Name: Tommy MattocksMajor: EnglishYear: JuniorHometown: Elon, North Carolina
Q: How did you land the role as a Walt Disney World Entertainer?A: I auditioned and the way it was set up was you went into the audition room, and they had three people from casting sitting at a table. The first round consisted of just a simple movement routine across the dance floor. They made a big cut after that round and only a few of us were left in my group. The next round they brought all of the remaining people in each group into a room where they taught us a dance. This is where it got interesting because on top of the dance we had to animate planting a tree, and acting like a monkey. So for a few eight counts we did the dance then we had to switch over to our animation that we came up with. After this round they made another cut and the remainder of us got a notification that we had made it into the character pool. Two weeks later I got an e-mail saying that I had been offered a role as a character performer! Out of 350 people that auditioned that day only 35 of us got offered the position to be a performer.
Q: What characters did you play?A: Woody, Goofy, Tigger, Queen of Hearts, Captain Hook, Baloo, Br’er Bear, Green Army Man, and Genie.
Q: Who was your favorite character to play and why?A: Probably a three way tie between Woody, Goofy, and Tigger. Woody because everyone loves him and I had some pretty special meet and greets with Make-a-Wish families with him. Goofy because he’s iconic and part of the original gang, and Tigger because I got chosen out of all the people that play Tigger, to play him in the Halloween parade.
Q: Tell us about a crazy tourist incident:A: One time I was playing Goofy in the Move It, Shake it, Celebrate it parade and when the floats came to a stop, a guy kept calling Goofy’s name. I was used to hearing whatever character I was portraying’s name called out so I didn’t think anything of it. Well when I turned around the crazy guest jumped onto the float and grabbed me from behind. Needless to say I got out of there pretty quickly, and was Chloe facing in my head the entire time.
Q: Who is your favorite Disney Princess and why?A: Aurora, hands down. She’s the hottest princess, has the best looking prince, has the best singing voice and the most Bad A** villain, Maleficent.
Q: What’s one thing that you took away from this experience?A: Definitely to follow my dreams. Being a character performer was definitely a dream come true and it was surreal, but it was never my dream job. After nearly 3 years at Disney, I knew I wanted to go back to school to finish and Disney taught me to chase those dreams and to pursue them.
Q: What all are you involved with on campus?A: I’m social chair for my fraternity, Phi Gamma Delta (Fiji), I’m a senator in SGA, representing Mountaineer Hall, and a member of the Student Affairs committee. I also play club tennis for the school.
Contributing writer: Laureston Hawley