The pink-haired girl from LazyTown's pilot has shared a sweet memory of her late co-star. If that sentence means precisely nothing to you, allow us to take you back to 2004, when LazyTown - an Icelandic children’s show about health and fitness - first aired.
Starring Julianna Rose Mauriello (and later Chloe Lang) as Stephanie, the aforementioned pink-haired girl, LazyTown followed Stephanie and superhero Sportacus’s quest to keep the LazyTown community fit and healthy.
However, in the show's unaired pilot, Stephanie was played by actor Shelby Young, who has now shared some memories from her short time filming.
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Stephanie and Sportacus's efforts were often thwarted by the late Stefan Karl Stefansson’s character, Robbie Rotten, and in a new TikTok video, Young reflected on her time on the show, sharing a sweet memory about Stefansson.
Check out Young's touching tribute:
Young posted her video in response to a fan who asked: “Do you have pictures of you as Stephanie?”
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Young replied: “I do!” as photos of her as the eight-year-old fitness fanatic popped up on screen.
Taking her followers through the snaps, Young explained: “This is me in the full Stephanie costume with Magnus as Sportacus. I also have a bunch of promotional images here - literally, training to do the splits was a big deal for me, ‘cause I’m not flexible.”
She went on: “Here I am with [the show’s puppets]. These two were actual puppets, Pixel and Ziggy, but Trixie and Stingy were just little sculptures at this point.”
The child star continued: “As I’m sure you guys know, we filmed everything on a green screen, so I was acting to tennis balls a lot of the time.
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“But again, there were some puppets. You can sort of see a guy in a green suit behind that was controlling Pixel. [That was] very interesting to get used to as a ten-year-old.”
As a photo of the show’s puppeteer flashed up on screen, Young sweetly noted: “Here’s the puppeteer for Ziggy, he was one of my favourite people on set from what I can remember. Everybody was so nice, but I just remember we bonded.”
But she gave a particularly touching shout out to Stefansson, who died in 2018 after being diagnosed with bile duct cancer.
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Young shared: “Here is Stefan Karl, rest in peace. He was Robbie Rotten, he was an amazing man. This was before they fully got the prosthetics on his face.”
Young was unable to play Stephanie in LazyTown’s actual series because of union restrictions - she was notably just ten at the time of filming.
She has gone on to have a successful career as a voice actor, lending her vocal talent to the likes of Marvel's What If...? and Ghostbusters: After Life.
Featured Image Credit: TikTok / @shelbyhyoungTopics: Celebrity, TikTok, TV and Film