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Photo Credit: Steve Bigler

THE STAR SCOOP:
Tell us what’s going on in your life at the moment.

AMY RIDER:
We started shooting the third season [of The Secret Life of the American Teenager]. That’s been a lot of fun. I think we’re working on the fourth episode now. Time just seems to be shooting by. Other than that, I’m pretty much a boring person. I don’t club a lot. I just kind of stay home. I’m a big homebody.

THE STAR SCOOP:
The Secret Life of the American Teenager is doing really well. How has that affected you?

AMY RIDER:
When I get around teens or tweens. We went to Disneyland the other day, some of the cast. It was pretty crazy. I definitely feel like a rock star when I’m around younger kids.

THE STAR SCOOP:
Playing a teenager character, being on this kind of show, do you have a responsibility to be someone these kids can look up to?

AMY RIDER:
I feel a responsibility to the character and I guess to tell the story the writers have written. I think that they do a pretty good job in making good role models in a sense. A lot of people think the show promotes sex. It really doesn’t. It actually kind of shows there are some pretty big consequences in making choices that may or may not be positive. So, I think the show almost does that for me. But I definitely do feel like I want to put forth a good sort of model for kids to follow for sure. I don’t think it takes a lot of effort for that, I think they do it for me.

THE STAR SCOOP:
When the show started, did you anticipate it would do really well? What were you thinking when you booked it?

AMY RIDER:
I had no idea and I was really just hoping that it was going to do well enough for us to get picked up for a second season. I don’t know if any of us did. The crew members have told me they were like, I knew, I knew, I knew. I don’t think any of the cast members knew.

THE STAR SCOOP:
Tell us about where Alice has been in the course of the show, how she has evolved.

AMY RIDER:
Alice is Ben’s best friend, along with Henry, who is also her boyfriend. They have this sort of on and off relationship. They just got back together in the series finale, which is cool. Alice is a really, really smart girl for her age. And she’s almost a little bit too smart for her age. She tends to get frustrated with other people sometimes. She has a bit of a controlling streak to her. She’ll do things like slap people and hit people and yell in the hallways, which is a lot of fun. She’s a fun character.

THE STAR SCOOP:
Are there aspects of her that relate to you? Is she totally different? How hard or easy is it for you to get into that character?

AMY RIDER:
It’s pretty easy for me to get into. I’m not like her in my life. I don’t go around quoting statistics on sex. Many times people who watch the show, if I meet them in person, they do not recognize me. I look very different in real life. There’s a lot of differences between us. In the sense that she kind of does what she wants, I sort of feel like I have that in me.

THE STAR SCOOP:
What can fans expect from the third season ofThe Secret Life of the American Teenager?

AMY RIDER:
I think that you’re going to see the dark side of one character in particular that started to get tapped into earlier. That’s going to be interesting. It’s going to deal with issues I don’t think have been broached before by the show. I don’t how much I’m allowed to say!

THE STAR SCOOP:
Why do you think The Secret Life of the American Teenager has been as successful as it has been and drawn such an audience?

AMY RIDER:
I think it appeals to people on a lot of different levels. One thing I find interesting is that sometimes when people use pregnancy in a story line on a teen soap opera, it’s one of those things that comes in and goes out of a show. It doesn’t really focus on that. You don’t really grasp the depth of how big teenage pregnancy is. Pregnancy in general, how life consuming. One thing that’s cool about this show is there’s that whole element of realism. There’s no nice, neat wrap up. It’s not like it comes and goes for entertainment’s sake. It’s something she has to deal with from beginning to end and for the rest of her life, and it chronicles that. I think it’s kind of interesting. It’s brings a whole other element to the love triangle.

THE STAR SCOOP:
What do you want to say to your fans and what do you want them to know?

AMY RIDER:
Thank you so much for watching the show. Hopefully I will continue to do good work everyday, try to do a good job. I hope that we keep the quality of the show up…I’m a screenwriter, so I write as well. Basically, that’s probably why I don’t party a lot [laughs]. I stay home writing a lot. That’s something that I’m hopefully trying to get off the ground. Hopefully they can look forward to me writing some cool stuff. I’ve never strayed from loving writing.