Summer Activity

Cree Summer says she’s a lot like Freddie Brooks, the bright but naive college freshman she plays on NBC’s Thursday night “Cosby” spin-off “A Different World.” “I’ve just seen a little bit more and have a couple more scratches on me,” she said. “(Freddie’s) so young and inexperienced . . . she’s having her first taste of independence and she’s going to fall. . . . What I want to see is if Cree can learn from the lessons that Freddie gets to learn.”

Summer, 19, calls herself “childlike,” and says she hasn’t quite figured out who she is. Her success has come quickly, too. She moved to Los Angeles from Toronto one year ago and landed her “Different World” role after just six months of auditions.

“I know I’m just a kid,” she says. “This is my first job in Hollywood, so it’s a training ground. . . . I’ve lost my (Hollywood) virginity to this show, and I’m proud of it.”

Summer was no newcomer to the entertainment field, though, having already piled up a hefty list of commercial, cartoon voice-over and movie-of-the-week credits while in Canada, and having studied dance and voice at the Toronto High School for Performing Arts, the Royal Conservatory of Music, the Toronto Dance Theatre and the Len Gibson School of Dance.

“But as soon as you cross the border, it’s like another planet, at least in the entertainment world,” Summer says, adding that “A Different World” has not been her only Los Angeles project--she also does voice-overs for the Whoopi Goldberg-like character Chilly Cooper on the Saturday morning cartoon show “Slimer” and is working on a debut album for Columbia Records.

“I’ve been singing since I was young,” says Summer, who at age 12, sang opening sets for her father’s Toronto jazz band. “So, doing an album just seemed like the next step.” Summer expects the album, as yet untitled, to be released late next year.

In the future, Summer said she would like to star in feature films and write children’s books. But for now, she says she’s happy just growing with her TV character, exploring Los Angeles, and getting herself into a lot of “good kinds of trouble.”