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Looking for 'Roommates' on ABC Family with Actress Tamera Mowry
by Troy Rogers
 Life in New York City can be tough on anyone trying to figure out life on the busy streets of Manhattan. For any young person coming of age with a roommate while in college, New York City can make for interesting comedy and drama that you won't find in most major cities. But if your roommate is someone who had a crush on you in high-school and doesn't get along with your best friend, college life in The Big Apple can be comedically complex when it comes to love-triangles.
On Monday, March 23 at 9pm, ABC Family rolls out the premiere of Roommates, which follows the life of five twenty-somethings who are about to embark on the funny and unpredictable rollercoaster ride of living with roommates. Starring Tamera Mowry (Sister, Sister), Tyler Francavilla, Dorian Brown, Tommy Dewey and David Weidoff, Roommates gets underneath the drama of young college life to give TV viewers a dose of life that anyone who has ever had a roommate may relate with.
Leading up to the premiere of ABC Family's new Roommates, we temporarily moved into a recent conference call to talk with series star Tamera Mowry to find out more about her character, Hope, the career of a young TV executive, and whether Hope will find love with her Roommates when the season begins.
THE DEADBOLT: Roommates sounds to me like it’s a little like Friends. How would you describe it?
TAMERA MOWRY: Actually, ever since we shot the pilot a lot of people who have seen the show, whether they’re in the audience or just family and friends, they compare us to Friends. And it puts pressure on us because Friends was obviously just an amazing, amazing show. But it also gives us a lot of encouragement. I tend to compare it to Friends in the sense of having five different characters meshing together and seeing how that works.
 However, we’re not all friends in the beginning. We’re just roommates. The only friend that my character, Hope, is friends with is Katie, so that’s how I would describe it, just us experiencing life post-college. So they’re younger than the characters of Friends because we’re just starting to embark on, I think, one of the most scariest moments of your life, which is basically post-college, just figuring out where do you fit in life, in general.
THE DEADBOLT: Hope is a career woman without a career. What is she looking to do?
MOWRY: Well, Hope, the character, she wants to be in TV. She is a television executive. That is her ultimate goal. The thing is, Hope is very opinionated and she can be a little bit narcissistic, so that gets her in trouble a lot. So because she really, really cares about what other people think about her, she hides the fact that she got fired. And then she’s working as a barista because she wants her best friend to look up to her and she doesn’t want to lose that. So she definitely wants to be a television exec, and you never know. Maybe that will happen in the future, maybe not. Maybe she’ll embark on something new because you change careers maybe about eight times in your life I think they say.
THE DEADBOLT: What attracted you to the character in the first place?
 MOWRY: Well, you know what? I was really, really, really attracted to the script, mainly because I think we have a lack of the original formula of sitcoms and comedy nowadays, and I just loved Hope because she is just basically 'Miss Congeniality would like to have a word with you.' She’s very nice, but she doesn’t take any mess, and that’s what attracted me to the character. I think she’s very talented. She just can be misguided at times, but she’s also very loving and she just cares for her best friend so much. She can be a bit overprotective, and I’m kind of like that in real life. So I could somewhat relate to the character.
THE DEADBOLT: Now, Mark has a thing for Kate. Does Hope have any love interests?
MOWRY: Hope, when I first started doing the show, I kept questioning, asking the writers. I was like, 'When is Hope going to get some action? Where’s the love for her?' You know, she’s always into Katie’s business so much. She does have a love interest towards the end of the show, but I don’t want to give that away.
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