As Netflix’s ultimate will-they-won’t-they ranch-y romance My Life With The Walter Boys returns for season 3, the Chicago-born actor sits down with Wonderland to unpack his reformed bad boy, Cole Walter’s new chapter. 

In TV, there’s never been more appetite for YA stories. Enemies-to-lovers, love-at-first-sight, heartbreaker-to-role-model arcs. While you’re at it, throw in a brotherly dispute over a girl, ’cause why not. On the opposite side of the pop culture spectrum, we have the Ice Hockey maniacs. The power of a team to uplift a main character’s journey, sportsmanship-turned-flirting grounds, and a lot of sweat. To be an actor joining the big leagues of romcoms in 2026 is definitely no easy feat. Because imagine having such range? Then, you sit down for a chat with Noah LaLonde. 

“[Young Noah] would’ve said, ‘Well, yeah, of course. This is where I spent all my time bearing all my emotions. Why wouldn’t everybody do it?’,” he laughs. The question was: if teenage hockey-playing Noah LaLonde, debating whether to become a professional athlete in Chicago or follow his passions for the arts, could see the extent to which both topics intertwine these days, how would he react? 

Still on theme, he’s speaking from Calgary, Canada, when we connect over Zoom, a week before the release of Season 3 of My Life with the Walter Boys. He and the cast are fresh from watching The Odyssey on 70mm, which successfully consolidated the generation-defining dream of working with a director like Christopher Nolan. 

But more telling than his location – it’s the place he’s been returning to for the past four years, where Netflix based the ranch that backdrops the show – it’s his blonde locks that tell me he’s back in Cole Walter shoes. “It’s really hard to look at myself when I am a few months after filming [and] my hair is dark,” he says. “It’s like I don’t even recognise the character anymore, which I guess is a good thing. But it’s also weird.”

An adaptation of Ali Novak’s 2014 book series, which originated on Wattpad (explains a lot), the story follows fellow lead Nikki Rodriguez’s Jackie Howard, a proud, driven New Yorker who moved to a ranch in Colorado to live with the Walter family, following the tragic passing of her parents and sister. 

The story untangles a bit how you imagine it to: the hurdles of settling in and belonging, the making of new friends, the dropping of stereotypes of her past New York life. And of course, things get interesting when Jackie loses her heart to two of the brothers — cowboy Alex, played by Ashby Gentry, and the troubled-turned-soft-boi older brother Cole, played by LaLonde, one of the internet’s favourite heartthrobs of late. 

Now, as Season 3 lands on our screens and Season 4 is confirmed to be in the making, he sits down with Wonderland to unpack what comes next. 

Noah, hello! Where are you speaking from today? What are you up to?
I’m in Calgary. Alberta, Canada. It’s where we film The Walter Boys, and we’re getting ready to maybe be doing some more of that very soon. 

I did clock the blonde hair. I couldn’t believe you’re not a natural blonde. 
Yeah, it’s a realisation for a lot of people, including myself. It’s really hard to look at myself when I am a few months after filming [and] my hair is dark. Well, I did a movie where they made my hair intentionally darker, and then my facial hair comes in a little bit. It’s like I don’t even recognise the character anymore, which I guess is a good thing. But it’s also weird.

Isn’t that a really fun part of the job, though? Getting to shapeshift for different roles?
100%. I love it more than maybe I should [laughs]. I just feel like actually becoming the character, looking in the mirror and seeing it, it’s such a different thing. As soon as this hair gets blonde, I’m fully clean-shaven, I have Cole Walter’s boots on. Yes, it’s a visual thing, but for me it’s also [about] things starting to make sense again. And to have all of those cylinders firing at the same time is what makes it so fun to immerse yourself in this new look and this new person. 

What did life look like to you before you started acting? Were there signs growing up that you’d end up here?
I’ve thought about the signs quite recently, actually. Interviews and whatnot prompted me to think about how I ended up here. I mean, I can’t say I always wanted to be doing this exactly the way [I’m doing it now], but as long as I can remember, I really enjoyed being funny and making people laugh and making people entertained by whatever it was I was doing. 

And so I think as I got older, that slowly led to finding myself doing school plays. In middle school, I was in the school choir, which felt like High School Musical. But I was also an athlete. But then, looking back at the days on my hockey team, we’d be doing lip sync battles in the hotel lobbies at tournaments, and we would win, and I would do dances in the locker room. So [the artistic spirit] was kind of always there.  

But how crazy would it have been for you to tell your younger self that hockey and TV, ice hockey especially, would have so much in common these days?
Gosh, I mean, the funniest thing about this timeline for me is that I left that environment…And now it’s like [both worlds] are the same. It’s amazing. You know, to be honest, and of course this comes up because people know that I played hockey,  but only just now I realised that when I was kind of [thinking about stories] I would pitch to make a show or a movie, I’ve always thought that – and this is going to sound like I’m just making this up – but I’ve truly always thought that, you know, movies, TV, the stories that we like to watch and the books we like to read, where it takes place doesn’t necessarily have all to do with the way in which it will successfully resonate with people. 

You have to find a way to relate to a lot of people by sometimes doing that in a foreign space. So, when it comes to hockey,  I spent my whole life in that space.  And there have been times when I’ve been full-on crying in the locker room because we lost a tournament. And I’m looking around at my 18 or 19 teammates who, on any day of the week, are gonna be like the cockiest, and they’re crying together. Nobody has an ego, and there’s nothing there except for pure emotion because you either lost something or the opposite when you win something. It’s, you know, the same thing. It’s like these extremes. I witnessed these my whole life. 

