*The series premiere of “Recovery Road,” which follows a high school student’s life at a sober house after she was busted with alcohol, begins tonight on the channel formerly known as ABC Family…now renamed Freeform.
Sharon Leal plays Charlotte, the mother of said teen, Maddie (Welsh actress Jessica Sula). The series takes place inside of a sober living facility, reluctantly entered by Maddie when her guidance counselor offers it as an alternative to expulsion.
“I think there’s a lot of enabling going on,” Leal says of her character, a single mother who somehow missed all of the signs that her daughter was an alcoholic. “Also, when you meet them, they’ve lost their patriarch. The father’s gone, so there’s a lot of pain and things that they’re still working out.
“You know, nobody’s perfect. Charlotte certainly has done things wrong and is sort of trying to navigate her way through everything and not with ease and not with all the answers, so all of that will start to evolve and you’ll figure all of that out.”
Of course the sober house has a colorful group of recovering addicts. Paula Jai Parker plays the feisty Margarita Jean-Baptiste, and Kyla Pratt stars as Trish, who is on 10 from the moment she greets Maddie in intake.
“I don’t think she’s on an upper,” Pratt told us at the recent TCA Winter Press Tour, where she appeared along with the cast. “I think she just has a very vibrant personality and just got involved in the wrong things.”
Below, Pratt says her character’s “vibrant personality” is one of the things she loves about the show.
“Recovery Road” premieres tonight (Jan. 25) at 9 p.m. on Freeform.
Watch a promo below:
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