For any avid DCOM fan, Smart House calls to mind the song “Jump, jump, the house is jumpin’!” I just as easily hear Katey Sagal’s voice. I see on-demand smoothies, floor absorbers (for when those smoothies get spilled), and wall projections of music videos and locations around the globe. The excitement begins when Ben Cooper (Ryan Merriman) wins a smart home that transforms his family’s world through Personal Applied Technology (PAT), an AI assistant who is initially helpful and ahead of her time. When Ben reprograms her, PAT shifts to motherly, then domineering and dangerous. Ben means to preserve the memory of his late mom and deter his dad Nick (Kevin Kilner) from becoming romantically involved with the technology’s creator, Sara Barnes (Jessica Steen). However, the assistant takes total control and imprisons Ben, his sister Angie (Katie Stiehler), and their dad until they are able to get through to PAT.
For Stiehler (née Volding), 1999’s Smart House was an opportunity to portray an iconic Disney Channel little sister, something she’d already mastered a year earlier in Brink! opposite Erik von Detten. The actress was a series regular in the TGIF sitcom Teen Angel and continued her sisterly antics in the Au Pair movie franchise.
Smart House writer Stu Krieger shares that a layered sibling dynamic benefits both the comedy and drama in a story. As Angie, “Katie definitely becomes the yin to Ben’s yang throughout the film,” the writer says. His own children, four years apart in age, inspired favorite DCOM characters from Ben and Angie to the Riley siblings in Phantom of the Megaplex. Krieger tells me, “For a teenage boy, one of the world’s most aggravating things to have to deal with is a little sister full of energy and opinions. That certainly was the dynamic in my household when my kids were growing up. Having Katie constantly in motion, jumping on the bed, propelled Ben to call [Angie] ‘Annoying Spice’ which my wife still claims is one of her all-time favorite scripted lines of mine.” I agree!
I can’t imagine the DCOM canon without Smart House in it. Our favorite little sister-turned-business owner is here to tell us about starring in the DCOM that has become all too real in recent years. Katie Stiehler, now living in Upstate New York with her family, is a tattoo artist and owns her own tattoo shop! She sat down with me virtually to reminisce about her Disney Channel days–including filming that fan-favorite “C’est La Vie” jumping-on-the-bed scene. Enjoy my conversation with Katie Stiehler, which has been lightly edited for length and clarity. Follow Katie on Instagram @ktvtattooer, and Stu @stukrieger.
In recent years, with all the developments we’ve had in technology and AI, I was wondering if Smart House ever comes to your mind, that you were a part of film that so many people reference every time we have some new thing with iPhones or artificial intelligence.
It is interesting because every once in a while, someone will tag me in a meme or something that’s like, “Smart House predicted this,” and I’m like, “I warned you guys!”
Yes, you absolutely did. 1997 to, like, ’99 were super busy years for you between doing two Disney Channel Original Movies, Fox Family movies, Teen Angel. I would love to hear a little bit about your journey as a child actor and how that got started for you.
I think I was about four, I was in a wedding for my cousin, and someone was there who was an agent. I was the flower girl, and they wanted to sign me to the agency, but my parents were like, No way, dude. You hear about all the things and you don’t want to do that. And then they kind of were like, Listen, let’s send her out on one thing. If she gets it, sick, if not, okay, no worries.
I guess my mom, obviously, agreed finally, and I booked it, and then that’s just how it went. But I was really lucky because my parents were not stage parents in any way. My mom was there to keep me safe all the time. If I didn’t want to go on an audition for something [or] it wasn’t something I wanted to be a part of, wasn’t a problem. They never pushed me into doing anything I didn’t want to do. If I had already committed to something, obviously, you know, got to have a work ethic, but I also got to have a regular childhood. I went to regular school. I had regular friends. I never hung out in the Hollywood scene. So I feel very lucky. I got to enjoy it tremendously and travel the world at a very young age and see things that I never would have gotten to see otherwise. But also got to just be a kid the whole time. So it was pretty sweet.
Awesome. So do you remember your auditions for Brink! or Smart House or how you or your agent found out about these opportunities to become an iconic Disney channel little sister?
