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LOS ANGELES — He’s the star of one of the most popular kid shows on television but — just like his series once did — Devon Werkheiser manages to keep a low profile.
In the actor’s case, growing up has had something to do with keeping him under the celebrity radar. Werkheiser has gone from 12 to 16 while playing Ned Bigby, school slacker extraordinaire and star of “Ned’s Declassified School Survival Guide.” Those years have been a time in which he’s shot up several inches, listened to his voice change and, toward the end of the current season, decided to grow his hair long.
“It keeps me incognito most of the time,” the friendly, self-effacing Nickelodeon star says with a chuckle. “But kids who know the show, they recognize me.”
Which means his days of public anonymity could be numbered. After two seasons of slowly building an audience, “Ned’s Declassified” has become this season’s breakout hit among the 14 and under set, regularly landing in the top five among live-action kids shows watched by that age group.
“Ned’s Declassified” has been mildly shocking in its approach since Day 1, having been constructed more like an animated show than a live-action comedy. There are bright, flashy colors, quick cuts and camera effects that sometimes have Ned, Moze and Cookie, their nerdy comrade in arms, racing through the halls of fictional James K. Polk Middle School at lightning speed.
Shown in back-to-back segments of 15 minutes each, the 30-minute show doesn’t try so much to tell a story as lift chapters from Ned’s survival guide, which he describes in first-person to the camera as the chaos his advice invariably creates unfolds all around him.
“It’s almost like a cartoon, and kids love that,” says 16-year-old Daniel Lee Curtis, whose portrayal of Cookie also has let him pass under the celebrity radar. Hiding behind gadgety glasses, this teenager of a thousand facial expressions (all of them geeky) is all but unrecognizable when he switches to his real identity.
“I go to public school,” says the 10th grader from Long Beach.” Some girls at school go, ‘Daniel, you were such a nerd. … ’ I say, ‘I was acting. I’m not that,”’ says Curtis who, minus glasses and the deer-in-the-headlights expressions, is a strapping school football player.