LI's Luke Islam moves from singing to acting with 'Mighty Ducks' role

The country embraced him as a kid singer from Long Island who reached the semifinals of "America's Got Talent" in 2019. Now Garden City South 14-year-old Luke Islam has pivoted into acting, as a cast member of the Disney Plus youth hockey series "The Mighty Ducks: Game Changers," premiering Friday.

"My manager and I talked about what I wanted to do and I definitely had acting in mind," says Islam, the son of Rebecca and Mithun Islam. "So he sent me to an audition and I ended up getting a couple of callbacks — that was crazy to me because I never expected anything would happen. So then I went to L.A. to do the screen test and I ended up getting the part!"

Playing Jaden "Koob" Koobler, a couch-potato whiz at hockey videogames but not so much on a real rink, Islam spent much of last year in Vancouver, British Columbia, shooting the 10-episode series. The comedy-drama centers around some young misfits and a single mom (Lauren Graham) who form a team to challenge the now-powerhouse Mighty Ducks. With Emilio Estevez reprising his role as Gordon Bombay from Disney's "The Mighty Ducks" movie trilogy (1992-96), the series reprises its original conceit, with a second generation now out to prove itself.

Captained by 12-year-old Evan Morrow (Brady Noon, 2019's "Good Boys," HBO's "Boardwalk Empire"), the team has little experience with ice hockey or even, in a couple of cases, ice skating. That was true of some the young actors as well.

"It was so much fun to learn how to skate with all the other cast members," says Islam. "They actually built a rink in the soundstage, so it was awesome." Learning to skate was "definitely challenging. It's so tricky to, like, balance properly, but it was a blast to learn the basics."

The show began shooting in February 2020, but all Vancouver production shut down that March 13 due to the burgeoning COVID-19 pandemic. "We were supposed to come back sometime around April and that obviously did not happen," Islam recalls. The cast remained in Vancouver. "We quarantined and rehearsed in August and then we started filming in September," Islam says, finishing production "the week before Christmas."

His father stayed with him initially, "and then the whole middle time was with my aunt," Toni DeLuca, of New Jersey. "She's one of my coolest people you'll ever meet," he says. "I loved being able to stay with her."

Additionally, Graham ("Gilmore Girls," "Zoey's Extraordinary Playlist") became a den mother to the kids. "She and Emilio would always make sure we were a team and really pushed through it and made sure we were giving our A game all the time," Islam says, adding that shooting the series taught him "a lot about my work ethic. … I learned I was able to do more than I thought I could. I did not know I had it in me."

A freshman at St. Dominic High School in Oyster Bay, Islam plans to continue singing, particularly at charity events as he has done in the past. "There are a lot of people in need, especially during this time, so I've been consulting with some of my friends who are singers about whether we could put on some kind of performance when everything is safe."

For more with Luke Islam, check out Newsday.com's The Buzz this Thursday.