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“Summerland” a new hit series that made its debut last summer has returned with new episodes on Mondays, at 8:00 – 9:00 p.m., CST following “7^th Heaven” on The WB. A series about a young career woman and her three friends raising the three children of her late sister and brother-in-law is an excellent family show. Lori Loughlin from “Full House” plays Ava Gregory the aunt facing the biggest challenge of her life.

 Recently on The Viewers Voice TV Show I had the pleasure of doing a phone interview with one of the young stars from “Summerland,” Kay Panabaker. Kay plays thirteen-year-old Nikki who has always adored her aunt but sometimes resents Ava’s attempts to fill her late sister’s shoes.

 Kay Panabaker is a young actress with a long list of theater, film, and television credits. This talented fourteen-year-old is also very smart and graduated from high school at age thirteen.

 Texas born, Kay moved to Philadelphia, Atlanta, and then Chicago. After appearing in Community Theater, she started her professional acting career at ten years old with the Chicago Shakespeare Theatre’s production of “The Herbal Bed.” Then came the lead role in a locally filmed movie “American Girls: Kit’s World.” From the success of that film, she decided to go to Los Angeles to test the waters. After the first week of auditioning, she was cast in the feature film “Dead Heat” starring opposite Kiefer Sutherland and Anthony LaPaglia. She has also done voice over on the animated feature film “Monster’s Inc.

Television was her next challenge and she had recurring roles on The WB’s “Angel,” and Nickelodeon’s “The Brother Garcia” and had guest appearances on “7^th Heaven,” “The Division,” “Port Charles,” “Fillmore” and NBC’s “ER.” It was for her role on the hit show “ER” that Kay was nominated for a 2003 Young Artist Award.

Kay now resides in Los Angeles with her parents, older sister Danielle, who is also an actress, and their Yorkshire Terrier Peanut.

Laurie Muffler, my co-host, and I did the following interview with Kay on the phone from Los Angeles:

Sharon: I understand you graduated from high school at the age of thirteecrn and now you’ve completed a semester of college in English and Chemistry?

Kay: That was actually last spring. I’m now finishing up my well, fourth quarter; in review we have two semesters, spring and fall and we have the little quarter semesters in summer and winter and I’m picking up my winter semester right now.

Sharon: What are you actually looking at doing for a career, are you planning on acting or are you planning on going in a different direction?

Kay: I plan on continuing with acting as far as it will take me, because right now I’m so loving it, but who knows where I’ll be in oh say ten years. But I really enjoy teaching also. My fourth and fifth grade teachers were phenomenal they taught me so much and they really put the love for learning in me. That’s actually what I’m hoping to get my degree in, is liberal arts, so that I can teach fourth and fifth grade hopefully if acting doesn’t work out.

Sharon: I understand you’ve also done other things like having your voice in “Monsters Inc.”

Kay: I did, I did a bunch of additional voices for that. In the beginning as the two mean monsters are walking to work there are these kids jump roping with one of the monsters tongue. That was one part and while we were saying the rhyme we had to hold our tongue with our fingers, so that made it kind of fun.

Laurie: You’re also in the Disney Channel’s new series “Phil of the Future”?

Kay: Yes, I did fourteen out of twenty-one episodes the first season. We shot those from August 2003 to February 2004 and that was before we started shooting “Summerland.” Now we’re finishing up our second season while they’re just picking-up their first season so hopefully when “Summerland” goes down I’ll be able to do more episodes then. Ones a live out loud comedy and this one is a hard drama.

Sharon: You’ve done a little bit of everything stage, film, TV, you’ve done voiceover; what do you get the biggest kick doing?

Kay: I prefer a “Summerland” series show just because I create such a tight family with everybody, like they are seriously my second family. Once I leave it’s heartbreaking for me. Even when we did the first season of “Summerland” and we knew that we were coming back for a second season, we just didn’t have a start date, I was sobbing at the last day, I could not get a hold of myself; I sobbed, “Oh no, I’m not going to see you guys for another two months.” So I think that if I were to do a movie or even a recurring role I couldn’t go through the heart break.

Laurie: But that’s good. You want to come back, you want to be with those people, and it’s nice to work with them.

Sharon: We had Shawn Christian (plays Johnny Durant on “Summerland”) on a couple months ago too and he was talking about how close knit the cast and crew was and how much fun it was to go to work.

Kay: The cast and crew are such a tight knit family. A lot of series will say oh yea our family is a tight family, but we really are a family like that. I really just get a long with everybody and it’s so good how well everybody gets along.

Sharon: That’s good; it comes across well on TV too. Tell us a little bit a bout yourself and your family?

Kay: My family is phenomenal. My mom helps me plan out everything from my college courses just everything. My dad works at home so he can be with me at night, especially when my mom’s on location with my older sister who is also an actress. Then my sister I love her too death, she’s so sweet, we really get along really well. Which a lot of people say really, there’s no competition there, and there really isn’t. She’s doing movies back to back and she enjoys doing that. The only hard part is she goes off on location which is permanent, even when she shot a movie for three months in L.A. we didn’t see each other, because she was at work and I was at work. We did take two college classes together and that was fun, we got to see each other there and we got to study together and even when she was out of the house and shooting a movie we got on our computers and talked on-line and did it that way, which was nice.

Laurie: How much older is she than you?

Kay: She’s seventeen. The age difference is two and a half years.

Kay seems like a nice young lady who has her head on straight and will be a success at whatever she does. Be sure to tune into “Summerland,” Mondays, at 8:00-9:00 p.m, CST.

Until my next column, let your voice be heard.