When something means something to you and other people, it’s like that doesn’t have to make sense to everybody because everybody knows what it’s like to have something mean something to them. So I find that [the success of these shows lies in the fact that they’re] just about someone telling the right story in that space. I mean, the movie Miracle with Kurt Russell, obviously, it’s a true story about the United States Olympic 1980 Hockey team. It’s a fantastic movie. And it’s a great story, but I always thought it was the way that they told the story off the ice that made it such a universally appealing story.  

And tell me about the Walter Boys. Do you remember your reactions when you first got the script for this project? What about it makes it so appealing to you?
The process of getting any role is really exciting. For me, this was my first really big undertaking as an actor and my first big role. So the appeal was that I had the opportunity. I was really motivated to have the opportunity to take a character and approach it over a longer period of time. 

I just remember being quite nervous in the beginning because it was just such a daunting task. At the beginning, I think I had six scripts, and I just spent as much time as I could [reading them], because I just felt like, you know, there’s so much there, and if you want to do that character justice, you have to fill in all the space of their life. And I remember feeling very daunted by that. But by the time we got here and started filming, the thing that started to feel really good about it was that a lot of space in that world of the character started to fill in on its own because I started to understand Cole Walter.  

And I remember that was very exciting because I think he’s a character with a lot of depth, and I was really excited to tackle that. Really nervous, but very excited as well. 

We’re very close to the release of Season 3, and people are invested. How are you feeling?
Yes, as we stand, we are one week away from season three coming out. I don’t know, I have this urge to play it cool, but it’s exciting. I love that people are invested. I think that’s really a fun thing to do with shows like this, especially where there is this sort of almost competitive nature between [the characters]. “She should be with him or him”. And so that’s, it’s really fun to watch unfold and to be walking down the street and have somebody feel so passionately one way or the other. To be a part of that is really special. 

You’ve been living with this character for almost 4 years now. How do you reflect on how much you’ve grown together?
Like I said, when I first got the part, it was the biggest thing that had happened to me in my career, and it was the first time I had such a thing happen. And now, [three seasons in], it continues to be the deepest process I’ve ever had in approaching a character. And I continue to learn new things about him, Cole, and myself and my approach. And what works and what doesn’t. […] Every other role I’ve had is done in a couple of weeks; I’ve never had anything else last more than a month. [My Life with the Walter Boys] is going on for four years, so to have that time to deepen my understanding of the character and [his] relationships, it’s been a really, really fulfilling tree for me.

What are your favourite things about Cole? Do you think you would be pals in real life?  
Yeah, I think we could be pals [laughs]. Over the years, it’s become quite obvious to me the things in us that are similar. I really think he has a good heart and I don’t think he always makes the right choices, as like any, you know, 17 year old high school student does. But at the end of the day, I think he has a really great sense of right and wrong and cares to make the right decision more than not. I think it affects him when he harms people, even if in the moment he kind of loses sight of the thing that could really impact somebody. Because he’s been through a lot. So I think he’s a little self-destructive in the way that when things happen to him, sometimes he has a hard time getting out of his own way as a lot of self-destructive people do. 

And that’s kind of one of the really cool things about watching the progression of his relationship with Jackie because I think she gives him this, almost like this inspiration, this sense of motivation to persevere in the light of despair. She [experienced] the worst thing that could ever happen to her. He lost his football career. I happen to think that losing your family is a little bit worse, but when you’re that age, you don’t necessarily understand the difference. Like it’s all relative and the feeling is the same internally. 

And so that feeling of loss, he is not doing the best at navigating it. And when he sees her navigating it, he has this epiphany. And then that admiration turns to motivation and inspiration and the longing to understand this person.  And I think in that process, he falls in love and then she kind of becomes the thing that he wants for himself and to himself. 

Moving forward, what excites you about the future? What are the projects you would love to be part of? 
Everything!

You’re hungry. 
[Laughs], yeah, I’m hungry. I mean, I’ve had such a fulfilling experience working with this character, and I think there’s a lot of foundational qualities that are similar to myself, Noah, and Cole. So something that might excite me is to embark on something that’s a little bit different, a different genre, in a different world, in a different environment where I’m challenged to go outside of myself even more and inhabit something that I don’t understand so that I can make myself understand and live in that world. 

The film and television world is ever changing and it’s a daunting thing to predict what’s next. I tend to be someone who believes the right thing is coming for me and I’m really open to a lot of those things, but there are so many fantastic directors and filmmakers out there right now. I just saw The Odyssey… 

I’m so jealous. I want to watch it on 70mm [screen], but it’s sold out in London until the end of September!  
It’s so random, there’s like, what, 41 [70mm IMAX screens] in the world? And one of them is at the mall down the street in Calgary. A bunch of us got tickets, we’re going to see it again. But there’s also a regular IMAX screen, and we just had to go. The power of a film like that is… I just want to be a part of things like that forever. I’m on my own personal odyssey to find the thing for me that can make me feel like that. 

I just watched Matt Damon and Tom Holland speak so highly of being a part of the project. The prospect of thinking about the journey that it could be to ultimately be a part of something like that is one that inspires me and gets me out of bed every morning. And to tell a story like that is such a beautiful thing. And then to do it in your own re-imagining of it. It’s just a really, amazing thing to watch and be a part of and think that that’ll be me one day. I’ll find that thing. 

Then I put on Interstellar when I got home, and I watched that, and then I watched some of The Dark Knight, and it’s like… I need to go to sleep. [But] that’s what I want. 

Words — Sofia Ferreira
Photography — Gabriel Perez Silva
Grooming — Tanya Alian
Styling — Daniela Romero