton and Freya Skye. “Sometimes I feel like an older brother, sometimes like a parent, sometimes like a younger brother — they’re showing me up. It was such a beautiful blessing to step into that older brother role and be there for them. Seriously, they blow me away with their talent. They’re all incredible human beings, and they’re all so similar to their characters in the best ways.”
Like Zed, Manheim welcomes change and is confidently reassured that Zombies is in good hands. He’s already invested his faith in the future of the franchise. But, Manheim is also careful not to forget about where and how it all began. “Every time I come back to do a Zombies movie, I feel a duty to go back to Zed [and] to how he was. Especially this time around, I realized that I’ve changed so much, and it would be such a disservice to Zed for him not to change,” Manheim says. “It’s been three years [since I played Zed], and it’s been three years spent away from him. He’s clearly different now. After being with him for this long, he’s shown me that it’s okay to come back and to have learned something and be different.”
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While theater has always felt natural to Manheim, his roles at Disney allowed him to appreciate acting and entertaining in an entirely new light. Instead of letting the script unravel sequentially on stage, he discovered how disjointed shooting scenes could be — out of order, over and over. Losing that chronology and adapting to the repetitive nature of filmmaking, as well as the intrusion of cameras, proved to be challenging at first. “A lot of the time, 20 seconds of the film takes 12 hours to shoot,” he explains. “I used to be really frustrated by that because I liked being a part of the story and getting lost in it. But now, I’m finding new beauty in trying something many times and being very specific and nuanced with the way I want it to be seen.”
Manheim has also learned how to find the balance between dramatized acting in often imaginary circumstances without overexaggerating every detail. “I think Disney is a lot more, ‘tell don’t show,’ and things outside of Disney are ‘show don’t tell,’” he says. “What do I want to put in your face right here, and what do I want you to infer? A lot of acting is not only what you do, but what you don’t do. Not only is it a different acting approach outside of Disney, but it’s a different approach for every single character. Sometimes, you focus on the physicality of it all, and sometimes, you focus on how you want to say your words. There are different actions and goals and restrictions for every project, so the beauty of it is that it’s new every time and you have to solve this riddle — this unsolvable riddle.”
According to Manheim, the first step to cracking the unique code to each character is thinking about the common ground that holds us together. As an actor, he draws from universal emotions like anxiety, fear, and sadness to color his performances. In Prom Pact, another Disney Original set during the peak of high school prom season, Manheim plays Ben Plunkett, the “socially awkward and anxious” best friend who tries to score a date with the girl of his dreams. “I know what it feels like to be incredibly anxious,” Manheim explains. “I know what it feels like to not want to make eye contact with somebody. I know what it feels like to be uncomfortable in someone’s presence. I try to remember that feeling and bring it to the character. I like to focus on the ways my characters are similar. A lot of the time, it’s harder to connect those dots, but I’m always trying to find myself in my characters.”
Acting has allowed Manheim to reflect inward and learn more about himself. “Art imitates life, life imitates art. So many times, I watch a movie, and not only does it inspire me to be a better actor, but it inspires me to get off my ass and go live my life.” He cites a recent rewatch of The Secret Life of Walter Mitty as an example, where a magazine editor (Ben Stiller) grows tired of his tedious life and swaps his briefcase for a backpack, traveling across Greenland in search of a missing print and its even more elusive photographer. “Let me take a deep dive into my acting the same way Ben took a deep dive with Walter. Let me try to direct something. Let me try to evoke inspiration through a different lens. Life comes from you, not at you. It’s a matter of choosing where to find the beauty, because it’s really all over if you just take a second.”
From movies like The Secret Life of Walter Mitty to books like The Creative Act by Rick Rubin (“It’s a good reminder that you can find this beauty everywhere,” he says), Manheim tries to consume media as consciously as possible in search of lessons he can use to enrich his own life. “As human beings, we can be so different, but we all enjoy art and movies because they evoke universal emotion in us.”
While he embraces the unknown with open arms, Manheim hopes that his future is “weird” at the very least — weird enough that he wants to be cautious about diving headfirst into the deep end of his dreams. “David Bowie says, ‘if you feel like you’re treading water, then you’re doing the art correctly.’ I never want to feel like I have a good grasp on it. I want to feel like I’m always figuring it out.”
Photography IRENE CHEN
Fashion JANELLE ARREOLA
Grooming PATRICK SANTA ANA
Words KATELYN POTHAKUL
Cover Design JUNG YOUN KIM
Layout IVY KURNIAWAN
Copy ANDERS LJUNG and SAMANTHA MARQUEZ
Retouch VALERIA MOROZOVA
Location PATRICK SANTA ANA STUDIO
Special thanks to 42WEST
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