Monty Geer has come a long way since graduating from Snohomish High School.
He went from being a tennis-playing class president to a rabble-rousing stoner.
That’s his character on MTV’s “Awkward,” a comedy about teen angst and antics at a California high school.
You can see him in the new season that airs at 10 p.m. Tuesday night on MTV.
The fresh-faced actor plays a pranking gay student named Cole. His role has been described as part of “a gay dynamic duo who ooze mischief and trouble.”
Yep, that’s him, behind the black glasses and under gallons of hair gel, strutting around in hipster clothes.
In real life, he doesn’t wear glasses or the duds.
“I’m wearing a white T-shirt and jeans,” he said in a phone interview from California. “I wear more bland stuff. Whatever is comfortable. Sweatpants and faded Snohomish T-shirts.”
Geer won’t give his age. It goes along with playing a teen on TV when you’re not a teen.
“I look like I’m 17,” he said. “I feel like I’m a kid at heart. I get to play pretend. I’m always goofing off having fun.”
Actually, he has worked extremely hard since leaving Snohomish for New York City.
“I went to NYU,” he said. “I did tons of improv and stand-up. For a year you just bomb and do awful and it feels terrible.”
After that, he went to Tinseltown with big ambitions. He did commercials. He was in “Raised by Wolves,” a movie he humbly called a “B-rated horror film. I was punk skater and all my friends started to die. We all died. I was the last one to die,” he said.
He scored the “Awkward” role “after tons and tons of auditions. I was homeless for three months, sleeping on friends’ couches. I didn’t think I got it. I was depressed and cried.”
This is his second season of the series that premiered in July of 2011.
“The joking aspect is me in real life. In a loving way,” Geer said. “In high school I was always the class clown. I was really, really short for my age and that’s why I started trying to be funny.”
His girlfriend, Shelby Wulfert, is on Disney Channel’s “Liv and Maddie.”
“We met in an ADD medicine commercial,” Geer said.
Off the set, he goes to high schools to give motivational speeches to teens.
“People can live their dreams no matter where you start. A lot of people are afraid because they think they are going to fail. Jump off the cliff and build your wings on the way down. Just go for it.”
He hopes to speak at Snohomish County schools later this year when he visits his mom, Terry Lloyd, and his dad, Bill Geer, and sister, Annaliese Geer.
Even though he’s landed a pretty sweet role, he feels he has a long way to go.
“I still get stage fright.”
Andrea Brown: 425-339-3443; abrown@heraldnet.com. Twitter: @reporterbrown.
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