Key Facts

• In 2001, 14-year-old Aubrey Graham auditioned for Degrassi: The Next Generation in Toronto.
• He won the role of Jimmy Brooks, a popular basketball player from a wealthy family.
• Graham played Jimmy for eight years, from 2001 to 2009, including a Season 4 storyline in which the character was shot and paralyzed.
• While filming, Graham wrote and recorded music under the name Drake, releasing mixtapes and building a separate career.
• He left the show as a regular after Season 7 and returned as a guest star in Season 8.
• His final episode aired in January 2009, shortly before the release of the mixtape So Far Gone.
• Drake later embraced his Degrassi history, including a 2018 music video reunion with former castmates.

The Audition That Changed Everything

In 2001, Aubrey Graham was a lanky 14-year-old who walked into a Toronto audition room hoping to land his first acting job. The producers of Degrassi: The Next Generation had already seen hundreds of school-aged actors as they searched for the young cast of their revival of the Canadian teen franchise, but one role was proving especially difficult to fill: Jimmy Brooks, a popular basketball player from a wealthy family. The producers needed someone who could convincingly play one of the cool kids, but also project enough warmth and vulnerability to become something more complicated.

Graham sat down to read. When he finished the scene, he was met with silence, which seemed to terrify the inexperienced teenager. He looked around and apologized, asking whether he had done something wrong and whether he could try again. The producers reassured him that he had done well.

Things became even more awkward when Graham stood up to leave and accidentally snagged a light stand, causing it to wobble before a production assistant grabbed it. He shook everyone’s hands, thanked them repeatedly, and politely backed out of the room. Once the door closed, the four people behind the table looked at one another and agreed that they had found Jimmy Brooks.

A Canadian TV Institution

By the time Graham auditioned, Degrassi was already a Canadian television institution with a history stretching back more than two decades. The franchise was created by middle school teacher Linda Schuyler and her producing partner Kit Hood, beginning with a collection of standalone short television films that included Ida Makes a Movie, which premiered in 1979. Those films eventually evolved into The Kids of Degrassi Street, but the franchise became a cultural phenomenon with Degrassi Junior High, which premiered in January 1987.

Unlike glossy American teen dramas, Degrassi Junior High looked like the schools its young audience actually attended. Its amateur teenage actors looked and dressed like real kids, while its characters dealt with difficult subjects such as puberty, peer pressure, teenage pregnancy, abortion, and suicide with a realism that rarely slipped into exaggerated moralizing. The approach resonated with viewers: Canadian audiences reportedly climbed as high as 1.6 million, the series eventually aired in more than 40 countries, and it won eight Gemini Awards during its run. The franchise continued with Degrassi High, followed by the post-graduation television film School’s Out and the non-fiction docuseries Degrassi Talks before going quiet in the early 1990s.

Almost a decade later, while Schuyler and longtime Degrassi writer Yan Moore were discussing a possible reunion special, they realized that Emma, the daughter of Christine “Spike” Nelson, whose teenage pregnancy had been one of the original show’s landmark storylines, would now be old enough to enter junior high herself. Rather than simply revisiting the past, Schuyler and Moore saw an opportunity to introduce an entirely new generation of students while allowing characters from the earlier series to return as adults. The idea became Degrassi: The Next Generation, which the network greenlit in 2000 before producers began searching Toronto for the young actors who would populate the fictional Degrassi Community School. More than 600 school-aged children would eventually audition for the series, including a teenager named Aubrey Graham.

Casting the Charismatic Kid

Aubrey Graham was raised primarily by his mother, Sandi Graham, after his parents separated when he was five. He spent parts of his childhood in Toronto’s west end and later Forest Hill, where he attended Forest Hill Collegiate Institute before eventually transferring to Vaughan Road Academy. His father, Dennis Graham, was a drummer who had played alongside Jerry Lee Lewis, which meant music was already present in Aubrey’s life. But it was television that gave him his first real opportunity in entertainment.

Actor Stefan Brogren, already familiar to generations of Degrassi viewers as Archie “Snake” Simpson, helped connect young Graham with the show’s casting team. Graham had no professional acting credits to his name, but Schuyler repeatedly recalled that there was something immediately compelling about him. She described a charisma and warmth to his face and his smile, while in another interview she put it even more simply: there was a vulnerability about him, and the camera adored him.

More than 20 years later, Drake revealed another side to the story of his now-famous first audition. In a 2023 voice memo, he admitted that he had gotten high shortly before walking into the room after succumbing to peer pressure while hanging out with other kids. He explained that he had an audition for a TV show that ultimately shaped his life. Before the audition, he went to another kid’s house and, out of a desire to be accepted, got high with the other kids right before the audition.

