Peyton List
Peyton List is an actor, born 1998.
Three of Peyton List's early credits are the young version of somebody else: Young Jane in 27 Dresses in 2008, the child Becky Barnes in The Sorcerer's Apprentice, an uncredited young Darcy in Something Borrowed. She began as a child model, was nine when the first of those came out, and spent her first years on screen playing other actresses' childhoods.
Disney turned her into a name. Emma Ross on Jessie ran from 2011 to 2015 and carried over into the spinoff Bunk'd, while the Diary of a Wimpy Kid films gave her Holly Hills across Rodrick Rules and Dog Days. It is a well-paid trap: the channel builds an audience of ten-year-olds and then the audience grows up and the actor has to survive being remembered as a sitcom teenager.
Her escape route was to be unpleasant. Tory Nichols in Cobra Kai is a genuinely hostile character played without asking to be forgiven, and it reset what casting directors thought she could do. Everything since leans on it: Maddie Nears in School Spirits in 2023, Batgirl in the animated Batman: Hush, low-budget genre thrillers like The Thinning, a run of horror. The interesting thing about her is that the pivot was not a reinvention as a serious actress. She just found out she was better as the antagonist and stayed there.
Movies (20)
- 27 Dresses (2008)
- The Sorcerer's Apprentice (2010)
- Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules (2011)
- Remember Me (2010)
- Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days (2012)
- Batman: Hush (2019)
- Something Borrowed (2011)
- Hubie Halloween (2020)
- Then Came You (2018)
- Bereavement (2010)
- Valley Girl (2020)
- The Inheritance (2024)
- The Swap (2016)
- Girl Haunts Boy (2024)
- The Thinning (2016)
- A Sister's Nightmare (2013)
- The Outcasts (2017)
- The Thinning: New World Order (2018)
- A Little White Lie (2023)
- 3 Backyards (2010)
TV (7)
Where to start with Peyton List
The correct entry point is the least Disney thing she has done. Cobra Kai gives her Tory Nichols, a character with a permanent chip on her shoulder and no interest in your sympathy, and it is the performance that made the rest of the career possible. Watch the show from the start; her arrival lands harder with the karate soap opera already running.
School Spirits is the follow-up worth your time, a supernatural high-school mystery that puts her at the centre and mostly earns it. The Thinning is the cheap one, interesting mainly as the bridge between phases. Batman: Hush is a surprisingly good use of her voice as Batgirl.
For the childhood material, Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules holds up better than Jessie, which is exactly the sitcom you remember. Hubie Halloween is optional and she knows it.