I really don’t remember going on the auditions. The one thing I do remember, at one point, I was going on an audition for something at the Disney offices, and the poster for Smart House was there, and I was like, This is really weird. I remember more, like, commercial auditions because I did a bunch of commercials before all that.
That completely makes sense. Well, they’re two very different movies, but really, when you think of “Disney Channel Original Movie,” those two are right up there for people in my millennial age bracket. Do you remember anything about [developing] the character of Angie in Smart House or your character for Brink!? What was it like to sort of have this teen boy in each of those different situations to try to be a little bit of a foil to?
For Brink!, I was only on set for, I think it was three days, so it was a very quick process for that one. I definitely have always been kind of a smart ass, so it wasn’t that big of a stretch for either of them. But on the Smart House set, it was actually about ten minutes from my house, and I was there for the whole filming of that. As kid actors, you have to have downtime and you have to have your school time and stuff. And Ryan Merriman, who played Ben in Smart House, was also a kid still at the time, so we did spend a decent amount of time around each other, and there was kind of this little sister-big brother dynamic. I turned tenduring the filming, and I got a new skateboard, which I didn’t know how to ride or anything. And he took it and did a bunch of tricks and stuff. And I was like, What are you doing? Don’t ruin my new skateboard. So there was definitely a little teasy dynamic, so made it kind of easy for the filming.
What was it like to play a character in a film where you are encountering so many, up to that point, rarely seen or theoretical ideas about what the future would be in a home? Do you remember what you thought about all of it and some of the technology that your character engages with?
Yeah, I mean, at that point, it was all fantasy. I’m sure people were developing it, but we had no idea. And all of it was green screen. So having to interact with things that weren’t there, it was very interesting because the director–I’m sure you know, LeVar Burton, side note, he is as great as everyone thinks he is. There’s no public persona that’s not true. He is a great, super, super nice, wonderful person to be around. He actually gave me a lava lamp for my 10th birthday. But, he’s telling you when the elephants were storming into the room or whatever. He’s over there being like, “Alright, now it’s charging at you.” We really didn’t have anything there. And that was my first experience with any green screen, and I think my only experience with that. But I definitely remember thinking, like when the floor cleaned everything, that that would be so sick to have. That’s the next thing we need to get on, I think, as a society.
Absolutely. And just the amount of projection that’s involved–I don’t know if you saw, Ryan Merriman had some paid partnership and they had him recreate scenes. So he did the “Slam Dunk (Da Funk)” scene from the party… And for your character, one of my favorite scenes is when you’re jumping on the bed while “C’est La Vie” is projected, the music video, in your bedroom. I know you had to imagine that that was there through the green screen. But looking back on it, do you have a memory about that fun moment?
I do, because I was really, really nervous to do it because when you film that, there’s no music outside, it’s just in your ear. And I remember practicing and practicing and practicing. That was probably my most practiced thing, I guess. And my best friend growing up, his name was Jafar, and we made choreography for the song so I could remember it. And we just did it all the time, well past the filming of it. But I remember being very, very nervous and then getting up there. I think they cleared a lot of the crew, so it wasn’t hundreds of eyes staring at me during it. It was actually pretty fun. And I do remember jumping on the bed and singing my song.
That’s so sweet. Aside from Ryan Merriman, I mean, you have to have a lot of trust in the adult actors, like Kevin Kilner, who played your father. In the scene where PAT is supposed to be scaring you, you all have to crouch down together and kind of hold each other. So that must have been kind of tricky on the flip side of that, getting into different emotional places as well.
Kevin was just dad vibes the whole time. And the one scene where the oranges get shot out, we actually had an orange cannon off screen, and they were fake oranges, but it was a cannon, and they were like, Listen, dude, you got to get her down before this goes off, because it was timed. And I remember us flying to the floor and he landed on my leg. Obviously no intention of doing that. Definitely some of those noises were real “holy moly” moments. But he definitely took that very seriously and made sure I was not going to get hit in the face with an orange cannon, for sure.