The memory stayed with him in a surprisingly existential way. Drake admitted that he had occasionally wondered whether something had actually gone wrong that day and whether the extraordinary life that followed could somehow be imagined. He said the concept had stuck with him for years. The two recollections offer strangely complementary versions of the same life-changing afternoon. Schuyler remembers discovering a teenager with exactly the charisma, warmth, and vulnerability the producers needed, while Drake remembers being an insecure kid desperate enough to fit in that he got high before the first major audition of his life. Whatever was happening inside Graham’s head that day, the producers had found their Jimmy Brooks.

Becoming Jimmy Brooks

Graham later recalled that he did not have a great time in high school and did not really fit in. Then one day his mother called and told him he had gotten the role. He grabbed his bag and left, beginning what he described as a wild journey. Degrassi: The Next Generation premiered in October 2001, introducing audiences to a new ensemble of young students navigating adolescence at Degrassi Community School. Graham made his first appearance as Jimmy Brooks a few weeks later, in the Season 1 episode “Family Politics.”

Initially, Jimmy appeared to fit neatly into one of television’s most familiar high-school archetypes: he was handsome, athletic, popular, and wealthy, played basketball, dated the popular yet insecure overachiever Ashley Kerwin, and spent much of his time with his best friend, Spinner Mason. But this was Degrassi, where familiar archetypes rarely remained uncomplicated for long. Throughout his first three seasons, Jimmy slowly emerged as much more than the stereotypical high-school jock. Viewers saw his seemingly privileged home life complicated by frequently absent parents, watched his relationship with Ashley become increasingly messy, and saw his friendship with the more impulsive Spinner repeatedly tested.

Underneath the confidence of the popular basketball player was someone sensitive and creative, with growing interests in art and music as well as insecurities about the expectations other people had placed on him. That emotional complexity helped make Jimmy an important part of the show’s ensemble. Unlike Spinner, whose impulsiveness frequently got him into trouble, Jimmy often became the more grounded presence in their friendship. While he could be stubborn, jealous, and occasionally immature, there was an underlying decency to the character that made viewers trust him and root for him. As the show grew from a Canadian revival into an international success, Jimmy Brooks became one of its most recognizable characters.

The Shooting That Redefined the Role

During the fourth season, Degrassi fundamentally changed Jimmy’s life. To many fans, no episode remains more unforgettable than “Time Stands Still,” the two-part episode that aired in October 2004 and tackled school violence with a seriousness rarely seen on television aimed at young audiences. Schuyler said she began thinking about incorporating a school-shooting storyline following the 1999 Columbine High School massacre, but it took several years before the writers felt prepared to tackle the subject. When the cast gathered for the read-through, Schuyler recalled a stillness in the room and said she felt physically sick as everyone discovered where the story was heading.

The episodes centered on Rick Murray, a troubled student who had previously physically abused his girlfriend before returning to Degrassi, where he became the target of relentless bullying and humiliation. After a cruel prank was played on him in front of the entire school, Spinner and school bully Jay Hogart manipulated Rick into believing Jimmy had been responsible, despite the fact that Jimmy had actually been one of the few students to show him kindness. Rick returned to school with a gun, confronted Jimmy in a hallway, and shot him in the back before he himself was killed during a struggle with another student.

The shooting permanently changed one of the show’s most popular characters, and Graham had no idea it was coming. Drake later recalled that he did not know about the end of “Time Stands Still” until the read-through. Someone told him to mentally prepare for the day’s script, but they did not tell him there would be a shooting at the school and that he would be the victim. As the young cast realized what was going to happen, the read-through became intensely emotional. Drake described shock and sadness, with cast members holding hands and crying.

Jimmy survived the shooting, but the writers made the consequential decision not to give the character an easy recovery or eventually return him to the life viewers had previously known. The shooting left Jimmy paralyzed, and rather than treating his disability as the subject of a single “very special episode” before moving on, Degrassi committed to exploring the consequences over the seasons that followed. Viewers watched Jimmy navigate rehabilitation, anger, frustration, depression, relationships, and eventually a degree of acceptance as he learned to live his life in a wheelchair. His disability became part of his character without becoming the entirety of his character; Jimmy was still allowed to date, joke, paint, fall in love, fight with his friends, and imagine a future for himself.

For Graham, the storyline initially raised difficult questions about what playing Jimmy would now require. He asked what now, saying he did not want to spend the rest of his years in a wheelchair. The storyline forced the young actor to stretch dramatically. He explained that a lot more went into playing Jimmy after the shooting, and that it gave him something to study and homework as an actor. Looking back on the uncompromising nature of the storyline, Drake credited exactly the quality that had made Degrassi distinctive from the beginning: the show was good because life is messed up and the writers were not afraid to let viewers know that.

