Why ‘Zenon’ Star Phillip Rhys Chaudhary Is Finally Ready to Embrace Proto Zoa’s Intergalactic Legacy
More than 25 years after its release, fans’ love for Zenon: Girl of the 21st Century still hits Phillip Rhys Chaudhary like a cosmic blast.
But while he looks back on his time as superstar Proto Zoa in the 1999 Disney Channel Original Movie and 2001’s Zenon the Zequel with fondness now, for a long time he was happy to leave the gravity-defying role in the past.
“I think at some point I was like, ‘You know what, I just can’t just be about [Zenon],’” Phillip told E! News in an exclusive interview of his nearly three-decade career as an actor and director, “because I was on 24—there was a SAG nomination on that—that was a huge show at the time, and many other projects subsequently, but there’s something about this one that hit the zeitgeist with a certain group of folks, and you just got to embrace it.”
The reason behind his reticence to reminisce on his DCOM days is quite simple. “I didn’t want to just talk about Zenon,” he explained. “But now it’s all good. I love it.”
More than anything it’s a bemusing part of his life.
“Other shows or projects I’ve done, I got it because of something, but literally, Proto Zoa, apart from this notoriety, I can’t say that has led me to a job or has actually got me further employment,” he revealed. But he’s more than happy to embrace the weirdness of it all. “Who wouldn’t want to have played a role that’s shall we say iconic to a group of people?”
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And his love for Proto Zoa—and that time in his life—runs deep, not just because he helped transform the “tamer” character into the platinum blonde spiky-haired Microbe frontman who captured the heart of a generation of Disney viewers. The Fully Monty actor admitted that the character was “written more like a Sting character, a bit more low key, but that wasn’t my take on it.”
Instead, he turned to Oasis and another rocker role he’d recently completed for cues, “supplanted it on Proto Zoa, and I could tell they liked it,” he noted. “And then I went back the next week, and I got the job. But he wasn’t written English. It wasn’t written with spiky hair, none of that. It was a bit tamer. We rock and rolled him up.”
And he “loved” being platinum blonde, even if it meant reporting to work at 3:30 a.m. to achieve the look.
“The enjoyment of the job is you get to transform,” he explained. “You have these ideas, and then you work with such talented people, they can make them a reality. Once you get that outfit on, you can’t help but be a bit groovier.”
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It was in that moment that producer Suzanne de Passe and the rest of the creatives got to see him in action—so to speak.
“Her and her team would just look at me, two left feet, like, ‘how’s this gonna work?’” he continued. “So they said to the rest of the band, ‘You guys do all of the chassé and the jeté’ and whatever else. ‘Phil, you just go left foot, right foot that way, left foot, right that way, and just shake your hips or something.’ So we did that, and it worked out.”
It helped that he was a fan of “Supernova Girl” right from the start.
“I had to learn the words the night before, but it was catchy immediately,” the 53-year-old shared. “I said, ‘There’s something here, definitely,’—and even the second one ‘Galaxy Is Ours’—‘Yeah, no, this is fun. I can get into this.’”
And while some of his actor friends, especially those doing “serious drama,” didn’t always see the vision when it came to Zenon, Phillip certainly did.
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“When we saw that first movie—they did a screening on the Disney lot with a full audience—It worked,” he recalled. “And I was young, I didn’t know that’s not always the case. I said, ‘I think this really worked. I think I’m pretty good in it.’ And then it aired. But it did take a moment, because it’s not just on a streaming service that everyone can go visit.”
Though Phillip was replaced by Nathan Anderson as Proto Zoa in 2004’s Zenon: Z3 as he was busy working on Nip/Tuck, he can see himself returning to the role.
“He’d be a manager now, wouldn’t he?” the Survivors alum posited. “Maybe he’s out on his own. He’s gone acoustic. He’s stripped it back down. He’s simplified everything, just acoustic version of ‘Zoom Zoom Zoom.’”
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Back down on earth Phillip has kept busy both in front of and behind the camera, which includes directing a feature version of his 2015 award-winning film The Scarecrow starring Sandra Oh.
“We’re trying to get finance in place for that,” he teased. “It’s a beautiful romantic drama. and I’ve got this other script that I’d like to shoot in England, and then I am shooting a feature in a few months.”
