NEED TO KNOW
Yes, Keri Russell is still close with some of her Mickey Mouse Club costars.
Russell, 49, appeared on Watch What Happens Live on Wednesday, Oct. 22, and answered a question from the audience about who in the Club she’s still in touch with. Russell starred on the Disney show from 1991 to 1993, alongside other future stars like JC Chasez, Christina Aguilera, Ryan Gosling, Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake.
The series — technically titled The All-New Mickey Mouse Club — was a revival of a classic series that had enjoyed runs in the 1950s and 1970s. The show always featured child, tween or teen performers singing, dancing and performing in skits.
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Russell confirmed she does still have friends from the show. “I’ll tell you exactly who,” she said. “One of my oldest friends, who still is one of my closest friends, Ilana Miller. Ilana Miller and Lindsey Alley.”
She explained, “We meet up for girls’ swanky dinner and numerous amounts of drinks. And we just met, like, two weeks ago, and someone always cries, and someone always tells it like a hilarious [story].”
Russell said it all goes back to the years after the show, when they were all living in New York and loved to meet up to gossip. “It was, like, all our 20s in New York, and, like, so and so hooked up with so and so, and what blow— story went wrong? It was the best.”
Not long after her time on the Mickey Mouse Club, Russell landed her breakthrough role as the lead character in Felicity, which premiered in 1998. The show won her a Golden Globe.
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Back in 2023, Russell opened up about her time on the Mickey Mouse Club and how she escaped with her “sanity.” “I was there at a time when there were a lot of famous kids there,” The Diplomat star told W Magazine. “And I say this completely truthfully: I was literally the least talented one there. I’m not kidding. When I look at those kids, I’m like, why in the world did they pick me? It was wild.”
In 2024, she opened up about her experience on the show during an episode of Jesse Tyler Ferguson’s podcast Dinner’s on Me and admitted she was a “great dancer.”
“I was living in Colorado at the time,” she explained of the audition process. “And some of my friends were going to a giant casting call for Disney at the downtown Denver Convention Center. And I went, I stood in line, and did my little nerdy, you know, dance. And they had me read a little skit, like, about a mermaid brushing her teeth, or something, with chocolate, or something stupid like that. And then I just happened to get it.”
“I think back then, Disney was looking for kids that were kind of, like, normal,” she said.
