Ashley Tisdale (Hellcats) is a producer on ABC Family’s half-hour comedy Young & Hungry, but this week she’s on camera as a special guest star, playing a lesbian magazine editor named Logan. On the series, star Emily Osment plays Gabi, a food blogger hired by an entrepreneur named Josh (Jonathan Sadowski) to be his personal chef. His assistant Elliott (played by out actor Rex Lee) is also part of the main cast and in this week’s episode, titled “Young & Lesbian,” Elliott wants to get Josh some good PR from Logan’s magazine, so he will do just about anything she wants-including setting her up with (straight!) Gabi.
We spoke to Ashley about how she came to play Logan on Young & Hungry and if we could see more of her in the future.
AfterEllen.com: Logan is definitely a woman who knows what she wants. Could you tell me about how you came to be cast in the role?
Ashley Tisdale: Yeah! Obviously I produce the show. David Holden and I were talking about my episode-ABC Family asked me to do an episode and of course, I was really supportive of the show and was excited to be on it. I told David I wanted to play something different. A lot of the characters I’ve been playing have been very different.. I kind of gave them a couple ideas and this one was the one that was very different and I was excited to play. Logan is really awesome and I was obviously nervous just because I’ve never played this type of character but I hopefully pulled it off and I had a lot of fun doing it.
AE: I’ve seen some of the clips and it looks like Logan and Gabi share more than one moment together. Can you talk a little bit about the storyline?
AT: I don’t want to give too much away but I am a magazine editor and I come to interview [Josh] and I take a liking to Emily Osment’s character because I am a lesbian and I get set up on a date through Elliott with Gabi. She doesn’t know she’s on a date with me. She thinks she’s there to talk highly about her boss and she starts to realize what’s going on and so it was a lot of fun. In that scene especially, for me I wasn’t used to obviously-I’m not used to being the more forward one, being a little bit sensual. So I definitely knew coming into it, “OK, Logan gives more of a masculine energy” and so I just kind of thought of other characters I’ve seen other actors play these characters and also how I am on a date and what would make me uncomfortable if a guy was doing something. Like “Wait, this isn’t a date!” So I kind of put that altogether and that was kind of the hardest part for me because I definitely am a very girlie girl. So I hopefully did it well.
AE: Did you have any say in the look of Logan?
AT: Yeah I mean, for me, as a producer I’m involved in everybody’s wardrobe so I got to with Logan. The tattoos were actually not my idea. That was the writer. I was like “OK!” I have tattoos myself so it was really funny because my fiancee [musician Christopher French] has sleeves of tattoos and I just felt like him for the placement. So I said, “I like how he has this one placed here” and kind of took my placements from him, so that was cool.
AE: Will there be a chance Logan could return for future episodes?
AT: Yeah, I think she definitely could. It just depends on my schedule. My series [Buzzy’s] got picked up for TBS so obviously we’ll go into production for that but I would love to do more episodes. I’m already there so I’d love to obviously act on it too. It’s a lot of fun. I’m having a great time.
AE: If not Logan, do you think Young & Hungry could ever have a regular lesbian character?
AT: I don’t know! Right now there isn’t any in the future but obviously we have Elliott, and he’s hilarious. Rex Lee is so funny-his character. I mean, maybe. It was just kind of for this episode but hopefully we’ll be on for a long time and there will be a bunch of characters.
Tune in tonight to see how it all goes down, with special guest Jessica Lowndes (90210) making an appearance and looking strangely jealous…
Young & Hungry airs Wednesday nights on ABC Family.