Of course, PAT, at one moment, is able to give [Angie] her freshly laid out clothes. So I want to talk about your fits as a DCOM star. You have great ’90s button-downs. You could rock a bandana and the pigtails so well. You’re just so adorable.
The bandanas were all mine. I used to go on auditions with them, and I still have them all. My daughter now wears them occasionally, so I guess they just kind of pulled that in because sometimes I feel like when they see something that they really like in the audition, they’re like, Okay, we’re gonna bring that on over. I do remember, though, the outfit that they had picked out that they showed that she gave me. I remember being like, Oh, that’s the ugliest thing I’ve ever seen in my life. … But it worked for the character, so all good.
You were busy auditioning and working all the time, but as a kid working with LeVar Burton, had you been a fan of Reading Rainbow and known his face from TV before you ever met him?
Oh yeah. In school all the time, I’m sure you had the same thing, they would turn on Reading Rainbow for us. And then I remember going back to school and being like, I’m working with the Reading Rainbow guy. He’s the director!! That was a big moment.
Like you talked about before, with him coaching you and the technicalities of this film, it was a really ambitious project (and I’m sure some would probably say, especially for a kids’ channel), but I think it’s really well done.
One thing I do remember: The “Slam Dunk (Da Funk) scene, I was like, 9, 10. So I was jealous that the boys got to be in this choreographed dance scene. Maybe I was annoying about it, but I hope not. But LeVar made it so I could be in that scene and do a little choreographed thing that wasn’t in the script, but he was like, All right, we’re gonna get you in here. You get to be a part of this choreographed dance scene. I’m sure he was thinking, like, Why do you want to do that? But he made it happen for me.
With your own fandom and what you enjoyed as a kid around this time when you were on the channel, did you watch Disney Channel at home and see yourself? What was that like, being a kid in that situation?
I had a core group of friends, and we hung out. It was the ’90s, so our parents didn’t know where we were most of the time. But we would hang out every week, and when I was on TGIF with Teen Angel, everyone would come over. We’d watch all of TGIF, but it wasn’t like, Oh, come look at me. It was just cool. But it was never like, Come, come see me! We would watch the premieres of everything, and it was just fun. And we would have a little party, and our house was the party house. Not, like, in a gross way. Just all the kids would come over, and then we’d go out and play, and it was pretty fun.
I love that. You really got to do pretty much everything. Movies, sitcom, working with Maureen McCormick. That is so cool.
That was another one, definitely. Because I would watch, I guess by that point, it was on TV Land or Nick at Nite, but The Brady Bunch, for sure. “Marcia! Marcia! Marcia!” But she was super sweet. She had kids right around my age at the time, too, so she was very momish and amazing. Very nice lady.
I was watching the first Au Pair movie, and to me, all these Fox Family [later ABC Family, now Freeform] movies, they’re kind of like cousins to the Disney Channel Original Movie. Similar, very comfy family vibes for a lot of them. So I was curious as to whether the process for making the Au Pair movies was similar to working with the Disney Channel.
No, it was not. And not in a bad way. It’s just a very different thing, because we filmed those movies overseas, and there’s different rules over there, so we worked a lot more. And again, my mom was there, and Fox Family was owned by the Saban family, and that Heidi Linhart was the daughter of the Sabans. So it was like a very special project for them because it’s their kid, and so they put a lot into that. They wanted this to be a really special family movie. Disney, as well, I feel like, especially at the time, there was just an emphasis on this being something that would be good for everyone to watch. You can sit down with your parents and the older siblings and the younger siblings, and there was nothing icky that you didn’t want to watch with your parents or your parents didn’t want to have you watch.
They also gave us time off, so we got to go explore whatever country we were in at the time. For the first movie, it was set in Paris, but we filmed it in Hungary, and then we went to film the B-roll in Paris for a few days. And I think we only shot for two days, but they gave us a full week there… so we got to go to the Louvre. We ended up going to [Disneyland Paris] and just doing it all up, so that was very neat.
Super fun to watch you in that project, making mischief in a whole new way and traveling the world. While I miss seeing you on TV and in these great movies, you do beautiful work now. So I would love to hear a little bit about how long you’ve been a tattoo artist and what you love about doing that.
