- - “My Life with the Walter Boys”’ Noah LaLonde Reveals Childhood Parallels to Zac Efron: 'I Was a Lot Like Troy Bolton' (Exclusive)

Julia MooreAugust 24, 2025 at 10:00 PM

Savion Washington/WireImage;Channel/Kobal/Shutterstock

Noah LaLonde attends Netflix Tudum 2025 (left); Zac Efron as Troy Bolton in 'High School Musical' (right) -

Noah LaLonde reflects on going from a dedicated hockey player in his childhood to the breakout star of My Life with the Walter Boys ahead of the Netflix hit's season 2 premiere

The actor, 27, tells PEOPLE that, looking back on how he juggled his love for sports and his love for performing, he sees a lot of similarities between himself and High School Musical's Troy Bolton (Zac Efron)

Similarly, LaLonde says that he can draw a lot of comparisons between his life and that of his Walter Boys character, the brooding quarterback Cole Walter

Noah LaLonde didn’t always have dreams of being on camera.

The My Life with the Walter Boys star, 27, spent the first part of his life consumed by hockey. It wasn’t until “my hockey career was, unbeknownst to me, winding down,” as he tells PEOPLE, that he put some focus into the other area of passion floating around in his head: acting.

“As I got into high school, [hockey] got a lot more serious, and all of the extracurricular interests narrowed quite a bit,” he says.

“When I finally did stop playing hockey, it was a no-brainer. It was like, I spent my whole life doing one thing, and before I do something else, I'm going to do the thing that I think has been knocking around in my brain for a long time," he says.

Acting was that aforementioned “thing,” and there are roots in LaLonde’s younger life that tie back to what his career is now.

“I think I always had a natural tendency to want to entertain, to want to make people laugh, to want to have fun,” he says.

Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty for Vanity Fair

Noah LaLonde attends Vanity Fair and Instagram Celebrate Vanities: A Night for Young Hollywood at Bar Marmont on February 26, 2025

Some of his “earliest memories” are performing in the school plays in elementary school.

“In third, fourth, and fifth grade, I did all those plays, and I remember each year... You remember so little about being that age, but I remember being so nervous at first, and having a hard time like, ‘How am I going to do this? How am I going to remember these lines?’ And I didn't have that big of a role. I think I was the Big Bad Wolf.”

“I eventually worked my way up to being a lead in fifth grade, and I really liked it," he recalls.

He played the Beast in a production of Beauty and the Beast, but he also played Prince Charming — and he did some singing, too.

“I did the school choir in middle school, and we had a High School Musical-style middle school choir. It was very theatrical and very, just, fun,” he says.

It’s all very reminiscent of a certain character made famous by Zac Efron, and LaLonde can see the connection, too.

“I loved those movies. And I think, looking back at the way those movies affected me… I think I was 10 years old, and I remember loving Troy Bolton," he shares.

“It's funny how you look back at your life and those things that affected you in a certain way, and you don't assign meaning to it until you're looking back. But, definitely in high school, yeah, I was a lot like Troy Bolton.”

Courtesy of Netflix

Noah LaLonde as Cole and Nikki Rodriguez as Jackie in 'My Life with the Walter Boys' season 2

His admiration for Efron, 37, goes past just High School Musical, though.

“I've talked about Zac Efron before, in some press, but I think he was probably the first actor that I remember being like, ‘Whoa, he's cool.’ And he's young, and he's comfortable with who he is," he says.

In a similar vein to how he finds pieces of himself in Troy Bolton, LaLonde also finds a catharsis in Cole Walter's story.

"It was interesting in a self-reflective way," he says of Cole's storyline in season 2, which sees the high school senior and resident cool boy quarterback struggle with defining himself off the field after a career-ending injury.

"This whole process of embodying Cole Walter has been very much doing the thing I just described, in looking back at my own life, because I'm a little bit older than Cole. I always think of him as a younger version of myself," he adds.

There are some caveats to that comparison, of course. "Sometimes I just want to slap him around when he's out there getting drunk, or doing drugs, or whatever he is doing," LaLonde admits.

"But, the whole process with football was really what was the first push into making me understand where his head is at — because I had to address that in my own life when I stopped being a hockey player, that search for a new identity."

Courtesy of Netflix

Nikki Rodriguez as Jackie and Noah LaLonde as Cole in 'My Life with the Walter Boys' season 1

In season 2 — which picks up after Jackie (Nikki Rodriguez), who relocated to Colorado to live with the Walters after her family died, fled Silver Falls without a warning after kissing Cole while dating his brother, Alex (Ashby Gentry) — Cole is "trying to be okay with being around the people and the things [related to football], and he's trying to get the feeling back."

It's yet another way that LaLonde saw himself in his character. "I can tell you, for myself, I don't know if I really got the [hockey] feeling back until I got on a set, and I got to look to my left and my right, and then again had these people next to me in this moment of incredible intensity, where I felt like we were forging through something together."

"Cole's just searching for that. So it was very, very cathartic and self-reflective to look back on my own life for that storyline," he adds.

— sign up for PEOPLE's free daily newsletter to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer​​, from celebrity news to compelling human interest stories.

My Life with the Walter Boys season 2 premieres Thursday, Aug. 28 on Netflix.

on People

Original Article on Source

Source: “AOL Entertainment”