Sifting through old photos and recordings inspired the star of ‘Punky Brewster’ (now revived on Peacock) to direct Hulu’s ‘Kid 90,’ executive produced by Sean Penn along with Leonardo DiCaprio’s Appian Way, about her youth.
Four years ago, Soleil Moon Frye cracked open what she calls her vault, a collection of Tupperware containers filled with journals, photos, ephemera and hundreds of hours of audio and video recordings.
Moon Frye, 44, wasn’t sure what she’d discover by digging through the items that had been in storage 20-plus years or how it would make her feel. Especially because so much of her life had been documented since the age of 7, when she was cast on Punky Brewster, a role that made her a beloved child star and part of a peer group that navigated fame eons before social media. “I had such a joyful, beautiful, happy life in so many ways,” says Moon Frye, “and then there were experiences that were incredibly painful. I truly opened Pandora’s box.”
At age 14, after receiving a video camera, Moon Frye carried it everywhere, pointing it at the faces of friends like Leonardo DiCaprio, Mark Wahlberg, Will Smith, Mark-Paul Gosselaar, Brian Austin Green and Stephen Dorff, while capturing trips to Magic Mountain — on mushrooms.
Some of those videos are now part of a documentary she directed, kid 90, that hits Hulu on March 12, with DiCaprio’s Appian Way team (Jennifer Davisson and Philip Watson) listed as executive producers. “We were just a group of real friends who had very authentic relationships and incredible adventures,” says the mother of four who also stars on Peacock’s Punky Brewster revival. In kid 90, Moon Frye doesn’t shy away from difficult subjects including drug use, sexual assault, suicide (close friend Jonathan Brandis hanged himself in 2003) and her breast-reduction surgery. Revisiting her youth — as seen in the images she shares here — was life-changing. “It makes me super emotional because reliving it transformed my relationships, my marriage, everything,” she says. “I believe that I had left this chronological blueprint as a way for me to find my way back home.”Before his days as Zack Morris on ‘Saved by the Bell,’ the actor appeared as Walker opposite Moon Frye on ‘Punky Brewster.’ “He was always so sweet and so kind to me and I was so crushed out on him,” says the actress, who eventually appeared on his show. “The hugging photo is around the ‘Saved by the Bell’ time. We stayed great friends throughout our youth. I remember he lived out in Valencia and sometimes we would hang out and take these long drives together — in my mom’s car, I’m pretty sure.”With Will Smith (left) and Mark Wahlberg at an Emmy afterparty. “I remember feeling on top of the world, so excited, and so crushed out on Mark,” she recalls. “It was one of the happiest nights in my teen girl life.” Later, Wahlberg visited her mother’s Burbank home for an adventure that involved the two of them taking a cruise on her stepfather’s motorcycle. “It was a very dreamy ride on the motorcycle. I’m pretty sure Prince’s ‘Purple Rain’ was playing in my head.”As a kid, the actress met Jenny Lewis (left), who went on to fame as a singer-songwriter: “We immediately became inseparable and best friends,” she says of the indie icon. “We traveled around the world together and have stayed friends our entire lives. She’s still one of the closest people in my life. We both love poetry, music and quantum physics. We love talking about the world and the universe. We share a frequency.The late Jonathan Brandis is featured prominently in ‘kid 90’ as the two shared a bond that continues to this day, she says. “Jonathan was one of the closest people in my life. I love him so much, and I say love because I feel him around me all of the time. We had this incredibly deep connection,” she says of the fellow child star who took his own life in 2003. “We went to school together, we spoke on the phone all night almost every night. We were just great, beautiful friends. My love for him is so abundant and never-ending.”
In 1989, Moon Frye hosted the syndicated talk series ‘Girl Talk’ opposite Sarah Michelle Gellar. Asked what she recalls of that moment poring over a script, “Puberty,” she laughs. “Things are about to get wild.”
SOURCE: hollywoodreporter