The Wheelchair Controversy

In 2021, as Degrassi: The Next Generation celebrated the 20th anniversary of its premiere, writer James Hurst made a remarkable claim about Graham’s relationship with Jimmy’s wheelchair. According to Hurst, the production once received a letter from a Toronto law firm stating that Graham would not return for Season 6 unless Jimmy’s injury was healed and the character was allowed to walk again. Hurst recalled that the letter said Aubrey Graham would not return to Degrassi Season 6 as Jimmy Brooks unless his injury was healed and he was out of the wheelchair.

Hurst said he asked Graham to come into the production office, where the actor denied knowing about the letter. Rather than dwelling on where it had come from, Hurst asked him directly how he felt about continuing to play Jimmy in a wheelchair. Graham’s reported answer revealed just how conscious he had already become of the way Jimmy Brooks, and particularly the character’s wheelchair, was perceived by the people around him in hip-hop. According to Hurst, Graham said all his friends in the rap game said he was soft because he was in a wheelchair. Hurst’s response has since become legendary among Degrassi fans: he told Graham to tell his friends in the rap game that he got shot, and asked how much harder he could get.

Graham ultimately stayed on the show and Jimmy remained in his wheelchair, but Hurst’s recollection is fascinating when viewed through the lens of everything that came next. The character that had given Graham his first taste of fame was apparently beginning to collide with the identity he was trying to establish in music as Drake. Jimmy Brooks had given him a career, but Graham was already wondering whether Jimmy Brooks might make it harder for people to believe in Drake.

Double Life

By the mid-2000s, Graham was effectively leading two professional lives, spending his days filming Degrassi in Toronto as Jimmy Brooks while devoting his nights to writing, recording, and trying to build a completely separate career as Drake. The distinction between the two identities became increasingly visible to the people around him as music evolved from a side project into an increasingly serious pursuit that consumed virtually every hour he was not working on the show.

According to executive producer Stephen Stohn, Graham sometimes slept in his dressing room because he had spent the entire night making music before returning to set the following morning. He used money earned from acting to help finance his recordings and manufacture physical CDs, and rather than waiting for a record company to discover him, he began distributing the music himself as he tried to create enough local momentum to force people to pay attention.

Perhaps most revealingly, Graham seemed determined to keep those two identities separate. Even as Degrassi producers recognized his musical ambitions and looked for opportunities to incorporate them into Jimmy’s storyline, Graham resisted allowing the show that had made him famous to become a vehicle for introducing Drake. Stohn said Graham would play them mixtapes, and they tried to talk him into letting them use some of his music in the show and getting him to rap and sing. Producers eventually pushed to make music a larger part of Jimmy’s storyline, but according to Stohn, Graham initially stood firm. His music side was one side of his career and acting was another. They did manage to get him to do some rap, but it took convincing.

In 2006, Drake released his first mixtape, Room for Improvement, reportedly pressing and distributing thousands of physical copies while using his own money to fund the project. Radio stations and major labels were not suddenly clamouring to sign him, and to much of the public, Aubrey Graham remained far better known as the kid from Degrassi. But he continued recording. The following year, Comeback Season arrived and began to change the trajectory. The music video for “Replacement Girl,” featuring Trey Songz, gave Drake a level of exposure that suggested his ambitions might not be as improbable as they had once seemed.

What makes this period especially fascinating in hindsight is that there was never a clean moment when Aubrey Graham stopped being an actor and suddenly became a rapper. For several years, Jimmy Brooks and Drake existed simultaneously, with one identity providing Graham with a steady career and a recognizable face while the other represented the future he was increasingly determined to pursue. Eventually, those two lives became impossible to balance.

Leaving Jimmy Brooks

By 2008, Graham’s music career was becoming increasingly difficult to contain within the life he had built on television. Jimmy graduated from Degrassi at the end of Season 7, later than many of his original classmates because his rehabilitation from the shooting had forced him to repeat a year. Graham’s time as a regular cast member was coming to an end as well. He returned once more as a guest star during Season 8, appearing alongside Jimmy’s longtime best friend, Spinner Mason, to bring the character’s story to a close.

