A young actor from Vancouver Island has his foot securely in the door of the booming TV and film industry and he’s only just getting started.
Fifth-grader, Kairo Ryan Ellis is only 10-years-old and has already met and worked with some of the biggest names in Hollywood.
Most recently he got to work on a musical comedy series with Keegan-Michael Key, who’s best known for his work on Key & Peele and MadTV, as well as Cecily Strong, who made a name for herself on Saturday Night Live.
The show is called Schmigadoon! And it streams on Apple TV+ in Canada. Ellis has gotten to be in four of the second season’s episodes, the last of which is episode six and it comes out on May 3rd.
Ellis’ role isn’t a huge one, but according to Konstantin Stanislavski, the father of modern acting, “there are no small roles, only small actors”, and Ellis has a big personality packed into a boy his age.
Schmigadoon! follows Josh and Melissa (Key and Strong) who are a struggling couple that have their lives transformed after they get trapped in a magical musical town with a mission to complete.
It has a 93% ‘Certified Fresh’ rating on Rotten Tomatoes and it has a 7.3 rating on IMDb.
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This isn’t Ellis’ first rodeo either. He already has a few big credits to his name, one of which is a film called Fragile Seeds and he worked on another movie, which was his first on-screen acting role, called Rip in Time.
“Rip in time was my first,” said Ellis. “It was my first audition ever and I somehow booked it.”
In that film he played the lead character’s younger counterpart in flashback sequences. His role in Fragile Seeds was similarly a flashback, younger version of one of the film’s leads.
Ellis has a new film coming out soon that he is absolutely buzzing about, in which he plays a leading, speaking role, and it incorporates his two favourite things to boot.
“I want to be a hockey actor,” Ellis exclaimed when asked what his dream job would be when he grew up.
“When [his agent] first signed him, he said hockey when she asked, ‘what’s your favourite thing in the world,’ and she said, ‘oh that’s not going to work,’” said Ellis’ mother, Jessica.
“So far two of the jobs he’s gotten he plays hockey,” she laughed.
Christmas Goals is a Hallmark movie following a hockey team that was filmed in Vernon back in March of this year.
The Ellises aren’t sure if that film will be coming out for the ‘Christmas in July’ run of films Hallmark releases yearly, or if it’ll be put on the backburner and released in December, but either way they are all very excited.
Looking even further ahead into the future, Victoria Buzz asked Ellis what his dream role would be and without skipping a beat he said, “Mighty Ducks”.
For now he and his family are celebrating the impressive successes he’s found thus far in his acting career while he continues to play hockey and act in the Sooke School District’s musical theatre program where he can cut his teeth. This year he will be performing in a rendition of Matilda, School of Rock and Glee.
Ellis has been acting since he was 6-years-old in Victoria and around BC and he shows no signs of slowing down anytime soon.
Keep an eye out for him on May 3rd’s episode of Schmiggadoon on Apple TV+.
