“I think this was the first job that I ever got to work with puppets,” posits Baltimore native Anthony Michael Hobbs, “and it was awesome. You get to meet the people who play the puppets, and you can see how the puppets talk and play and all kinds of stuff.” About to celebrate his seventh birthday, Hobbs can easily be forgiven for forgetting a credit or two, given his steady streak of back-to-back gigs, one of the most recent being “SkWids,” an educational web series. Fittingly, Hobbs’ casting was online from start to finish, beginning with a backstage.com casting alert promptly answered by “momager” Kerri Moseley-Hobbs.
“Anthony’s mom submitted for him, but they couldn’t make it up [to New York] for the casting,” says “SkWids” director-producer Matthew Zuckerman. “She submitted a reading of his through a YouTube post, so we got to see Anthony that way.” Impressed by the digital submission, the “SkWids” team hired Hobbs to play one of the main character’s learningcompanions. Over the course of several short videos, the friends cover a host of subjects with the help of experts and original puppet creations by Brooklyn’s Geppetto Studios.
