Kidsday chats with actor Reed Alexander

We met actor Reed Alexander who plays Nevel on the Nickelodeon show “iCarly” while he was in Manhattan. We cooked with him at the Blue Ribbon Sushi Bar & Grill.
 
Has your family changed after you became health conscious?
 
I think my family definitely has. I’ve been lucky because my mom, my dad and grandparents, I don’t have any siblings, it’s so nice because we kind of formed this big team together and about when I started making some healthy choices, my grandmother joined on and she lost about 20 pounds. She feels so much better and it’s so nice to have a support team around me. Really great trusted people. It really is encouraging too. It’s so nice because I get to go grocery shopping with my parents and we stock the fridge differently and I think it’s a collaborate effort, which is really great. I do think you need that. Hopefully on the site too, I try and provide tips for families as well — that being healthy can be easy and it’s fun. And it can be a group effort and it’s so important.
 
Do you cook for only you or other people?
 
I love cooking for a group. I cook a lot with my grandmother. She’s always loved cooking. She actually once had a catering business. I cook a lot by myself, but it’s so much fun when you cook for other people. It doesn’t have to be only what you like. I love calling my friends and my family and sometimes you bring people into the kitchen, like what you got to do today. How much fun was this? A big group of friends, right? It was great. We got to hang out in the kitchen, cook, we got to make something. I love cooking for a lot of people because I think then everybody can hopefully take away what you tried to do and you could share your accomplishments. I love that and it’s really fun to plan it too. You can call around and have a really fun event night. It just becomes this really nice activity and it brings people closer together.
 
How do you stick to your diet if you’re not at home?
 
Sometimes it could be a struggle because you’re in an airport, or you’re going out to dinner, or you’re going to somebody’s house. I think the key is you want to be flexible and you want to live a healthy lifestyle. In doing that, it has to be practical too. It’s no fun going around eating a cucumber all day. Sure that’s healthy, but you want to be able to do something that you will enjoy because you won’t be able to stick with it. So when you out and about you just want to think about what you’re going to feel best about doing. Sometimes you go with your friend to the ice cream store, OK, that’s fine. You should enjoy your life, and that’s at least how I live. After you go into those situations where you can control things, you can. So if you went into that ice cream store and you got like a small ice cream and you had a great time. Then you can go home and be a little healthier. It’s about living a healthy lifestyle and learning to do that. And believe it or not, it’s extremely easy. It comes with time, but it comes quickly.
 
Are you anything like your character on the show?
 
Oh, I hope not. Nevel’s really fun to play, but I hope in real life I’m not too Nevely. I have been like if I didn’t eat lunch today. Eeek! It’s easy to be a little more like Nevel. Very little sleep the night before. But I definitely hope I’m not like Nevel because he’s pretty mean. It’s fun to play him.
 
How would you like to change your character?
 
I love my character as is and that’s the fun thing. That’s a very good question. I think Nevel of course is missing that sort of nice chip, that hopefully someday can be plugged in. Honestly I have so much fun playing Nevel because he’s unique, like all of the “iCarly” characters have their own characteristics that hopefully nobody can take away from them. That’s why I love Nevel, because he’s pretty interesting to play and it’s a nice change. Because nobody would want to be like that in real life. But getting to play a role like that is interesting.
 
Do you like the characters on the show and who is your friend?
 
They’re all so awesome. I have to tell you being on set with them is always a blast when the camera is on or off. It’s nice because they’re my friends and they’re fantastic. They’re all extremely welcoming and extremely talented. They’re really funny. They’re all so interesting as people. You could sit down with them and have the most amazing conversation. So it makes it fun to play Nevel around these brilliant people. So I feel very lucky that way.
 
Was it hard losing weight?
 