His final appearance as Jimmy Brooks came in the Season 8 episode “Lost in Love: Part 2,” which aired in Canada in January 2009. There was no dramatic farewell or elaborate sendoff for the future superstar; Jimmy simply moved forward with his life, while the actor who had played him for most of his adolescence prepared to do exactly the same thing. In retrospect, the timing seems almost impossibly cinematic. Less than a month after Graham’s final Degrassi episode aired in Canada, Drake released So Far Gone, the mixtape that dramatically altered the trajectory of his career. “Best I Ever Had” became a massive hit, while “Successful,” featuring Trey Songz and Lil Wayne, helped push him further into the centre of hip-hop as Lil Wayne and Young Money entered the picture.

For eight years, Aubrey Graham had been recognizable to millions of television viewers as Jimmy Brooks, but within an extraordinarily short period of time, Drake began to eclipse the character who had made him famous. The transformation looks almost seamless when compressed into a career retrospective, yet Graham was leaving behind a steady television job that had shaped much of his adolescence for a music industry that had given him no guarantee his ambitions would work. The gamble paid off spectacularly, but one part of his old identity proved considerably harder to leave behind.

Hip-Hop Credibility and the Jimmy Brooks Joke

Drake’s acting career inevitably followed him into hip-hop, where his years playing Jimmy Brooks, and particularly his years playing him in a wheelchair, became an easy way for critics to question whether a former Canadian teen actor could possess the kind of authenticity traditionally demanded by rap. His years as “Wheelchair Jimmy” became an obvious reference point for anyone looking to question Drake’s credibility, which makes Hurst’s recollection of how Graham had worried years earlier about what his rapper friends thought of Jimmy’s wheelchair seem almost prophetic.

His relationship with Degrassi, however, appeared to evolve as his success grew. Rather than trying to erase Jimmy Brooks from his biography, Drake seemed increasingly comfortable allowing the character to become part of his mythology, referencing the show in interviews, laughing along with the jokes, and occasionally reminding people that the global rap superstar they were watching had once spent his days filming a Canadian teen drama. In 2017, he even posted an $8.25 residual cheque from the series on social media, joking that Degrassi money was still coming in. By that point, Drake had little left to prove about whether a former Degrassi actor could succeed in hip-hop, and the part of his history that had once complicated his attempts to be taken seriously could finally be treated with affection.

The following year, he made that reconciliation impossible to miss. In June 2018, Drake released the music video for “I’m Upset,” turning what had received a somewhat mixed reaction as a song into one of the most memorable celebrations of his Degrassi past. Directed by Karena Evans, the video was essentially a Degrassi: The Next Generation reunion disguised as a Drake video, bringing together a long list of familiar faces including Shane Kippel, Nina Dobrev, Stacey Farber, Jake Epstein, A.J. Saudin, Adamo Ruggiero, Lauren Collins, Cassie Steele, Ephraim Ellis, and Stefan Brogren, along with Jason Mewes and Kevin Smith.

Drake and his former castmates returned to the halls of Degrassi Community School for a reunion party filled with inside jokes and references to the series before the closing credits paired original footage from The Next Generation with new clips of the cast as the show’s familiar theme song played. For millennials who had grown up watching Degrassi, the video felt like much more than a nostalgic class reunion. Drake had become one of the biggest stars on the planet and could have constructed a music video around virtually any fantasy or chapter of his life, yet he chose to return to the fictional high school where millions of viewers had first met him.

There was also something fitting about the fact that the same chapter of his life that had once complicated his attempts to establish credibility as a rapper had become something he could now celebrate completely on his own terms. Years earlier, Graham had resisted allowing Degrassi to become a vehicle for his music; now, as one of the biggest artists in the world, Drake was bringing Degrassi into his music himself. Jimmy Brooks was not an embarrassing footnote that needed to be hidden from Drake’s history; he had become part of the origin story.

Reclaiming the Origin Story

Nobody’s post-Degrassi life has looked anything like Aubrey Graham’s. As Drake, he became one of the most commercially successful recording artists of his generation, building a global brand while becoming deeply intertwined with the modern cultural identity of Toronto. Yet after all the records, awards, tours, feuds, memes, and accolades, Jimmy Brooks has never completely disappeared from the story. That does not diminish Drake’s extraordinary success so much as make the route he took to get there even more unusual.

It would be too simple to argue that Degrassi somehow created Drake, or that the sensitivity and vulnerability that later became signatures of his music can be directly traced back to Jimmy Brooks. What can be said is that before Drake built a career around translating heartbreak, insecurity, ambition, and complicated relationships into entertainment, Aubrey Graham spent eight formative years performing complicated emotions in front of a television camera. Before millions of fans began dissecting his relationships through his lyrics, viewers watched every week as Jimmy navigated breakups, friendship, jealousy, trauma, and uncertainty

Source:Yahoo Entertainment News