Jason Earles Recalls Lying About His Age To Get Cast On Hannah Montana
The actor was 28 when he got hired to play a 16-year-old.
A popular piece of Disney Channel lore that pops up a lot is that Jason Earles was significantly older than his Hannah Montana character, Jackson Stewart. Miley Stewart’s goofy older brother was about 16 years old on when the show premiered in 2006. At the time, Earles was almost double that age at 28. Two decades later, the actor has finally revealed how he managed to land the part despite the large age gap.
Earles told the full story of how he hid his real age during the early Hannah Montana years on the March 17 premiere of his Best of Both Worlds podcast.
"I was desperately afraid that I was going to be fired and recast because I had a big secret," Earles said. "When I auditioned for the show, I lied to them and told them I was 18 years old."
At the time, Earles was really 28, and he recalled thinking, "The character's 16, nobody's gonna buy it." However, some words of encouragement from a casting director motivated Earles to go all-in on the lie. "What's funny is Lisa London, who cast it, when she brought me in, she was like, 'Hey, I know you're 19,' because I had lied to her in a different audition. And she was like 'Would you be okay, when you go in there, would you lie and tell them that you're 18?' I was like, 'I think I can do that.'"
After getting cast, Earles kept up the ruse until about halfway through the first season when the network finally discovered the truth. Earles recalled how a Disney executive confronted him about the lie.
"I remember one of the higher-up network executives showed up on show night and was like, 'Hey, you're, uh, 28? And you're married?' I was like, 'Yeah, that girl I keep making out with…that's my wife,'" Earles said. "And he was like, 'Any more secrets? Anything else we should know? Do you have any kids?' I was like 'No,' and he was like, 'Let's go ahead and keep it that way for a few years.'"
While the conversation had an air of tension to it, Earles added that it did end on a somewhat uplifting note: "He did say, 'Thank you so much for lying to us because we would've gotten nervous if we'd found out during the pilot and we would've recast you.'"
