American Cheerleader

Reporting by Jennifer Renée Smith

STAR STRUCK EXTRA!!

Get to Know: Tiffany Thornton

Claim to Fame: Playing Tawni Hart on Disney channel’s “Sonny with a Chance”

Cheer Career: Three years at A&M Consolidated HS in College Station, TX.

AC: Did you have previous cheer or gymnastics experience prior to trying out for your junior HS and HS teams?

Tiffany Thornton: I took gymnastics from ages 5 to 7 and really enjoyed it. I get bored really easily and switched activities a lot when I was younger. Before I was in gymnastics I took ballet for a week and was like, “Mom I don’t like it—it’s too slow. I was just kind of here, there, everywhere.”

AC: That’s until you discovered your love for cheerleading.

Tiffany: Yes, but then during eighth grade I stopped cheering for four months, which was insane for me to do. At the time, I also played tennis and basketball and had to make a choice and picked basketball.

AC: You chose not to cheer your senior year. Was that hard for you?

Tiffany: I went from a huge public school with close to 700 people in each class to a tiny private school, and just assumed that every cheerleader would want to be friends with me because I’d cheered my whole life, and those were the people I related to. But they weren’t as welcoming as I thought. You know, the new blonde girl coming in with her sports car who wants to be an actress. I’m sure they got that all the time. Now, I’m friends with everyone and we laugh about it, but at the time, it was a little rough.

AC: Did your team spend a lot of time working on technique and flexibility?

Tiffany: Our squad really focused on jump technique. All of us had level if not hyper-extended jumps. We did about 50 jumps a day at practice and we stretched a lot. I would say, our jumps and flexibility were more important than our tumbling, because we didn’t want it to be a challenge.

AC: What do you do to stay in shape now? Do you take advantage of the cool classes Hollywood has to offer?

Tiffany: I get super-nervous when I go to any kind of cardio class. Instead, I’ll go to the gym and literally get on the elliptical for an hour. I call it ellipticizing. I’m really petite so it doesn’t put much stress on my joints.

AC: “SWAC” is your first series as a regular cast member. What have you been most surprised to discover?

Tiffany: I thought it was going to be really challenging to memorize all my lines. I kept thinking, “How in the world am I going to do this? What’s my line again?” But you just get so used to it. I read the script a few times through before our table read it during rehearsal, and then we read through each scene over and over again. That’s the easiest way to memorize—speaking it out loud. It came so much easier than I thought it would.

AC: When you’re not shooting scenes for “SWAC,” making appearances at charity events and attending red-carpet premieres, what fills up your free time?

Tiffany: Right now, I’m really focusing on writing and recording music, and figuring out what I want my sound to be.

AC: Has your family gotten a chance to attend a taping of the show?

Tiffany: Yes, everyone in my family has come to a taping except my brother, who’s a father of two and kind of has his hands full. My family’s in awe over it all. It’s something we all wanted for me for so long and to see it actually unfold, it’s just such a blessing. I feel honored that God trusts me to impact our youth and put a smile on their faces.

Check out the April issue of American Cheerleader for an extended interview with Tiffany, on newsstands now!