Former "Even Stevens" Cast And Crew Are Confessing Wild On-Set Disney Channel Secrets, And It's So Juicy

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Disney Channel has been creating hit shows, box office successes, and literal superstars for decades. But there's so much on-set drama, behind-the-scenes secrets, and untold stories that are just now being released thanks to Disney High, a tell-all book about the "rise and fall of the tween empire."

The book was written by Ashley Spencer and was released at the end of September.

I just read the book – which includes wild stories from cast and crew members who were on your favorite Disney Channel shows and movies – so here are some of the coolest and most shocking things I learned about the making of Even Stevens.

1. The story of Even Stevens paradoxically starts at Nickelodeon, not Disney Channel. Shia LaBeouf auditioned for their show Hey Arnold! but completely bombed it. He was 10 years old when he walked into the room and introduced himself by saying, "I'm Shia LaBeouf, and I'm going to win an Academy Award one day." But the casting director, Joey Paul Jensen, was intrigued. Shia signed up for Jensen's acting classes, and two years later Disney Channel asked Jensen to help cast their new show, so Shia was at the top of her mind.

2. Even Stevens was originally titled Spivey's Kid Brother, which was later changed to Ren's Brother by the time the pilot was filmed. Over 2,000 kids auditioned for the lead role of Louis Spivey (eventually "Louis Stevens"). Shia went through several rounds of auditions, but executives were worried that the now-12-year-old was too young for the part.

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3. Shia ultimately got the job, but test audiences weren't the biggest fans of him or his character after viewing the pilot. Because of this, executives wanted to replace Shia with a different actor: "They felt his character came across as more of a depressed loner than a comical boy next door. The orders came from above that Jensen needed to recast Shia and start from scratch on a new nationwide search for his replacement."

4. The casting team auditioned another 600 boys for the role of Louis, but Jensen couldn't get Shia out of her head. After some arm twisting, executives agreed to give Shia another chance. He was instructed to reaudition and do yet another screen test to prove himself. This sort of broke Shia, and he had a mini panic attack while at the Disney Channel headquarters, sobbing while crouched down between two filing cabinets and yelling, "What do I have to do to prove myself to them? I can't do it again! I can't!" Jensen calmed him down, and Shia booked the role...again.

5. However, the show itself had a lot of problems. They filmed six episodes, but the tone was completely different than that of the pilot, and things just felt off: "It was too broad. It wasn't story driven. It wasn't emotionally driven. You have to be kind of smart to write dumb humor, and it just missed," said creator Matt Dearborn.

6. In fact, true fans of the show will remember the final episode of Season 1 (titled "A Weak First Week") when Ren and Louis get stuck on a Ferris wheel and reminisce about Louis's first day at Lawrence Junior High. This episode includes flashbacks to the much-younger-looking cast, and that's because those scenes were actually taken from the original pilot episode. They simply repurposed everything to fit this flashback episode.

7. Two former writers from Full House, Marc Warren and Dennis Rinsler, were brought on to do a complete overhaul of the show. They were basically allowed to hire and fire anyone they wanted, and they took advantage: "The pair cleaned house. Dearborn was the only one from the original team who was asked to stay on as a writer and producer, and Warren and Rinsler countered the show's zany sound effects and food gags with a more grounded, familial heart."

8. These new writers weren't afraid of incorporating drama and real-life scenarios, rather than just sticking with wacky storylines. For example, the relationship between the characters Louis and Tawny (played by Margo Harshman) turned romantic in Season 3 after the writers learned that Louis had a crush on Margo. The two later started dating in real life as well.

They also made the Stevens family half-Jewish "in a nod to Shia's own family history." As a result, Even Stevens became the first original series on the network to have a Hanukkah episode, which aired in 2000.

9. You have to remember that this was a completely different time on Disney Channel. Like, the executives were apparently so "hands-off" that the writers were able to get away with pretty much anything. For example, they named the gym teacher Coach Tugnut, and one of the students was named Tom Gribalski (i.e. "grab-balls-ski"). "If it made us laugh, we put it in," Rinsler said. "It was fun to trick them. We would say, 'This is totally innocent! It's your dirty mind!'"

10. The writers also noticed how fraught the relationship was between Shia LaBeouf and Christy Carlson Romano, who played his on-screen sister. "In real life, they drove each other crazy. When we heard that, we said, 'Oh, this will be fun,'" noted Rinsler. Their real-life rivalry was eventually written into the series, and the show changed from being solely about Louis to being about the combative siblings.

