Christian Isaiah may only be 12-years-old but he’s already making his mark in the acting industry in a BIG way. The actor, who plays youngest Gallagher kid, Liam, on Showtime’s comedy-drama series Shameless is in the midst of filming the 10th season of the show as well as promoting his new action crime drama, 21 Bridges, which was released on Nov. 22, so when he sat down with HollywoodLife for an EXCLUSIVE interview, he sure had a lot of epic details to spill!
“Liam’s part in the show is just amazing, he tries to find his identity,” Christian EXCLUSIVELY gushed to us when speaking about his character’s part in the current season. “He has family members that live across the street that he never knew about. There’s just certain things that he’s just so happy about cause he finds his identity and it’s just the best.”
Christian also talked about how working alongside such an eclectic group of talented actors, including William H. Macy and Emmy Rossum, who play his wild family members on the series, can be fun, but because of his young age, they are cautious about what scenes he’s able to stick around for. “It depends on what’s usually going on in this scene that they probably don’t really want me to know about but other than that it’s like they treat me as a family member,” he explained. “I just feel really good to wake up in the morning and go to work and see everyone. It just makes me really happy.”
Christian’s role as the young version of Chadwick Boseman‘s main character, Andre, in his latest film 21 Bridges is quite the departure from his Shameless act, but with the various roles he has under his belt (he played a young Tupac Shakur in the 2018 TV series Unsolved: The Murders of Tupac and the Notorious B.I.G.), he was able to take on the challenge. “My character is sort of like that natural person with instinct,” he said about his role in the film. “It’s very vibrant when it comes to certain things like the character will just look around and be like, ‘Why is this here? Why is that here?’ He’s just very attentive.”
The young star also promised that the plot of 21 Bridges is an exciting one full of suspense and nonstop action. “This cop is trying to find the people who killed his dad cause his dad was a cop,” he explained before touching base on the moment he appears in the drama. “At that moment he’s not a detective. As a little boy, he’s like, ‘Why could this happen to me? Why did they take my dad?’ He just wants to know all these certain questions that he can’t really find out. It’s just a really good movie, it’s really wonderful.”
Although Christian is hard at work whenever he’s acting in Shameless or any film roles he earns, he doesn’t let it stop him from embracing his childhood and having fun on set whenever he can and he credits co-star William, who he calls “Bill”, for his most fun moment of 2019. “William H. Macy is like, we’re really just close, we do everything,” he admitted. “He ordered me a fart gun. It was the best ever. We just like pranked everyone on the set, it was amazing.”
Find out what Christian had to say about his role as Tupac, his favorite holiday traditions, what he hopes to achieve in 2020, and more in our full EXCLUSIVE interview with him in the video above.