“The minute I came out into the sunshine and smelled the air, I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, this is home,‘” Lizzy Greene said, fresh off a flight from LAX to DFW Airport. The 21-year-old actress was speaking in a recent video call from the back seat of a moving car, and although she was running on only two hours of sleep, her face lit up as she praised her native state.
“Texas is where my soul is,” said Greene, who grew up in the Dallas area. “My whole family’s here. That’s why I come so often, or try to.”
Now a resident of Los Angeles, Greene cut her teeth as a child actor on the sitcom Nicky, Ricky, Dicky & Dawn, which ran on Nickelodeon from 2014 to 2018. Greene played Dawn, the only girl among the titular impish quadruplets. But her latest role in the new Netflix Western series Ransom Canyon represents a return to her roots.
The show, which premieres April 17, is set in the Lone Star State and borrows its name from a small town in Lubbock County (shooting, though, mainly took place in New Mexico).
Greene stars as Lauren Brigman, the sheriff’s daughter and Ransom Canyon High School’s head cheerleader. Lauren is the quintessential cheerleader type — blond and popular with an on-off quarterback boyfriend. Despite her ostensibly cushy life, she’s desperate to escape town and start anew far from her family’s complicated dynamics.
Greene spoke to The Dallas Morning News about the parallels between herself and Lauren, being a pseudo Texas historian for the show and what it was like to grow up on screen. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
What goes through your mind before a project releases?
Given the show is Texas based, I’m curious how peers of mine are going to perceive it — if they’re gonna like it. There’s definitely some anxiety there because we want to represent Texas in the most authentic way. Me and my co-star, Garrett [Wareing], we’re both from Texas. We were kind of the point of contact for making things realistic. In the opening scene, one of the characters originally picked some bluebonnets to put on a grave. We were like, “Oh, no, you can’t do that here.”
What’s interesting to you about playing a character like Lauren?
Sometimes, as an actor, you get stuff that feels so far-fetched, and you’re kind of like, OK, I don’t feel like I’m gonna get this, but I’ll do a shot in the dark and see if it happens. When this one came in, it felt close to home. My mom went to UT. My dad was an Aggie. There’s this cheerleading storyline. My mom was an NCA cheerleader. All of it felt very kismet.
[Lauren] makes a few mistakes here and there, but her intentions are always rooted in following her heart, even if that gets her in trouble.
She’s spunky, she’s athletic, which I love. People that are close to her are really important to her — a quality that we share.
How was the transition going from acting on Nickelodeon to more fraught roles?
A lot of the time you can get pigeonholed in this child actor box and people think you are not capable of doing anything else. There’s definitely not a book on how to transition from child acting to adult acting, but I think it’s a big testament to my co-stars. I learned a lot from them. Since I didn’t go to high school, set was basically my school experience. Every morning, it would be like I’m a sponge, trying to soak up as much as I can.
What did you learn about yourself from growing up on set and in the public eye?
I had someone say one time, “If you do not know who you are outside of acting, you will never be a good actor.” It is an amazing thing that we’re blessed to do, but it also is a job. Growing up in that environment, the core of my existence was work. The older I got, the more I realized that in order to be fully present, you have to have a great support system and have activities that make you human. I’m big into sports and I love art — that’s my therapy outlet I found outside of acting.
Hollywood it’s like a fairy tale land, right? You could be working one day on top of the world, and then you could be out of a job for eight months. I have to slow things down in my day-to-day life when I’m not working.
You have been living away from Texas for a while. Is there anything that this state gives you that maybe California doesn’t?
Dallas is my home. Texas is the cornerstone of what grounds me. I didn’t grow up in LA, I didn’t grow up in that world. Whenever I come here, it’s just so easy living. I can sleep on my bed. I can hang with my pets. The goal one day [is] I want to have a ranch out here and then fly back whenever I’m needed and raise a family here.
Are you into the Western genre?
My family is obsessed with all of the Paramount+ Westerns. I’ve actually never watched them, but I would always walk through and they’re like, “You gotta watch Yellowstone.” Then I’d watch Euphoria or something like the complete opposite. (Laughs.) I always thought that Westerns were not going to be my genre and then Ransom [Canyon] came along.
In 2016, you told The News one of your first acting experiences was a musical in Plano. What play was it?
Yeah that’s crazy. I did a lot of plays back in the day. I’m trying to remember specifically what play it was, but overall it was always comedy. That’s where I learned the fundamentals of acting. I still see all of my fellow castmates from that theater company to this day.
What was it about being onstage that made you want to be an actor?
As a kid, I had so much energy. My mom, she’s like, I put you in acting because I needed you to not be bouncing off the walls at home.
I loved to make people laugh — that’s everything to kids. Kids aren’t watching dramas, kids aren’t watching anything really except for comedies. That was the prize — waving a camera in front of my face. From doing that and seeing the reactions out of people, it invigorated me to keep going. I spent multiple years of my life working with that theater company.
I was juggling also playing soccer at the time. I would miss practice or I would miss games. I would completely forget that I had games that day because I was just so into [theater]. I’m a little too used to being on a set. I don’t know if I would [do] well with a bunch of people watching, but it’d be really cool to go back to my roots.
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