I’m sure you know about Au Pair 3. The Sabans had nothing to do with that movie. It was very fun, we had a great time doing it, but things went awry with the script, and also Jake and I hadn’t acted since we were both 12, maybe, and they asked us to come back for it. And we were both over 18, so we got to go to Puerto Rico on our own. So we definitely signed up for that. And I think during it, I was like, I don’t think I actually know how to act at all. And it wasn’t something I wanted to do anymore, obviously. I quit when I was 12. And my parents, again, they were just like, Okay, that was a phase and we’re done with that now.
And then I just went to regular high school, did my thing, and then I kind of didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life. I wanted to go to a military academy, which I know is just totally off of acting or anything like that. But I was in ROTC in high school and I wanted to do that, but I ended up having some things that I was born with in my legs that prevents me from being in the military, which, thank goodness, I really don’t think I would have done well. But then I was kind of lost, I didn’t know what I wanted to do. I just worked regular jobs. I was a coffee shop manager, I closed down a Blockbuster, stuff like that. And I really enjoyed that, but it was like, okay, it’s time to grow up, figure out what I wanted to do. I started going to college finally, just to try and figure something out. Wasn’t for me. And I had started hanging out at a tattoo shop that was around the corner from my apartment in Los Angeles, and something clicked. They asked me if I wanted to learn how to tattoo, and I just never went back to school. I didn’t tell anybody I quit school.
It was an up and down process… That was 14 years ago, I think. Then I worked with a guy named Albert Sgambati in California at that tattoo shop. He had originally opened a shop on Long island. I ran into him at a tattoo convention in Central California, and he was there with the person he had taught how to tattoo, Ron Bianco. … I had applied to colleges again, and I had been offered a full ride to Rutgers. And that weekend I had to say yes or no. And I think it was the last day of the convention. I was sitting in my car, and I just pressed no on the form [thinking] Okay, something better work out. And I went back inside, and no joke, ten minutes later, Ron Bianco came up to me and he was like, “Do you want to come work for me?”
Whoa!
I said, “Absolutely.” So I packed up all my stuff and moved across the country to Long Island, and I worked for Ron for seven and a half years, and that’s where I met my ex-husband. But we had a daughter, and she’s nine and a half now. … We moved up [to Upstate New York], and I’ve been working up here for six and a half years now, and I just opened my own tattoo shop.
It’s going pretty great. It’s exactly what I wanted it to be and I’m ten minutes from my house, and my daughter gets to come over there and hang out with me, and my partner of five years now, he’s there all the time.
I actually saw, I think, on your Instagram that you did a parody of Brink!. It was so funny.
Yeah, that was at the tattoo shop I was at before. I kind of, not hid it, but when I started tattooing [I realized], This is who I am. This is who I’ve always been. I got my first leather jacket when I was five. But when you’re portraying the little sister and being a Disney person and stuff, people tend to think of you as that, right? They can’t separate the two. And when I started tattooing, I wanted people to want to come to me and not want to come to me because of who I was. So I kind of just kept it a secret. And then people started finding out, and then I was like, you know, who cares? That’s who I was. Also, it’s been 30 years, so people can separate that now, I think.
Well, you know what? The little sister grows up to become a badass tattoo artist and business owner. And I think people will think that that is pretty cool if they don’t know already.
Yes. I feel very lucky that I got to do all that stuff, experience all that stuff. And also, especially now, when we’re hearing about all the terrible stuff that has happened to children, particularly, in the industry that I never experienced. I was always around great people, had my mom there all the time to make sure nothing weird happened, and had their support and the support, of I felt like, everybody I ever worked with. There was never a bad time.
So that is so good to hear, especially being such a fan of Disney Channel. I know that there’s been ups and downs and people have had bad experiences, but I’m really glad that yours was good and that there are things about it that you enjoyed and that you’re happy in your life now. I think that’s wonderful.
Thank you.
If you love DCOMs, let’s connect on Instagram @pastfootforward. Katie and her awesome work can be found @ktvtattooer, and the writer of our childhood, Stu Krieger, is online @stukrieger.
Past Foot Forward 