Rising Star with TV Premiere and Movie Opening in September
“
With ‘Troop
,’ I think I’ve finally found a show where people would laugh and scream and have their heart racing—all on the same show.” - Tommy Lynch, Producer
Ninth-grader Jake Collins thought he was simply moving to a new town. But soon his whole world is turned upside down as he discovers not only that Big Foot, lake monsters and other supposedly mythical beasts are real, but that he's been recruited to join The Troop: the secret organization of kids whose sole mission is to battle those creatures and send them back to “the other side.”
In Nickelodeon’s “
The Troop,” NY05 IMTA alum Nicholas Purcell stars in his first major role as Jake, a typical teenager whose ambition is to create his own comic book. When his school counselor (John Marshall Jones) asks him to join The Troop, he is teamed with the smart, athletic and popular Haley (Gage Golightly) and the annoying paranormal expert Felix (David Del Rio). The three are tasked with protecting the world from the monsters that walk among us.
Since attending IMTA, Purcell has been paying his dues with industrials and commercials, uncredited roles in the feature films
Fever Pitch and
Gone Baby Gone, on TV with a guest- starring role on
“Law & Order: Criminal Intent” and a recurring role on “
As the World Turns.” Following the debut of “
The Troop,” he appears in the new Bruce Willis sci-fi thriller
Surrogates. Set in a futuristic world where humans live in isolation and interact through surrogate robots, a cop (Willis) is forced to leave his home for the first time in years in order to investigate the murders of others’ surrogates. Purcell plays a commando named Pulaski.
As the lead in a TV series, Purcell will have to get used to being a familiar face out in public. “I was still in high school when the ‘
Law & Order’ episode aired and a kid might come up to me and say, ‘Hey, didn’t I see you on TV last night?’ And it wasn’t a friend of mine or anything,” he recounted during an interview with New Hampshire Magazine. “It sort of hits you in small doses like that, or I’d go into Walmart and have someone recognize me.”