Ashley Liao Talks ‘Fuller House’ Season 2 [Exclusive Interview]

Fuller House Season 2 is coming to Netflix just in time for the holidays.

I recently had the chance to chat with cast member Ashley Liao about her experiences working on the show and what we can look forward to with the second season.

Liao plays Ramona Gibbler’s best friend, Lola, who Jackson has a major crush on. We saw Lola on several episodes from Season 1, and now we’ll be seeing a lot more of her character.

Though acting seems like a natural fit for Liao, who also stars on the Amazon series, The Kicks, she needed a little encouragement to start her acting career.

“I started doing acting [with] community theater. In fifth grade, I started doing plays and musicals, and that’s kind of where I fell in love with all the bright lights, and the production, and the very fast pace of everything. It’s so funny, I actually didn’t want to go to my very first audition, because I was really nervous. But my mom was like, ‘You know what, just go and do it. The worst thing they can say is no, and then we’ll just move on.’ And I ended up getting the lead role of Dorothy [for The Wizard of Oz] in my second production. That was a lot of fun,” Liao recalled.

As excited as Liao was to be a part of Fuller House, she actually didn’t make the connection at first that the show was a spin-off of the original series, Full House. Once her mom filled her in, she was even more excited.

“I knew that it was a really popular show, but at the time I wasn’t exactly someone who watched it weekly. But I knew about it, and then after I got my audition, I went on to YouTube and I looked at everyone’s catch phrases. I kind of became a fan overnight,” Liao said.

The nostalgia from the original series along with the fact that much of the cast already had experience working with one another made being part of Fuller House a unique experience.

“In some ways, it puts a little more pressure on you, but that pressure is good pressure. It makes you want to do so much better. But it is really great to know that everyone there already has a connection with each other,” she explained.

“Coming on to this show, you know they already have really good chemistry both on screen and off screen, so I feel like that makes for a really, really great show and a lot of good chemistry on camera.”

As for what it’s like behind the scenes, Liao said it’s about as fun as you might imagine.

“It’s definitely a lot of fun. We laugh so much on the set. We’ll say a funny joke, and everyone just has a taste of the giggles that day, and it spreads like a wildfire,” she laughed. “There’s never a dull day on set, and everyone loves each other.”

“Everyone’s really happy to be there. It’s a really great feeling going to work and knowing that everyone wants to be there and that they love their job,” she continued.

Liao also shared the reasons she loves her character on Fuller House.

“I really love Lola’s sassiness,” Liao began.

“I think towards the end, and you’ll see this more in Season 2, she’s really, really sweet. And she’s really loving,” she continued. “Plus, she loves red M&M’s, and I really love just chocolate in general,” Liao laughed.

Fuller House Season 2 will be available on Netflix tomorrow (hooray!) and Laio gave a few hints about what we can expect.

“Season 2 is actually going to be taking place during the holidays. It’s going to be taking place from Halloween time to New Year’s. So in that amount of time we’re going to have a Halloween episode, a Thanksgiving episode, a Christmas episode, and a New Year’s episode. There’s going to be a lot of holiday fun going on,” she said.

“A lot of old characters from the original Full House are gonna be coming back, so that’s gonna be really exciting. And then they also had New Kids On The Block guest star. Andrea [Barber] and Candace [Cameron Bure] were freaking out!”

Working on Fuller House has been an important experience for Liao, and it’s one she said she’ll be able to take with her throughout her career.

“I’ve learned so much from being on this show that I can apply to other shows,” she said. “This show has taught me so much. It’s helped me grow so much.”

In addition to Fuller House, you can also catch Liao as Alex Morgan on Amazon’s The Kicks, though she’ll look quite different.

“In Fuller House, I play this super sweet girl who wears dresses, and she’s kind of sassy,” Liao began. “But on The Kicks, I play a goth girl who’s kind of a little bit sarcastic and dry. I feel like that took more rehearsing my lines and trying to get this intonation down.”

The filming for that show is also completely different since it’s a single camera series.

“We were filming out on location. So we went out to this middle school, and that’s where we’d film all the shots of us playing soccer. So that was really different than Fuller House because with Fuller House, we film on a stage in Warner Brothers, and it’s a multi-cam, which means there’s four cameras, but there’s only half the room that you can see. So you’re never ever seeing the other side of the house in Fuller House. That was really different. And learning how to situate yourself to turn and cheat towards the camera on Fuller House versus actually being able to turn your back while filming on The Kicks, that’s really different too.”

When Liao isn’t busy working, she spends a lot of her free time watching Netflix. “I watch a ton of Netflix. More than I’m proud to admit, actually,” she laughed. Recent binges for Liao have included Parks and Recreation and Grey’s Anatomy, plus one very popular Netflix original series.

“A Netflix original that I really fell in love with was Stranger Things,” she said.

Be sure to catch Ashley Liao on Fuller House Season 2, which will be available on Netflix beginning tomorrow, December 10th.

*Featured image credit: Bobby Quillard

10 Netflix Originals You Should Binge-Watch Now!