‘School of Rock’ Child Actors Said They Were Bullied After Starring In The Film: “I Came Back To School, And I Was Like A Three-Headed Freak”

The School of Rock cast and crew recently reunited to share the oral history of how the film came to be in honor of its 20th anniversary. And while mostly everyone involved sang its praises, the child actors remembered one difficult part about making the movie: returning to their normal lives afterwards.

Actor Brian Falduto, who played the band’s costume designer Billy, told Rolling Stone, “To have this experience where we were all made to feel special because of our differences was really cool. But then it also made it all the more difficult when we went back to school.”

Because of his character’s flamboyant attitude, Falduto said people would box him “into the title of the gay kid after the movie.” He recalled, “I didn’t even know what being gay was at the time. I was just being myself and having a great time.”

His fellow co-stars had similar experiences. Veronica Afflerbach said she decided to stop acting because of how kids her age treated her after the movie. “When I came home from doing the movie, I was like, ‘I’m never doing this again.’ Because kids are brutal,” she said. She later expressed regret in not exploring acting more at the time.

Joey Gaydos Jr., who played the band’s guitarist, Zack, had a similarly “tough” time dealing with his classmates.

“I came back to school, and I was like a three-headed freak, basically. I came back with all this culture in my brain to a pretty one-horse town outside of Detroit. And I was looked at like a complete weirdo, and that was hard,” he said. “People thought I had it all going on. I couldn’t believe it.”

He also recalled getting smacked in the face by someone at a high school football game because he was involved in the movie.

Actor Z Infante claimed he was also bullied because of his sexuality when he was younger, but he maintained that starring in School of Rock played an integral role in developing his sense of self.

“I have grown to understand myself in a deeper and more profound way because of my childhood, and my work as a child actor on School of Rock,” he said.

Throughout the oral history, the stars praised Jack Black and director Richard Linklater for making the experience so memorable for them. And many of them praised it for its radical inclusivity that was well ahead of its time.

Caitlin Hale, who played background singer Marta, fondly looked back on working with them on the film. “Of course Jack was the funny one, but I remember Rick to be just so encouraging and so open to all of our ideas and really treating us as if we were collaborators in this. We were part of it,” she said.

“It just warms my heart that it’s aged so gracefully and that it still has this powerful message of radical self-acceptance,” Rivkah Reyes, the band’s memorable but quiet bassist, said. “School of Rock allowed us to really let our freak flags fly. When you have a whole room full of underdogs, it’s so powerful.”

Read the rest of Rolling Stone‘s oral history of School of Rock here.