Hey guys, Nikki Novack here for Young Hollywood on the set of ABC Family's Young and Hungry.

Hello, Jonathan. Good to see you.

Hi, how are you? Good to see you again.

Been years.

So long.

I am here with Amy Carrero.

Hi.

Hi. She wants to show you something. Little Hollywood magic. You wonder how all these clothes are perfectly tailored? They're not. This is what happens on Young and Hungry. She wants to interview me, but I got to go do a scene.

What's your name?

Nikki.

My real name is Cam.

Oh. And you changed to Hollywood. So, I'm here with David Holden. He's the creator. Should I call you Dave or David?

You know, that is interestingly, according to IMDb, you can call me either. No one calls me Dave. If you really want to be my friend, and I really sense that you do, you call me Holdy.

Holdy. What's up, Holdy? We're like, we should fist bump at this point. Boom. Is it exciting to be on a brand new show?

Very exciting. It's always exciting because, you know, it's it's a new cast and a new crew and new storylines and it's fun. This is a really like easygoing set too, so it's

Is it? Yeah. You haven't been shooting the show that long, and I mean, you seem to have good chemistry. Oh, you have great chemistry. You, I mean, the best thing you can ever do when you get on a show is immediately get to know everybody. I mean, you've worked I mean, you're no stranger to this business. You've worked on a lot of different shows before and it's just it seems to me just from the little I've been here, everybody the chemistry is like boom, instant. It's good.

I think we all get along and that's a good thing. It's a good group of people. Yeah. I've never I've worked on a lot of different shows. This is the first time I've ever seen a show where every single character is funny. Every single actor is funny.

So, we are actually in your apartment. Not your real apartment.

No.

Your TV apartment.

Yeah.

So, we would love to have a little tour.

Okay. Thanks. It's quite small and we're missing a ceiling. But um, I'll we can start this. This is the front door here. And as you can see, they've done a great job making it look aged. Cuz we don't live we live in the Mission, which is from what I understand, not, you know, the most more ritzy part of San Francisco.

Got it.

So, it needs to look lived in. Look at this. Look at this detail. They like put smutz on it to make it look

Oh, gosh. That looks like my my house.

Me too.

Okay. So, the show. So, you play a chef on the show. Yes. Um, do you have Are you a good cook? Like, I mean,

When I booked the show and we started getting going and I started understanding the character and doing some research on it, I was like, my friend Clifton Collins Jr. was like, "You're doing You're not doing anybody a favor unless you actually go home at the end of the day and cook and do what the character does and find find some little thing here and there that you can connect to cooking-wise and bring to the show." Cuz there's always something you can do in your real life to prepare for any role. And even though, you know, cooking seems like a pretty easy thing to fake.

Right.

There are some things that

No, there's not. Like the chopping thing, that is not.

The chopping is hard. I mean, you really have to know what looks real cuz otherwise that's the only thing people are going to watch. They're like, "Oh, she's not really doing that right."

Yeah. They do a good job kind of making it look lived in. It's actual There's You have to be. A little bit of food. It's Young & Hungry. Look. Booze. Yeah. And more booze. We can tell we're and and wait, what are these? And corn popcorn. I've never even heard of those things before.

It's literally called popcorn. Sweet popcorn.

Oh, that looks good. And a mango. So, we booze and we popcorn. That says a lot about you. You know.

Yeah. We're young and unattached.

Okay, so you play Elliot on the show. Uh-huh. So, you you're basically you're anti you you don't want this woman to move in and

Correct.

And become the chef.

Yes.

of your

You know, my character Elliot already has a contentious relationship with Kim's character Yolanda. So, the idea that another interloper is coming in and invading my territory is is really It's a real little territorial. In the best way possible. This is the things that go on Young & Hungry. I can't tell you, but if you watch the show, it's a little different. ABC Family is doing things a little different. It's a little edgier. You see the silk robe? It is edgy. I'm edgy.

So, you had a hand in the set design. You had a hand in pretty much every

Well, here's the set design. You want to see a couple things?

Yeah. Yeah.

Okay, so, uh like Julia Child, for example. This was taken right there's a wall in the Smithsonian where her kitchen wall had been taken out. And if you she had a little place where every single uh utensil went and she made a chalk outline. Her husband did, Paul. And I was like, "Well, we have to copy that."

Okay, we're not weirdos. They're shooting something over there. And this is another thing that happens. They pin clothes and they tell us to be quiet when they're shooting something. Otherwise, you're gonna hear us talking in the scene on the show and you'll be like, "That was those two." So, we're just gonna keep it quiet.

Yeah, I know. I thought she was just being into it. This is the kitchen area. We actually just used this for the first time, the dining room area, so it's

I like how there are actual crumbs here.

Yeah. Cuz they had to eat. They did.

Place my script. They didn't place my script. Are your scripts on the floor? Do you look down and look at your lines?

No, I would never do that. But we get rewrites.

