Who plays rodrick in diary of a wimpy kid

Olivia Bleyaert, Reporter
April 5, 2017

During the weekend, a campaign started to arise about the acting cast of the new movie of “Diary Of The Wimpy Kid” and one of its characters, Rodrick. People are upset about the new actor who is playing the new Rodrick instead of the older actor Devon Bostick. The new actor’s name is Charlie Wright, and he does not look like the Rodrick that we all know and love.

The campaign started when the trailer came out of the new movie and people were enraged by what they saw. Most of the people on social media were comparing him to different characters from different shows/movies. Wright is mostly compared to Lord Farquaad, Bella Thorne, Jeffree Star, Pleakley from “Lilo and Stitch” and Dora The Explorer. People mostly were just roasting this actor because how different he looks from the original Rodrick from the past movies.

The reason why the original actor wasn’t going to be in the movie is because he is 25 years old now, and he doesn’t really look like a teenager anymore so the producers just needed another actor that actually looks younger and they found one (that doesn’t really look like Rodrick).

There is also another trending hashtag “Not My Heffleys” as well with the “Not My Rodrick” campaign. Because they also replaced the actor for Greg, mom, dad, and even Rowley. Our childhood has been taken from us and has been replaced with different actors. This tomfoolery is outrageous to all of our childhoods and our hearts have been ripped out of our chests. Why can’t they just keep the old actors and show them looking older and growing? Nobody stays young forever.

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• Book
• Movie (2010)
• Movie (2017)
• Movie (2021)
• Online
• Rowley's Journal

Ice cream parlor mascot (presumably formerly)

Devon Bostick (2010-2012)
Charlie Wright (2017)
Hunter Dillon (2021)

Diary of a Wimpy Kid (online)

Diary of a Wimpy Kid (2021 film)

Rodrick Heffley is the semi-aggressive older brother of Greg and Manny Heffley and the drummer and founder of the rock band Löded Diper. He is a major character in the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series, acting as a tertiary antagonist in the series overall and serving as the main antagonist of Rodrick Rules.

In the first three Diary of a Wimpy Kid films, he is played by Devon Bostick, with the role being passed on to Charlie Wright in the film adaptation of The Long Haul. He is voiced by Hunter Dillon in the animated Diary of a Wimpy Kid film for Disney+.

Background

Birth and Childhood

Rodrick as a baby

Rodrick Heffley was born to Susan and Frank Heffley in Plainview.

When Greg was little, Rodrick liked to mess with his head. The first lie he told Greg was that, if your belly button got untied (as a newborn), your butt would fall off. Greg told his whole preschool class, which caused a big stir. Another lie was that the toilet seat was only used for girls. Greg believed this, until he accidentally left the door unlocked, and Susan found him. Once he told Greg that, if someone wears camouflage, they are invisible to everyone else. That incident got Greg banned from the pool for the rest of the summer, due to him looking at naked women. Sometimes Rodrick's lies even end up costing money. Greg once believed that, if you put money in the ground, it will grow into a money tree. Rodrick took the money, and Greg lost a lot of his birthday money until his mom stepped in to help him.

Teen Years

Rodrick Heffley attended Westmore Middle School and became friends with Chris Merkle and Ward and they together created the band Löded Diper. He also wrote an assignment called A Hundred Years Ago; this assignment was the reason Frank started to do his homework for him. He used to be a trouble maker in school and was greatly disliked by some of the teachers there, one such person being Mr. Huff. During this time, Rodrick tried out soccer, but quit because of Mr. Litch.

Rodrick meets Bill

A summer later, Rodrick and his friends were going camping overnight looking for concert tickets; during that time, they meet Bill Walter. Rodrick became friends with him and looked up to him, because in high school he was voted, "Most Likely To Be A Rock Star".

Rodrick attended Crossland High School, but the school has not been mentioned for a while. He either graduated or the school has simply not been mentioned, since the series is on a floating timeline.

