Child Star Survivor Allison Scagliotti

Morning all,

Back in the early 90′s it wasn’t that uncommon to see a kid star go on to different things. Take for example Keri Russell, you know the girl who grew up to play Felicity and then opposite Tom Cruise in MI:3. So it wasn’t that uncommon. Then something strange happened. Kids became child stars on youth networks and… that was it. With the exception of the High School Musical kids, not a lot of others look like they can break away. Call it lack of talent, bloated lifetime contracts, or whatever you want, but the fact remains, child performers on kid networks kind of suck these days.

But through the darkness there’s always a tiny glimmer of hope that the new generation of Disney and Nickelodeon graduates can actually do some good things. Which brings us back to the title. Meet Nickelodeon survivor Allison Scagliotti. Who?

Allison Scagliotti is currently starring as Claudia Donovan on the SyFy Network‘s Warehouse 13. She’s got talent, she’s on a show that has a bit of cult stature and she actually steals scenes from the other main characters by simply being around. Scagliotti got her start like a lot of other child stars. She was cast a one-off character on a show that not a ton of people really care about, Zoey 101 on Nickelodeon. After her one appearance, it looked as though Nick liked what they saw and gave her a small, yet recurring role on another show nobody really cared about, Drake and Josh. It looked as though she was going down the road of child star who wouldn’t be able to shake the stereotype. Then she landed a small guest role on a show called Party Down things started to change.

Scagliotti played the daughter to JK Simmons‘ character of a movie mogul. Basically all she had to do was cry a bit because nobody wanted to come to her birthday party, but instead of just doing the job, she added to it and gave her character Taylor some actual depth. Now, Party Down is an off-beat comedy which is no longer on the air, but Scagliotti’s performance in that one episode landed her on an episode of Smallville as one half of the Wonder Twins and now a recurring role on Warehouse 13. As Claudia Donovan she is the genius girl with a checkered past. Her storyline is interesting as she spent her teen years studying physics in order to get brother out of another dimension (did I mention that Warehouse 13 is on the SyFy Network?). She’s spunky, smart and pulls off the attitude extremely well. I have a feeling we’ll be hearing a lot about Allison Scagliotti in the future.