Make Page Six a Preferred Source “Life With Derek” star Michael Seater admitted he and co-star Ashley Leggat “leaned into” the onscreen step-sibling romance fans wanted on the Disney Channel show.
“Here’s the thing. We had an undeniable chemistry that the fans loved,” Seater explained on the Back to the Best podcast. “And then, listen, romance has never been bigger, right?”
“We knew that the fans liked it, so we leaned into it without letting the writers or the producers know that we were leaning into it,” Seater confessed.
“We’d be like sitting on a couch, they’d be like, ‘Can you maybe separate yourselves a little on the couch?’ But we were like, ‘How many shows have existed on will they, won’t they for so many years?’”
The Canadian teen sitcom, which was broadcast on Disney Channel between 2005 and 2009, starred Seater as the titular Derek, a laid-back underachiever who frequently clashed with his uptight stepsister Casey (Leggat) when their two families blended after their parents’ marriage.
The actor said that in the early days of the show, he and Leggat were aware that fans were rooting for the unconventional and inappropriate romance through online forums, but producers had zero clue.
Want more celebrity and pop culture news? Start your day with Page Six Daily.
However, according to Seater, after four seasons, it wasn’t just the actors who were aware of the covert dynamic being fostered between Derek and Casey.
“What’s crazy is like, the very last scene — they were sort of aware of it by the end. But [Jeff Biederman], one of the writers who wrote when [Casey] goes, ‘Derek, you’re the [best] of a brother ever.’ And he goes, ‘Stepbrother.’ Corrects her that it’s stepbrother with a smirk.”
“I mean, I know what I’m doing there, but he says he did not mean that to be such an encapsulating moment of that whole thing,” Seater recalled. “So yeah, we knew what we were doing, at least some of us.”
Fan love for the forbidden pairing was so strong at one point that the “ship name” Dasey was given to Derek and Casey for the purposes of discussing their “will they, won’t they” romance.
Over a decade after the show’s finale, Leggat even endorsed the odd coupling on X in 2020.
Your voice matters. Discussions are moderated for civility. Read our guidelines here
Community Guidelines Welcome to the Page Six Community! Our community is about connecting people through open and thoughtful conversations. We want our readers to share their views and exchange ideas in a safe space.
In order to do so, we've created a simple set of rules that will improve your experience.
Your post will/might be rejected if it contains:
User accounts will/might be blocked if we notice:
Thanks for reading our community guidelines. Don't forget, freedom of speech is not the freedom of reach!