11. One tense on-set moment in particular was during a Season 1 shoot when Shia had to throw tomatoes at Christy. He apparently kept aiming for her face and was pelting them as hard as he could: "Shia was throwing tomatoes at her face, like, really trying to hurt her, and she never forgave him for that," Rinsler said. "He was always giving her a hard time and complaining about her off camera, which she put up with because she felt it made the on-camera rivalry more realistic."

12. Christy Carlson Romano auditioned for the show when she was just 14 years old. By this point, she'd already appeared on Broadway (as Mary Phagan in the original production of Parade) and was a total professional. In fact, Even Stevens creator Matt Dearborn said she gave the best audition he's ever witnessed: "In the thousands of casting sessions I've sat through, to this day, hers is still the best audition I've ever seen."

13. Even then, the creator and casting director couldn't ignore how different Christy and Shia were from each other. At this point, Christy was Ren Stevens – prim, proper, and perfect. "Nothing was out of place. Not her hair. Not a button. Nothing. She was the total opposite of Shia." They compared the actors' personalities and demeanors to that of Robin Williams (for Shia) and Anne Hathaway (for Christy).

14. Production got more and more difficult as the show went on, specifically in regards to Shia. For him, acting was a way to get out of school and make money (that's how he got into acting in the first place, because he met a kid who paid for cool, expensive sneakers after a gig on a TV show). He struggled to learn his lines due to a lack of focus, and some days he wouldn't want to work at all, so the showrunners had to come up with different strategies to help: "They'd chop up his dialogue so Shia never had large chunks to recite at once. Or they'd instruct him to cross his arms and tuck his hands under his armpits while filming, a trick to center him on the task at hand."

15. A child psychologist recommended hiring a mentor for Shia, which "changed everything." Richard Lyons, who acted as a coach and big brother figure to Shia, is credited as "the man who saved Even Stevens" because he was able to turn Shia into a more collaborative and engaged person on set.

16. Even Stevens ran from 2000–2003 and lasted exactly 65 episodes. This was a strict rule from Disney Channel, which canceled any show after reaching its 65th episode (enough to boost the series' exposure in syndication while also making room for new shows with younger talent). However, the series was so popular that it became the second show to get its own DCOM (Disney Channel Original Movie), after The Famous Jett Jackson.

17. There was a lot of drama behind the scenes of The Even Stevens Movie (2003) because Matt Dearborn, the show's creator, was basically shut out by executive Gary Marsh. Dearborn wasn't asked to be part of the movie, to which Marsh later admitted, "Yeah, I f*cked up." As a consolation prize, Marsh told Dearborn he could write any movie he wanted for Disney Channel, and that's how the Aly and AJ Michalka DCOM Cow Belles (2006) was born.

18. After production wrapped, Disney Channel tried pitching a Ren-centered spinoff series to ABC (which is owned by Disney). The show would have revolved around Ren working as an intern on Capitol Hill. This was pre-Disney Channel superstardom, so ABC didn't see any potential and was kind of insulted by the proposition, even though the Even Stevens writers thought it was a no-brainer: "We said, 'You have a talent here. She can dance. She can act. She can sing. She's likable. She has a built-in audience. Why don't you grow that audience with her?' At that time, ABC did not want to hear anything from Disney Channel. It was almost like, 'Get away from us with this stuff.'"

Eight months after Even Stevens ended, Christy Carlson Romano found herself back on Broadway. This time, she replaced Belle in Disney's theatrical adaptation of Beauty and the Beast, becoming the youngest actor to do so.

19. Shia drifted away from pretty much the entire cast immediately after Even Stevens ended. He reunited with Donna Pescow, who played his on-screen mom, at a 2019 screening of Shia's "autobiographical" movie Honey Boy. The film chronicled his troubling childhood and abusive father, whom Shia portrayed in the movie. Pescow embraced Shia with tears and insisted she would have made him live with her if she'd known about his problems as a kid, to which Shia responded, "Yeah, I know, but everything's okay." But in 2022, Shia admitted to making up a lot of events in the film, saying "I wrote this narrative, which was just f*cking nonsense. My dad was so loving to me my whole life...never was not loving...I turned the knob up on certain sh*t that wasn't real."

20. Almost all of the cast and crew (minus Shia) reunited over Zoom in 2020 to celebrate the show's 20th anniversary. Nick Spano, aka older brother Donnie Stevens, praised Shia's raw talent and comedic chops, saying they owe a lot of the show's success to him. The topic of a potential reboot was brought up, but unfortunately without Shia the cast just doesn't think it'd work. Still, Nick insisted that "we're still all a part of this family, and he's still here with us in spirit."

If you want to read more about the inner workings of Disney Channel's biggest hit shows and movies, you can order Disney High here.

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