Personality

Like Greg, Rodrick is shown to have no real talents, and is only good at a few things, mainly rock music, and spends most of his time on it, which drafts him away from schoolwork. He would much rather sleep for hours over doing anything else. Fitting with his love for heavy metal music, Rodrick is the founder and lead drummer of a band called “Löded Diper”, a metal band. Its lead singer is a man whom Rodrick's parents are afraid he will turn into.

Rodrick is extremely lazy and careless when it comes to school, which explains where Greg gets his laziness. He almost never gets a grade above C-, except for his book reports (where Frank does nearly all the work due to Rodrick's inability to type). Greg believes that Rodrick is lazy and unintelligent in all other areas, though there are clues that show otherwise. Rodrick clearly isn't the smartest in the family academic wise as he hardly makes an effort at school and constantly asks his parents to do his work for him, as already mentioned. Sometimes he can even get rewarded for bad grades. When Greg was invited to a café by his parents as a reward for his great half-year report card with A's and B's on it, Rodrick was allowed to come too despite of his report card being as terrible as usual. Although Rodrick is portrayed in this manner, he is actually quite manipulative and intelligent in conning other people.

Rodrick is said by Greg to be a terrible speller (though he spelled everything right besides band names on his activity page in The Wimpy Kid Do-It-Yourself Book) and is said to be completely ignorant about how to use any electronic device.

(although this may be more manipulation to get things done for him; he is clearly seen using a music player in Rodrick Rules and a cell phone in a flashback in Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days, and in The Ugly Truth it is shown that he uploads photos online and he is again seen using a music player once again in Hard Luck. He also messages his friends as shown The Deep End). Rodrick did terribly back in elementary and middle school. The only reason Rodrick is doing slightly better at high school is that he cheats by having his dad do all the work for him, but in Hard Luck, it is said his first quarter didn't go well, meaning that his father might have stopped helping him. In the online book, Rodrick gets into a big fight with his dad in seventh grade, so he had to do a history paper himself. Greg buys that paper and flunks it.

He is shown to misspell a lot of words even in the recent books, like for example, in Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days and the online book, when they got Sweetie (the dog), Rodrick went and got the dog a bowl that says "Sweaty". In The Long Haul, he thought a safe is a microwave and bacon comes from pigs in the same way that eggs from chickens.

Even though Rodrick is often lazy, mean, careless, and irresponsible, he is shown to have a softer side at times, as seen where he can occasionally treat Greg nicely and the brothers get along. They also do some stuff together.

In the most recent books, he tends to be more responsible and treats his family nicely with respect.

Appearance

Rodrick usually wears a white shirt and black jeans but sometimes black shorts similar to Greg and wears a black tank top with ripped shorts and black shoes whenever he's going to a concert or performing a band show. Rodrick appears very alike to Greg as when Jeff Kinney draws Rodrick he starts off as if he's drawing Greg because they have the same facial structure.[1]

Rodrick stands out because of his eyebrows and five short strains of hair.

In the films Rodrick has black hair and occasionally wears makeup but In The Long Haul he has long hair. In the animated film he has multiple strains of hair that covers all around his head.

