Hellcats Premieres on the CW Next Week
Okay this isn’t strictly our territory, but there’s a new show debuting on the CW next week called Hellcats.
Hellcats revolves around Marti, a pre-law college student at Lancer College in Memphis, Tennessee who comes from the wrong side of the tracks. When budget cutbacks and her mother’s constant carelessness cause her to lose her scholarship, she looks for a new scholarship. She overhears that one of the cheerleaders has become injured and a place on the team is available. She hates cheerleading but upon hearing that the new member would get a scholarship she uses her dancing skills from high school to try out. She makes the Hellcats, the college’s competitive cheerleading team.
Marti is played by Alyson Michalka, the daughter of a former Raiderrette, Rams Cheerleader and UCLA Cheerleader.
From Canmag.com:
The CW’s new series Hellcats may seem like the typical CW drama about young adult girls. The stakes of college cheerleading go a little further than other teen dramas. Aly Michalka plays Marti, a law student who joins the Hellcats to stay afloat in school, and they get intense.
“Cheerleading is bad-ass,” Michalka said. “These people are athletic. These people work out like crazy. These people are trustworthy people because they are there to catch you when you are up in the air, flying. They are there to have your back. When you are injured, they are there to help you out. You have to go and see a doctor, you have to be on medication, you have to be out of the squad sometimes, and you are not able to make nationals. It’s this team effort and I think that that makes our show, it makes us as actors bond even more. The stakes go up higher for us because we have the respect for these characters and for these real-life girls that we know are in America that are doing the same thing. So it makes it special for us.”
The girls of Hellcats have pretty much started training for cheer from scratch. “I have no cheerleading background, but my mom happened to be a Raiderette that went to the Super Bowl, and they won, which is rad, and a Rams cheerleader and a UCLA cheerleader. I know, right? So that’s kind of a cool thing, that my mom has that background. So I guess I have it in my blood, but I’ve never had an interest to be on a squad, probably because there’s no home-schooling cheerleading squads. I don’t know. That might be weird, a home-schooling cheerleading squad, but I have a dance background for sure in free-styling, and I’ve been a part of dance companies before, like hip-hop dance companies when I was a teenager. So the dance aspect I’m really comfortable with, but cheerleading-wise, it was something completely new to me, and that was really fun to dive into.”
Hellcats premieres September 8 on The CW.