It was fun. I started losing weight probably about a year ago, maybe a little more than a year. It was hard because you have to make changes and you got to stick with them, you got to follow through, and you make these commitments and sometimes the transition isn’t the easiest thing in the world because at that point I was just so used to just being out of control with my eating and exercise that I was very much demented in those ways. Yeah, making those changes wasn’t the easiest, but then when they started flowing, I realized that it wasn’t such a hurdle, because in the end it was going to benefit me and seeing the results like I write about on the website, sometimes I would go to an event or a party or like my friends house or something. When people would say, oh my gosh, what changes did you make, you can really tell, it was a huge compliment and it made me, it sort of, encouraged me and spurred me on even more and it made me want to continue with what I was doing. But seeing the gradual changes over time was very inspiring. I feel lucky first of all that I could make those changes that we as people could be completely in control of our health that’s great. But it took time, but looking back I still tell myself I’m not done at all. I’m a work in progress. Every single day when I get up, it provides another opportunity for me to continue what I’m doing and to try and stay on track. It’s fun and it’s a really nice adventure.
 
Are you doing any work for charity and if so what?
 
I am doing work for charity. I work with a charity for the American Heart Association and it’s called the Chair Family Foundation . It’s fantastic. I actually just worked with a charity very recently that benefited a home for orphans in California, which was amazing and a lot of those kids were abused children as well. So it was an honor to be able to work with that charity and make changes. And we were able to raise about a million dollars. That was really exciting. We raised the money during a really great dinner event. That was so much fun and it was about two months ago. It was really nice to be able to hopefully have an impact with all these other people who were at the event and on the lives of these children. It was a good feeling. Charity is really important.
 
What do you think is more important to become healthy, exercise, diet, or both. And do you have any exercise machines at your house?
 
I don’t have exercise machines. Sometime I work with a trainer and we go to a gym and there’s a lot of exercise machines there. But my favorite kind of exercise is just taking a walk around the neighborhood with some jogging or going on your bike or playing tennis. Like things that don’t require that many machines. I think that both eating healthy and exercise really compliment each other. Neither is complete sort of without the other. Sort of like yin and yang. You need both to make the whole. I think when you start to make those changes, obviously, you really want to do both, and sometimes you can’t just because of your schedule whatever. Whatever reason, but they really help each other. When you’re doing both, you’re taking care of yourself in a great way. And that’s sort of the ideal goal; is to be healthy comprehensively. So you need both I think. A little bit of both. And the problem is I didn’t really have either. I sort of had to invent it from the bottom up and it’s been fun.
 
Do you ever cook any of the recipes for the cast?
 
I have not. I don’t think I have. I have cooked for the cast of “iCarly,” but I don’t think I’ve cooked any Kewlbites recipes. If you go to the “iCarly” Twitter, you’ll see a link to healthy blueberry muffins that I make on the site. I would love to share some of my recipes with the cast. Hopefully they like them. But we all love food I think.
 
Are you in any upcoming TV shows or movies?
 
“iCarly” was just picked up for another season. We’re so excited. They’ll be a lot more episodes of that. Possibly some “iCarly” movies too. I don’t know in theaters but “iFight Shelby Marx” for example was an “iCarly” movie. More “iCarly,” we’re so excited.
 
Have you ever thought of making smoothies to get your servings of fruit?
 
Definitely, it’s a brilliant idea. Actually I recently had a really great time making fruit smoothies and talking about exercise. Have you guys seen Big Time Rush? Do you know James Maslow? We had a great time. We hung out and we got to exercise and we made a real healthy strawberry smoothie. Smoothies are fantastic. I can’t say enough. You can have them before or after exercise or just for fun because they taste good, but they’re a real great way of getting in servings of fruits and vegetables. If you could sort of make them naturally, that’s what you want. And whatever fruits you like, blueberries or strawberries, or whatever’s doing well. I love spring and summer because coming up in a point of time, the fruits taste fantastic. They’re sweet and they have so much flavor and they’re juicy and all that good stuff. You can blend them up and it’s a really great thing to do.