He’s also juggled all of that with appearing in the FX series The Full Monty, discovering an equilibrium between his creative pursuits, noting, “I realized I can do both.”
And he acknowledges Zenon and his other earlier work played into his current chapter balancing directing duties.
“You work fast on those Disney shows—those movies we made in a quick timeframe,” Phillip noted. “The acting helps the directing, and the directing helps the acting. You get to understand how set works. You know how to talk to an actor, speak with them, get that take, move on.”
He added, “Time is so much an issue when you direct and always the X factor are the actors—as it should be because what they’re doing isn’t one plus one, it’s something else. So all of that was good training.”
For more insights into the Zenon films, keep reading…
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1. Debuting on Disney Channel on Jan. 23, 1999, Zenon: Girl of the 21st Century was the sixth Disney Channel Original movie to be released following Northern Lights, Under Wraps, You Lucky Dog, Brink! and Halloweentown.
2. Say morning glorious to the story that started it all. That’s right, the film was inspired by the 1996 book Zenon: Girl of the Twenty-First Century by Marilyn Sadler.
3. The commander of this ship—a.k.a. the movie’s director—was Kenneth Johnson, whose other work includes the DCOM Don’t Look Under the Bed, the TV show The Bionic Woman and the sci-fi franchise Alien Nation.
4. Zenon: Girl of the 21st Century is set in the year 2049. Ready for a shock major? That’s only 25 years away!
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5. Kirsten Storms was clearly destined for the stars. While this was her first lead role, it wouldn’t be her last. In addition to appearing in two more Zenon movies—of course we’re talking about The Zequel and Z3—Kirsten acted on hit shows like Days of Our Lives and General Hospital.
6. Although, she didn’t land the role of Zenon right away.
“I went in seven or eight times for the part,” she told PeopleTV during a 2020 virtual cast reunion. “They really, obviously, were taking their time trying to figure out who was going to play Zenon. I just remember auditioning so many times for it and was super excited when I got the call that I had booked the part.”
7. In fact, Kenneth originally wanted to cast Raven Symoné—who portrayed Zenon’s BFF Nebula—in the starring role as she had more acting experience.
“I really wanted Raven to play the lead ’cause Raven was proven and a commodity,” the filmmaker said on a 2021 episode of The Kulturecast. “She’d been acting since she was, like, 3 years old.”
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8. Zenon: Girl of the 21st Century was Raven’s first Disney Channel Original Movie, and she continued to rocket into fame. Not only did she appear in Z3, but she also starred on the Disney series That’s So Raven and The Cheetah Girls movies.
9. All Zenon movies were written by Stu Krieger—and you won’t have to search the galaxy far and wide to find his other work. Some of his other DCOMs include Smart House, Phantom of the Megaplex, Gotta Kick It Up! and Going to the Mat. He’s also penned films like The Land Before Time, A Troll in Central Park and Monkey Trouble.
10. So yes, you can thank him for all the out-of-this-world lingo in the Zenon movies. As for how he came up with “Cetus-Lupeedus?” (And yup, that’s how you really spell it.)
“Zenon grew up on the space station,” Stu explained in one of his TikToks. “All she could see outside her windows were the stars and the constellations—including Cetus, which means whale in English. So, her catchphrase was ‘Cetus-Lupeedus’. That’s c-e-t-u-s-l-u-p-e-e-d-u-s.”
11. And while Kirsten said she doesn’t have a favorite catchphrase, there were many lunarious lines from the movie that she loved.
“I think all of her lingo, obviously, was so unique,” the actress told PeopleTV. “I like ‘sweat minor’ a lot and saying anything ‘major.’”
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12. While Zenon: Girl of the 21st Century is based on the book of the same name, Stu also drew inspiration from another story. As he noted in another social media video, he got the writing job for the movie by pitching the concept to Disney as “Eloise at the Plaza on a space station.”
13. To give the script a more futuristic feel, Stu met with scientists at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif.
“I went to the JPL and just sat with a bunch of different scientists throughout the day and said, ‘What are you working on? What kind of things?’ I had specific questions about,” the writer recalled on TikTok. “For me, it was always extrapolating if we’re here now, where are we gonna be in X amount of years? And so, a lot of the technology was based on things that they talked about that they were working on.”