Trivia

• Given estimates made based off of illustrations of him, Rodrick Heffley is most likely between 5' 6" (167.64 cm) and 5' 8" (172.72 cm) tall. However, this is entirely conjecture, as his height has never been stated definitively within the series.
• Rodrick's science project and his grades for his SAT exams have not yet been revealed so far. In the online version, however, Rodrick got no ribbons for his science project.
• Rodrick once slept for 36 hours and didn't notice until he saw that Monday Night Football wasn't on, because it was Tuesday. He also had a bad habit of falling asleep in the hot tub and once Susan forgot to wake him up, resulting in his skin looking like a prune for two weeks during which his high school did their yearbook photos.
• Rodrick's room is located in the basement of the house. In the film, however, it was relocated to the attic as the house the producers used to film all the Heffley household scenes had no basement.
• Most of the characters in the book only show their eyebrows when they are mad. Fitting with Rodrick's antagonistic behaviour, however, he always looks angry due to him having eyebrows all the time.
• It's hinted in the online book that Rodrick has never had a legitimate girlfriend since Greg has never seen him with a girl. However, in The Wimpy Kid Do-It-Yourself Book, it is hinted in a letter that he was associated with a girl named Lyndsey, who seemed to break his heart in some way. This may explain why he acts incredibly rude and immature.
• Rodrick is a major antagonist of the three series; book, film, and online version. However, he isn't an antagonist in The Third Wheel, Hard Luck, and Big Shot.
  • In The Third Wheel, he is mentioned only a few times and is a background character; he doesn't bother or prank Greg at all (except for flashbacks), the same in Hard Luck. In Big Shot, He only appears on two pages and is mentioned once.
• He has had a minor role in the recent books, since Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days, with the exception of The Long Haul.
• In the online book, Rodrick drives a pickup truck while the van belongs to Bill Walter, however in the books and films the van belongs to him.
• He is thought to have a love for pranks. In the Rodrick Rules movie, he takes Greg to a mall and throws fake vomit on cars. This ends with the boys being chased through a dumpster and the mall by an angry gym teacher. He is also shown pulling pranks on Greg, other adults and teenagers in many of the books, for example putting fake vomit on cars, shooting spitballs on a man and mentioned to have pranked people with dollar bills underneath the boardwalk.
  • However, the first one with fake vomit on cars in Rodrick Rules book does happen, but Greg isn't involved.
• It is most likely he has a social network account because according to Greg in The Ugly Truth, he uploads pictures of his band. But after when Susan told him that people will look at his social media profile before giving him a job, in order to make him stop posting pictures of his band.
  • It's likely that his social media account could have been a Facebook account since The Ugly Truth was published in 2010.
• Despite appearing on all the books' first page (which generally has all the books' protagonists) Rodrick is only a major character in Rodrick Rules and The Long Haul with every other appearance being minor (under 30 pages).
• Rodrick is shown to be taken advantage of for the first time in Old School. This is also the first time he doesn't squeeze out of a situation from his Dad, Frank.
• Rodrick cut off some of his hair and one of his eyebrows in the online version when he grew a great moustache.
• In Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days, Rodrick got Sweetie's name wrong on the water bowl, which he spelled "Sweaty".
• Rodrick is usually the main antagonist in Diary of a Wimpy Kid, minor antagonist, and anti-hero in Rodrick Rules and Old School.
• It remains unknown if Rodrick got fired from his job at Old-Timey Ice Cream Parlour after Old School.
• It is assumed that he has minor dyslexia as he has trouble with writing and spelling.
• Rodrick is based on Jeff Kinney's older brother named Scott Kinney.
• Rodrick made an appearance in a Happy Meal Commercial created by McDonald's alongside with The Pig, Gammie, and Sweetie.
• It is unknown if he is in college as of Double Down or not, even though his mother has tried to persuade him to apply for numerous ones, where he eventually applied (even though he didn't know) for dog schools.
• In the online version, Greg states that Rodrick has a bee sting allergy.
• Like Greg and Manny, Rodrick is also rarely seen smiling (sometimes when pranking)
• It is implied in Hard Luck that he gets his thick eyebrows from his mom’s side of the family, as his maternal aunt Gretchen also has thick, always shown eyebrows.
• Rodrick has one of the biggest fanbases out of all the characters especially for teenagers mostly because of the portrayal by Devon Bostick.
• It is very possible that Rodrick has read Greg's diary as he knows that Greg has a crush on Holly Hills, he tried to steal it in Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules, and the "of a wimpy kid" on the cover looks similar to Rodrick's handwriting.
• Many fans considers him as the most normal out of the family because all the bad things he has done is usually harmless.
• Although Rodrick was portrayed as the mean older brother in the first books, he is portrayed much less mean in recent books.
• Rodrick is actually nice to Greg one time in the online book.

Gallery

See Rodrick Heffley/Gallery

References

1. ↑ //www.youtube.com/watch?v=cdiLIGIltm4&t=10s