MLWTWB's Ashby Gentry Has Mixed Feelings on Being the Love Triangle Underdog

With season 2 of My Life With the Walter Boys finally here, Ashby Gentry once again steps into one of TV’s trickiest roles: the other guy in a love triangle. While his character, Alex, has his fair share of swoonworthy moments, being the one fans don’t ship can come with its own kind of heartbreak — and backlash.

“I think my body and mind are preparing for people to start talking about me again,” Gentry, 26, exclusively told Us Weekly ahead of the Thursday, August 28, season 2 premiere. “I don’t try to hide from that, because I think that’s fruitless. I don’t go off social media, I don’t want to limit my own life because people are saying stuff.”

He continued, “Some actors do, and if that works for them, that’s great. And it truly doesn’t always make me feel bad, but sometimes it does. I would be inhuman if people were saying these things and I didn’t feel like it didn’t hurt me to some degree.”

Warning: Spoilers below for season 2 of My Life With the Walter Boys. 

Gentry has starred on My Life With the Walter Boys since its 2023 premiere, stepping into the role of the quiet, steady Alex Walter opposite Noah LaLonde’s brooding bad boy, Cole. Together, the two form the beating heart of the show’s central love triangle with Nikki Rodrigeuz’s Jackie, who comes to live with the family after her parents and sister die in a car crash. Once in Colorado, she finds herself torn between the reliable good guy and the electrifying rebel. It’s a setup that’s become a staple of the teen drama genre, but comes with the reality that every glance, kiss and cliffhanger gets dissected — and debated — by a passionate fanbase.

That can be tricky when an actor plays the less popular romantic interest. While Alex dates Jackie in both season 1 and 2 of the Netflix hit, she ultimately chooses his brother Cole — twice. Their connection is undeniably a fan favorite, which means Alex becomes a target for simply being in the way.

“Our fanbase is so young. It’s like, these are kids who haven’t grown up. They don’t know what they’re saying,” Gentry said. “But when the [season 2] trailer came out, I got really, really, really sad. I was like, ‘I’m gonna have to go through this all over again.’ … You know in [The Summer I Turned Pretty] when Conrad is like, ‘My chest hurts, physically hurts?’ Yeah, I felt like that when our trailer came out. I was like, ‘Man, this is making me really sad.’”

Speaking of TSITP, Gentry found himself empathizing with star Gavin Casalegno, who plays Jeremiah, the less-popular side of another one-girl-and-two-brother love triangle to Chris Briney’s more popular Conrad.

“We always get compared to [The Summer I Turned Pretty], so I feel like it’s appropriate to talk about them. But I was talking to some people the other day, and I was like, ‘Man, I feel for Gavin [Casalegno], a little bit,’” Gentry confessed. “I don’t know him, but here’s the thing: I definitely feel like a lot of the hate I received was, like, residual [toward] Gavin. Which is crazy, because our characters are so not the same.”

Gentry said he understands what Casalegno, 25 — whose show is currently airing its third and final season — is going through, despite the pair never having met. “I get what it’s like to have everybody be like, ‘Man, this guy sucks!’”

Like Casalegno, Gentry has had to learn how to weather the insanity of fandom. And sometimes, the critiques can hit uncomfortably close.

“This job is just a personal business. It is my person at the end of the day… I saw someone say when the [season 2] trailer came out, ‘No matter how attractive Alex gets, I just can’t be attracted to him because he’s 5’7 in real life.’ Which is like, that’s fine. But also — have you never heard of the short king face card theory?” he said with a laugh. “The way that I look, to some degree, is the way that I look. And so when people are critical of that, it’s like, I’m gonna take that with me forever. Whereas when people are critical of Alex, it’s a little more understandable, because my job as an actor is to showcase a character’s flaws just as much as their strengths.”

Gentry clearly understands that fan feedback is part of the job, but admitted that the intensity of splitting into relationship “teams” for shows like MLWTWB was not something he was familiar with before joining the cast.

“I’ve never seen The Vampire Diaries. I’m not into this stuff, and people very much are. I didn’t realize how much people rally behind their person, their team,” he said, adding that fandom culture can be both “toxic” and “funny,” considering the shows are already written before they’re released.

“It’s not Love Island. The whole thing is planned out,” he said with a smile.

Still, he acknowledges that it’s not always easy to brush off the noise. “Intellectually, I know that’s not me, that it’s this character I’ve created,” he said. “But the character I created comes from me. Alex’s heartbreak is mine. It’s mine on display, or, like, his affection is my affection on display.”

That connection to Alex has grown deeper working on season 2 and season 3, which is currently in production. “I think what I’m realizing is I internalize the story a lot more than I might think I do,” he reflected. “I believe that Alex … he’s on three very different journeys in each season. And each time I go through that, I, Ashby, will do different things and notice I’m feeling different ways.”

Alex’s rawest moments also often leave him shaken. He recalled filming the end of season 1, when Jackie kissed Cole behind Alex’s back. “It hurt me, like, I felt it. And the reason is because, at least when I’m working, all the feelings are real feelings,” he said. “When I remember saying, ‘I love you,’ and [Jackie] didn’t say it back, it actually hurt me — Ashby. The feelings are real, whether or not the story is real.”