He also turned to his inner child. “Because the Disney Channel movies are basically kid wish-fulfillment movies,” he added, “it was like, ‘If I was a kid, what were the things that I would love to have?’”
14. The cast and crew really had to zoom, zoom, zoom around the world to film the movies. The first Zenon movie was shot in Vancouver in British Columbia, Canada. Meanwhile, The Zequel was filmed in New Zealand and Z3 was done in South Africa.
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15. Actually, they filmed some of Zenon: Girl of the 21st Century at the place where Gregory Smith—who played Zenon’s Earthly crush Greg—really went to high school.
“Because we shot it at my high school during the summer break, they let a bunch of my friends be extras,” the actor—who later starred on Everwood and Rookie Blue—shared with PeopleTV. “So in all those scenes, that’s all the kids that I palled around with growing up.”
16. Greg wasn’t the only main connection Zenon formed on Earth. She also bonded with her beloved Aunt Judy, played by Holly Fulger. And it looks like the actress embodied several of her character’s qualities—including her fear of flying.
“That role for me was so much what I’m like, which was odd,” she said on The Kulturecast. “Just hating to fly and just kind of quirky and fun. That’s how I raised my kids. I’m very much Aunt Judy-like.”
17. “Supernova Girl”—the song performed by rockstar Proto Zoa (Phillip Rhys) of the band Microbe—was written by Kristian Rex and Sabelle Breer. And they have pretty stellar résumés. Kristian also did the theme song for the TV series Smart Guy starring Tahj Mowry, and Sabelle has worked with artists like Avril Lavigne and Ryan Cabrera.
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18. Phillip didn’t have a lot of time to practice the song before performing it for the space station concert scene.
“I think I got the song maybe the night before,” the actor told PeopleTV. “The choreographer was, I think, Michael Jackson’s choreographer.”
And, admittedly, dancing wasn’t exactly Phillip’s forte. “I’m not much of a dancer,” he continued. “I had two left feet. So I was trying to remember the song that I’d just been given plus these dance moves.”
19. While it’s hard to imagine Proto Zoa without his signature spikes, the ‘do wasn’t always part of the plan.
“I wanted to do something different, so we did the peroxide blonde thing, spiky hair thing,” Phillip added. “It wasn’t written that way actually.”
20. If you’ve orbited through all the Zenon movies, then you know Phillip was in the first and second films but not the third. The reason?
“I was shooting Nip/Tuck at the time, and…I was committed to it,” Phillip told HuffPost in 2018. “It was Ryan Murphy’s first big thing, and I just couldn’t leave, really.”
As a result, Nathan Anderson replaced him for Z3. And it looks like Phillip is a fan.
“I met him via a friend, and he’s a lovely guy,” he added. “That’s not easy taking over the role. He’s American. He had to do an English accent as well. That’s tough, just not fair.”
21. “Supernova Girl” wasn’t the only soundtrack hit. Along with Donald Markowitz, Stu wrote “The Galaxy Is Ours” for The Zequel—noting it’s the only songwriting credit in his career.
Disney Channel
22. Forget space suits. Costume designer Linda Matheson brought out the neon and spandex for Zenon: Girl of the 21st Century. And for The Zequel and Z3, the looks were done by Mona May, who was also the costume designer for Clueless, Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion and Enchanted.
23. If the pull for more Zenon content is stronger than gravity, you may be interested to know there were allegedly plans for an in-theater movie and TV show.
“There was talk of actually doing a Zenon series and a Zenon movie,” Stuart Pankin—a.k.a. Commander Plank—said on a 2020 episode of the Back to the Best podcast. “Something happened, horrible, that prevented that. It might have been 9/11. I don’t know what it was. But something put the kibosh on those plans.”
24. If you want to rewatch the Zenon movies, you can blast on over to Disney+. In fact, Kirsten said her daughter Harper, 10, watched the film for the first time at age 5.
“I think, obviously, she was a little young to understand the storyline,” she shared with PeopleTV, “but she was really excited to see me on TV because she’d not seen me in anything before.”
25. And Kirsten’s performance was so good, Harper initially thought her mom was actually Zenon offscreen.
“We did have to clear up some confusion about the fact that I wasn’t really Zenon in real life,” she continued. “She thought when I left her, I went to be Zenon.”
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