Oh. We get rewrites like like two minutes before. As an actress, does that freak you out? Because that would freak me out.

It freaks me out a little bit, but we kind of got to the we thing. Yeah.

What else can we see? Walk over to the other one. Is there anything else here? We have fake photos of them together. This over here.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. All they're they're huge wall over here. Yeah. You know, where we have to go out and they look like they've been friends forever. forever. From when they were young. And they're all over. Like, the more you start to look for it and then in other parts. There's so many little details. I I the shoes.

Yes. Well, that's I don't we noticed it at the same time too. You know, what's weird is, you know, often you have to put up a uh right before you shoot a scene, you put up yellow tape because it's what's called a hot set. You know, you everything's in place. This looks like you just someone just came through and kind of messed it up. It really does. But this is a hot set. This is primed and what we're going to be shooting. Now, we can ding this bell too. We couldn't before when you guys were shooting. Ring for a drink. I mean, how cute is that? So cute. Do you think selfies

Turn off. Turn off. Complete turn off. Instant turn off.

So if you like a girl and you go on her Instagram, there's a selfie.

Let me tell you a funny story. It's done. Okay. There was a girl who I'm no longer friends with because every day all she did was post pictures of herself. Selfie after selfie after selfie. And she was like, "Frump. I'm having the hardest day today." And I posted, "Maybe you should post a few more pictures of yourself and you'll feel better."

When you were dating her?

No, I wasn't dating her. Um, but no, but she defriended me like that. Okay. I was like, "Beat it." Like, it like that and duck lips. Like I hate when girls do that.

That I agree with you. I agree with you. Like, no. On that one. A selfie, I can defend. You know, if I'm like if it's like you and I right here and like no one's gonna take a picture, like this. That's one thing. Right. But just like taking a bunch of them for no reason, like, come on. Don't ever look at my phone. And then this is like a a Dell computer from 1975. You know, they're broke. So, I can't. It's so heavy. It's like, look at this.

Oh, yeah. Jonathan lies through his teeth because you know how many selfies I have on my phone and how 99% of them are Jonathan stealing my phone and taking a selfie and setting it as my background photo. So, resend that, Jonathan.

If you can see the arm, if you can see the arm going like this, then it definitely

Then that's all the proof we need. No, no. He has one. He's this guy that's taking a a selfie with his arm.

This is an incredible apartment.

Yeah, it's and I'll give you the the tour. Okay. When we got picked up, we wanted to really invest in it cuz it's our main backdrop and this whole place is supposed to be an aspirational living place. So, this is what it looks like when it's lit from the front. And if you ever go to San Francisco, the view, Oh. The view. That did not just happen. It did. This is romantic. I feel like we're on a date.

Well, we should I should be so lucky.

Now, if you just you know, just a moment ago, when the lights were shining on the front of it, you got a daytime look.

Yeah.

When you see it at night, it has this nighttime look. And that's not easy to do.

No.

So, first, you got to find someone to take the picture of it. This was taken from the Mandarin Hotel. And we had to put someone up there and they take a picture of it. And then we have our daytime look. Now, in order to turn it into a nighttime look, you guys have to follow me. Oh, sorry. You okay? Whoa. Earthquakes in San Francisco. Um, at night you light it from behind.

Ah.

And that's the trick. And in order to get there, Like how do you get the the little windows to look like they're lighting? So, on this side, this whole side is hand-painted. Wherever you see the yellow, uh that's where the light can get through. And we put yellow see-through paint. The light shines on it. It looks like a little window's on. It's so cool. But you can't you don't want every single one on.

Yeah.

So, you go through, hand-paint it. And you can even see the little dots of light that are on the on the bridge. On top of which, you see how this part's darker and then it's lighter. Imagine it gives you the up-lighting effect from the other side. It's all shading that it takes weeks and weeks of

Yeah. How long did this take?

A long time.

Yeah, I can imagine. So, I was asking you about selfies. Also, because the show is tech-related, thoughts on people who uh take food pictures and Instagram food pictures. That's my favorite thing is when people take a like I I watch people at restaurants and they'll like, the food will come, they won't talk to each other for like five minutes and then they'll get the angle. And then they'll eat it. And the tag will be like, "This is the most delicious meal I've ever had," and they haven't even tried it yet. I I don't have a problem with other people doing it, but when people do it a lot, I just kind of think, "Why don't you have a life outside from food?"

This is our elevator. That's so neat. Yeah, that cool. And this works. You know, on show nights, there's a person who's has a whole control panel here, which will light the right lights. This comes out, this comes out, so you can get two cameras on either side, one at a time. It's gotten way out of control. What about food pictures, Instagramming food pictures? If someone from the 50s came today, what's the one thing you would tell them? In our pockets, we have this one machine that puts the entirety of human knowledge and information at our fingertips, and we use it to watch videos of cats and to take pictures of food. And ourselves. And literally, and ourselves.