Complexity, however, is also part of what makes the work rewarding. Even if Alex doesn’t always get the girl, he is a character filled with depth, vulnerability and humanity that exists beyond just romance and love triangle drama. Those are especially on display in season 2, where Alex returns from a summer in Montana a changed man — both inside and out.

Season 2’s trailer alone proved a turning point for the general opinion on the character when it released last month, particularly thanks to Alex’s “glow up” that features new clothes, a different hairstyle and a sunkissed tan.

Gentry told Us that he was not surprised Alex was going to have a physical transformation for the second season, as he’s “very in tune with what the writers are doing,” adding that he believes the evolution made sense.

“That’s a very classic trope of like, you get broken up with and then you get hot, or something,” he said. “But I was just interested in exploring that side of Alex, because in season 1, I very much read the character as the non-conventionally attractive brother.”

He continued, “When I read the pilot for the audition, the assignment was always, ‘You are not like Cole, he is the conventionally attractive one. He’s the marble sculpture.’ I literally described this to our costume designer like, ‘He’s the marble sculpture, the David. And I’m, like, the cartoon stick figure type drawing.’ I didn’t mean it ever in a bad way, I just viewed that both of these people are attractive just in different ways. And one of them is in a more mainstream and conventional way, and the other is in a more, like, behavioral and almost alternative way.”

According to Gentry, he actually changed his natural appearance more for season 1 than for his leveled-up season 2 vibe, sharing, “I lost some weight, I stopped going to the gym … I was in very good shape before I shot season 1, and I started running and stopped lifting weights because it didn’t make sense to me that Alex was muscular, like Cole. Cole is an athlete. Alex reads books. “

Gentry said that he even went as far to change “my walk and my voice,” and added more product to his hair. “I did all these things to become this person in season 1, a lot of the glow up for season 2 was me just doing what I do in my normal life.”

He added with a laugh, “I wish someone had said, ‘Don’t worry, Ashby, you’re gonna be in second place no matter what!’”

And although seeing some fans slowly make their way over to Team Alex for season 2 doesn’t hurt the ego, Gentry said he hopes people pay more attention to who Alex is as a person, not just what he looks like.

“I want to be very careful about how I [say this], but I also want to be honest,”  he confessed. “My reaction to the [positive] response [for Alex in] the trailer was like, ‘You guys shouldn’t just pick the boy because of how the boy looks!’ There’s so much more to being with someone than just their physical attractiveness. Obviously, that’s a component, and you need to be attracted to someone in order to be with them. … So I feel like when people say, ‘Oh, I’m switching teams,’ I’m like, ‘Great, thank you, but [maybe] you’re missing the point?”

Gravitating toward Alex on looks alone likely won’t be an issue for most fans. While season 1 saw Alex muddled in his motivations to date Jackie, season 2 confirms that his intentions are pure. Not only does he forgive Jackie for cheating on him with his brother and running off to New York without a word, he expresses his desire for them to give their romance another try — only to walk in on Jackie confessing her love for Cole once again.

Giving Jackie another chance is not something Gentry could see himself doing. He admitted that finding out Alex was willing to forgive and forget was a surprising — but welcome — turn of events.

“Reading it for me, I was kind of like, ‘Oh, my God, are you kidding me?’ But then the challenge as an actor is like, you have to [do it]. People always say, ‘You have to like your character. You can’t dislike your character. ‘I totally disagree,” he explained. “I think you can totally dislike your character. All you have to do as an actor is understand your character. Why they are doing what they are doing in the story. And I think season 2 was a huge challenge for me, not only because of all of the physical changes for the glow up and stuff, but it was tough for me to find a way back into being with Jackie, because I would never do that as Ashby.”

Still, Gentry sees it as Alex clearly “really loves” Jackie, and “believes” the two can make it work.

“He knows there’s something with Cole, and just doesn’t care,” he said with a shrug. “And I think that’s what’s different about me and Alex, like he just wants to be with her, whereas I’m the type of person [who] doesn’t want to be with someone who wants to be with someone else. But he just loves Jackie and wants her really bad. I don’t think it has anything to do with Cole. I don’t think it’s about the competition between them. … In season 2, he just is like, ‘OK we both made mistakes. Let’s just forget about them. I want to be with you because I love you.”

He also doesn’t “blame” Jackie for her actions, because she does care about Alex, just in her own way. “I think she does love Alex. I don’t think she’s in love with him,” he said. “I think she’s in love with Cole, but I do think she loves Alex.”

As for season 3, Gentry has to stay coy: season 2 ends with Alex having no time to react to Jackie and Cole’s love confessions before the credits roll. What he is willing to say is that he “didn’t expect” what comes next, teasing that some romantic story threads from season 2 might not be all wrapped up quite yet.

“Does it ever all really go away with anybody?” he asked. “I think not.” 

My Life With the Walter Boys season 2 is streaming on Netflix now.