Interview Crushable

'Degrassi's' Charlotte Arnold, Raymond Ablack Dish On Life Offscreen

What are Charlotte Arnold and Raymond Ablack — Holly J and Sav on the popular Canadian teen soap Degrassi: The Next Generation — like in real life? They met with Crushable in New York — just a week and half before Degrassi’s new two-hour movie The Heat is On debuts on July 19 before Season 10 kicks off in August — and let us in on their extracurricular activities, their love lives, and shared a story about former co-star Aubrey Graham aka new rap wunderkind Drake.

Charlotte just finished her third year in journalism school at Toronto’s Ryerson University. She told us she wants to work in broadcast journalism some day, and travel the world. “I want to go to Paris. I want to do a master’s at the Sorbonne,” Charlotte told us. “I do still love the feeling of being on set with a crew and that kind of family. So I think that’s where I’ll end up. And I’d love to try on-air reporting or an anchor or something. I’m news obsessed.”

Meanwhile, Ray has been spending his off time playing shows with his band Soundspeed, made up of (former) Degrassi co-stars Shane Kippel (Spinner), Dalmar Abuzeid (Danny van Zandt), Jamie Johnston (Peter Stone), Scott Paterson (Johnny DiMarco). Ray is the singer in the band, which he says has an alternative sound that he compared to Incubus. “We’ve tried to do every kind of genre just to see what we’re best at,” Ray told us. “We tried ska, that wasn’t our favorite. I tried to do screamo, couldn’t do it at all. I feel like what we’re sitting in right now is kind of an Incubus feel. Melodic verses and long held notes in the chorus, melodically. Incubus is a band i would compare us to, but they are far more amazing than we are.”

“They’re baby Incubus,” added Charlotte, who says she goes to see most of their shows. “They’re Incubating!”

When they’re not on screen, the cast — who Charlotte and Ray say are all good friends — go to Everest, a restaurant in Toronto, and Wonderland, a theme park nearby. They also get ready for events and go together, like they did for the recent Much Music Video Awards (the Canadian VMAs), where they ran into Drake.

“He was walking the red carpet, and it was just a really cool scene that played out,” Ray told Crushable. “He was walking, he’s got his whole entourage, body guards and people. And Shane Kippel, who plays Spinner, who has been Jimmy, Aubrey/Drake’s character on Degrassi’s best friend, and they had been best friends for years and years on the show. And Shane is standing with us on the red carpet and he sees Aubrey walking by, sorry, Drake, walking by, and he’s like, ‘Aubrey!’ He shouts out to Aubrey.”

“It could have been really embarrassing,” Charlotte added. “We were going, ‘[Gasp] If he doesn’t hear you, how bad does that look?’”

“It would have terrible,” Ray agreed. “Aubrey/Drake turns around, runs over, gives Shane a big hug.”

“The rest of us hung back because we started in Season 7, which was his last season…But he came over and gave us all hugs and was really nice,” Charlotte said.

Before we let them go, we had to ask about their love lives. Ray revealed he just recently started dating his girlfriend, Chani, just over two months ago, and admitted it’s going to “break my heart” when she goes off to NYU Abu Dhabi in the fall. “But I’m so proud of her,” he told Crushable. “The acceptance rate for that school I think is 1.7%, so she’s brilliant, gorgeous, and I’m really liking her.”

As for Charlotte, she just recently split from her longtime boyfriend, and high school sweetheart, Matt, although they are still close. “We’re still best friends…I’m at that time in my life when you hit your 20’s and you want to see what else is out there and be a little more independent,” said Char, who is about to turn 21 later this month. “I’ve just been dating, which I’ve been loving, and I still go out on dates with Matt sometimes. You can appreciate what you once loved about a person or still love about a person.”

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