Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast
This Teen Actor Got Murdered - The Tara Correa-McMullen story
Mon, 03 Feb 2025
This is the story of Tara Correa-McMullen, the young actress from Rebound and Judging Amy.
Who was Tara Correa-McMullen and how did her acting career start?
So in the early 2000s, there was this Martin Lawrence comedy called Rebound. You might have seen it. And in that movie, you may have noticed this girl. Well, unfortunately, she's been unalived in a really brutal way. Now the girl, her name's Tara. She's 14, and she's a normal kid, and her family's kind of poor. But Tara's mom works at a casting office in Los Angeles.
And one day in that office, they're having trouble finding a teen actress to fill this role. And Tara's mom is like, hey, maybe Tara could do it. And so she comes to Tara and she's like, hey, you want to audition for a movie? And Tara's like, all right. So Tara goes in to audition and she's never professionally acted before, but whatever, she gives it a shot. And bam, they're like, she's perfect.
And suddenly Tara is cast in the movie Rebound with Martin Lawrence. Not bad for a first gig. And Tara ends up doing a good job and she enjoys it a lot. She loves being on set and learning everything she can about the process. So then Tara gets an agent and her career starts to take off.
And as soon as she's finished filming Rebound, she gets cast in her next role in the Emmy award-winning TV drama, Judging Amy. This time she plays a teen gang member. And Tara does such a good job in judging Amy, the producers, they decide to give her character an extended arc that spans many episodes. It means there's hope. Can you just give me my peanut butter cups?
She then also gets cast in an episode of Zoey 101. So she's out there killing it. She is about to be a star. Until around this time, Tara turns 16. And that is when she meets this guy, Christopher. And she thinks Christopher is fine. Here's the thing about Christopher though. He's quite literally 10 years older than her. And most importantly, he's gang affiliated.
I guess he's a blood or something. But regardless, pretty quickly they start dating and soon Tara is spending all her free time with Christopher and his gang affiliated friends. But when she starts bringing Christopher around her mom, mom takes one look at his gang colors and she's like, absolutely not. And she tells Tara, Christopher is not allowed in her house.
And she and Tara, they start fighting about this all the time. And the mom starts calling the police on the regular, hoping to get Christopher arrested and out of Tara's life for good. But unfortunately, it doesn't work because they can't prove he's committed any actual crimes. So there's nothing they can do. And eventually Tara and Christopher move in together and they get their own apartment.
Meanwhile, at work on the set of Judging Amy, Tara suddenly isn't taking her job seriously anymore. She keeps showing up to set late or just not showing up at all. So her agency gets worried and they start babysitting her, picking her up and dropping her off at set every day to make sure that she shows up on time and finishes shooting the season.
But then one day Tara shows up to set looking all tired, like maybe she's hung over and she's got some fresh bruises on her face and a new tattoo on her chest. And clearly she's been wrapped up with her boyfriend in that gang life. And the director, she sees what's going on and she's like, you know, Tara, we've written more episodes for you. And Tara's just like, I don't want to do them.
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