"Not because [the show] told us anything," he tells TV Guide Online, "but it's my experience just being in the business. You can only write about so many things for so long... Eventually, they'll probably try to move into that romance thing, and then pull it back and toy with that. That's my opinion."

An optimistic Jonathan feels anything is possible, especially considering how What I Like cast against type by selecting a black actor to play Gary. "In the [audition] breakdown, it said any ethnicity," he says. "In my opinion, it was a white role because of the way it was written out and the way the dialogue was and the character Gary — the whole description of him as a skateboarding type... In their minds, they pictured a white boy. When I tested, I was going up against four or five white boys and I was the only African-American male, so in my opinion, they originally probably wanted a white boy, but I showed them otherwise."

How did he pull that off? At the audition, he recalls: "I was wearing the Diesels, the thermals, the vintage T-shirts... I added my own flavor to it. That's what I did to get the job. I just did my thing and didn't worry about color. If everybody's mindset is 'We pictured the kid being white' and the black kid comes in and changes your mind with his performance, that just goes to show you it can be done.