The Role You Forgot Alison Brie Played In Hannah Montana

Like “Stranger Things” star Natalia Dyer, who appeared in “Hannah Montana: The Movie,” Alison Brie adopted an accent when she auditioned for the first season of the “Hannah Montana” series. But in an interview with Cosmopolitan, Dyer recalled that her role required her to fake a British accent, whereas Brie took a little artistic liberty with her character, a hairdresser who develops a crush on Jackson Stewart (played by Jason Earles). “For my audition, I came in and took a big swing at a Long Island accent which was not requested,” she told W magazine.

Initially, Brie’s creative risk seemed like a smart move — afterwards, she overheard other actors being told to adopt similar accents for their auditions. “And then when I got the role, I got there for my first day of filming and they said, ‘Everything looks great. Just lose the accent,’” she recalled.

Because “Hannah Montana” was filmed in front of a studio audience, the role gave Brie a small taste of the stage life that she once craved. “Working on ‘Hannah Montana’ was actually the perfect first job coming out of theater school,” she said in an interview with Collider. “I couldn’t be more comfortable.” The Cal Arts grad noted that Miley Cyrus hadn’t yet become a global phenomenon, so the cast member whose name she immediately recognized wasn’t the pop star’s, but that of her father, country singer Billy Ray Cyrus.