“Come and let’s play together, in the bright sunny weather, let’s all go to Gullah Gullah Island!”

Remember the Nickelodeon show about a family on an imaginary island that encouraged children to eat healthy, tell the truth, and solve problems? One of the young daughters on the show was Shaina Freeman. This young girl had a four year run on Gullah Gullah Island and has grown up to be… a wonderful Auburn University student.

Shaina Freeman was a toddler model in Florida when she auditioned for the TV show. All she had to do was sing a song that helped children learn Spanish, and she got the part of the youngest daughter in the Daise family.

Freeman was on the show for the entire four seasons from 1994 – 1999. During this time, she had to live with her grandmother so that her parents could still work. She was tutored on the set as well and didn’t go to public schools till second grade.

“It was hard being so young and being away from my mom. Plus I didn’t get to do ballet and gymnastics like normal little girls did,” Freeman said.

But although Freeman was a young girl, she says Gullah Gullah Island was a great time in her childhood. She got to experience things a lot of kids don’t get to experience. Freeman got her own “TA”, which is a talent assistant who she claims she “ran ragged”. In the moments she wasn’t filming, Freeman got to cut lines and ride anything she wanted to at Universal Studios. She also got huge discounts at the stores in the theme parks.

“The coolest thing was that there was a green room where all the kids hung out, so I got to hang out with the kids from ‘All That’ and ‘Keenan & Kel’.”

Freeman hasn’t acted or modeled since the show, but instead wanted to enjoy the life of a normal kid.

“As soon as I finished the show, I signed up for everything. Ballet, hip-hop dancing, basketball, gymnastics, baton. I did not want to act anymore. I wanted to be a kid,” Freeman said.

To this day, people still recognize her as one of the young girls from Gullah Gullah Island, but she doesn’t have a big head about it.

“The funniest things are that people think it’s a real place, and then when guys tell me they had a crush on me when they were five,” Freeman said.

Currently, Freeman is a junior in Human Development and Family Studies. She still sings in the Auburn University Women’s Chorus and performs in the Auburn University Flagline.



Find more videos like this on The Loveliest Village