Corsages, limos and lots of photos can only mean one thing:prom!
However, when Mandy finds out the prestigious university put her on the waitlist, she decides she’ll do anything she can to get in, including getting a recommendation from popular jock Graham’s (Blake Draper) Harvard alum dad (Christopher Shyer).
Eric Milner/Disney
“Harvard is my life’s ambitions,” Mandy says in the trailer.
After insulting Graham at a house party she crashed, Mandy offers to tutor him as an apology. That allows Graham and Mandy to get to know each other, and learn there may be more to one another than they initially suspected.
“Graham Lansing is not who I thought he was,” Mandy admits.
Mandy decided to go to prom with her best friend Ben (Milo Manheim), but her budding relationship with Graham may cause her to second guess that.
Kailey Schwerman/Disney
Bowen, 52, signed on to executive produceProm Pact, even though she herself never went to prom.
“I went to a small boarding school in Rhode Island. We did not have a prom,” Bowen, 52, tells PEOPLE. “Maybe that’s why I am obsessed with the idea of prom as a right of passage. It will always have an air of fantasy to it for me because I never got to experience the reality.”
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In high school, Bowen says she considered herself a mix of the “best friend to the boys” (she points to Mary Stuart Masterson’s character Watts inSome Kind of Wonderful) and the “frustrated sister who follows all the rules” simialar to Jennifer Grey’s Jeannie inFerris Bueller.“When Jeannie ends up making out with a dirty looking Charlie Sheen at the end ofFerris Bueller, I almost died!” Bowen says. “The uptight sister gets the cool bad boy! It was just the best.”
Tyler Demogenes/Disney
The mother of three, who says she grew up on John Hughes movies, signed on toProm Pactthanks to writer Anthony Lombardo, who she worked with onModern Family. Bowen also saw it as an opportunity to put a modern twist on moments she loved from of ’80s teen movies.
“There is a real nostalgia for ’80s music and movies right now, but if you really look at those films, they can be problematic,” Bowen says. “It felt like the right moment to to tap into the love for the ’80s, without letting the ’80s off the hook completely.”
“I never thought about producing seriously, but then Anthony Lombardo pitched me the idea of a feminist high school senior who is more obsessed with Harvard than prom and all the trappings of senior year. I came up with the ‘pushing back against the ’80s’ idea, and suddenly we were off to the races!”
Reflecting on high schoolers today, Bowen believes social media and the “one-upmanship” of prom “spoils” the fun for today’s teens.
“I love how creative kids are about their promposals, but I don’t understand why every second has to be recorded and shared in order to ‘count,'” she says. “I guess I’m a dinosaur.”
The actress also says she felt “protective” of the young cast, like when it came to photos of its star on set getting out.“When I would get photos of Peyton trying on outfits, it was important to me that she felt empowered to say, ‘Nope’ if a T-shirt was unflattering in her eyes. How did she feel about the degree of skin being shown? How does Peyton want to show or not show her body,” Bowen says. “How I felt about the outfits was secondary to her comfort level. She didn’t need that ‘mother hen’ routine from me — the younger actors are digital natives — but I couldn’t help myself.”
Disney
The two-time Emmy winner plans to watchProm Pactwith her sons Gustav and John, 13, and Oliver, 15, even though she acknowledges they might not think of themselves as the movie’s target demographic.
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Prom Pact, also starringMargaret ChoandWendi McLendon-Covey, premieres March 30 on Disney Channel and March 31 on Disney+.
source: people.com
