Snack Shack star Conor Sherry makes us feel old

Want to feel old? When asked to tease Snack Shack, which becomes available digitally on Tuesday, star Conor Sherry first points out that “it’s in the ’90s, and there’s no technology. There’s no screenagers.” The 23-year-old relates to his character because he “had parents that were somewhat ‘granola,’” he tells The A.V. Club, “meaning that I was the last kid to get an iPod touch.” He has fond childhood memories of playing outside with neighbors, “So I think a lot of that, and the friendships I had at that age, were really fun to actually draw on and use going back into 1991 for Snack Shack.”

“When I first read the script for Snack Shack, it was interesting because I’m so used to reading scripts where 15-year-olds and 14-year-olds are portrayed through a certain lens, right? You can tell it was written by an adult,” Sherry shares. “And when I read this script—granted there is a lot of cussing, but we were all 15 at one point. And I just remember reading it and thinking, ‘This is so authentic. This is so true to how 15 year old best friends are behaving when there parents aren’t around.’”

Sherry co-stars in Snack Shack with The Fabelmans’ Gabriel LaBelle, which “was the greatest experience ever,” he says. “We got to go out to Nebraska two weeks early and hang out in the town that we actually shot the movie in, which was really cool. We worked at the real Snack Shack with real Nebraska kids. And I think the energy we created and the friendship that we had carried us through the shoot. It felt very natural, it was really just a lot of fun.”

The actor promises that “even though it’s an R-rated comedy with a ton of cussing, it’s a family movie” with big laughs for the whole audience—he’s had moms come up to him at screenings of the film saying, “I grew up in the midwest, this was my life!” In other words, it’s a worthy entry to the coming-of-age pantheon, and Sherry would know, as he watched a lot of them to prepare for Snack Shack. His favorite? “I always come back to Superbad,” he admits. “It doesn’t matter how many I watch, every time I watch that one it gives me everything I need.”