Peyton List

Breaking out of the Disney mold

Peyton List had already racked up hundreds of ads and catalog covers before turning ten. It wasn't a deliberate choice on her part, but a momentum that carried her from children's magazines to Disney Channel studios in New York.

Her role as Emma Ross on the series Jessie defined her teenage years between 2011 and 2015. The industry quickly typecast her as the blonde, popular girl from Manhattan. But her contract stretched longer than expected with the spin-off Bunk’d, where she had to stretch a character who no longer offered anything new.

It was a gilded cage with canned laughter.

In 2019, she made the necessary change of pace with the second season of Cobra Kai. The character of Tory Nichols had nothing in common with the expensive dresses of her earlier roles. **She learned martial arts from scratch** to play a teenager with a ruinous family situation and constant anger.

And the bet on gritty realism paid off.

Transitioning from child star to adult actress is often a minefield in Hollywood. List avoided public scandals and focused on genre projects such as The Friendship Game in 2022. That Canadian horror film wasn't a major commercial hit, but it helped prove her endurance on physically demanding shoots.

Managing her own name

Her move into leading roles with dramatic weight came in 2023 with School Spirits. She plays Maddie Nears, a young woman who must investigate her own murder from the limbo of her high school. The Paramount+ production confirmed that List could carry a series without relying on nostalgia for the '80s.

During the filming of 2024, the actress began getting involved in decision-making behind the camera. She didn't want to be just a face on the poster. She actively took part in developing the second season of her supernatural series, filmed in Vancouver under difficult weather conditions that forced several outdoor sequences to be postponed.

And the effort paid off in the offices.

Her ability to attract the Gen Z audience translated into solid viewership numbers. **She surpassed 20 million followers** on social media, but she kept a low profile about her private life. This strategy allowed her to work on projects as different as the Adam Sandler comedy Hubie Halloween and low-budget independent dramas.

But her greatest professional challenge was closing out the Tory Nichols arc. In 2024, the production of the sixth and final season of Cobra Kai faced the writers' and actors' strikes, which forced a complete restructuring of the filming schedule in Atlanta.

The sixth installment of the karate series used Sony Venice 2 cameras to capture the final fight sequences, and it had a production budget that exceeded 15 million dollars per episode.