Peter Dager Actor: The Miami Kid Who Knew Nothing About Owen Wilson—and Landed Stick

Before Peter Dager filmed a single scene of Stick, he flew out to California for a screen test. Owen Wilson was in the room. And Dager — 22 years old, Miami-raised, one step removed from playing a minor character in a horror sequel nobody particularly loved — had genuinely never seen an Owen Wilson movie in his life.

Not Wedding Crashers. Not Midnight in Paris. Not Bottle Rocket. Nothing.

“I don’t know how he reacted when he saw Owen,” Dager told the Boston Globe, “but for me, it was natural.”

That’s the detail most profiles of this kid skim past. Because the standard version of this story — unknown young actor, seven-round audition, lands breakout role opposite comedy legend — is a perfectly usable Hollywood narrative. It sells itself. But the reason he actually got the part, the reason showrunner Jason Keller and Owen Wilson chose him out of what was presumably a significant pool of young Latino actors, is that he walked into a room with one of the most recognizable faces in American film and felt nothing but professional curiosity.

That is either insane confidence or a complete lack of vanity. Possibly both.

Table of Contents

Quick Bio

Info	Detail
Full Name	Peter Dager
Born	Miami, Florida (birth date disputed in sources: Nov 2, 2002 vs. Mar 20, 2003)
Ethnicity	Cuban-Venezuelan; Cuban father, Venezuelan mother
Training	New World School of the Arts, Miami — musical theatre, graduated 2021
Current base	New York City
Breakout role	Santi Wheeler in Stick (Apple TV+, 2025)
Audition rounds for *Stick*	Seven
First recorded credit	Short film Fourteen (2013) — age roughly 10-11
Notable TV	Harris in WITS Academy (Nickelodeon, 2015); Miguelito Morand in Demente Criminal (2015) — billed as Peter López
Notable film	Nick the Dick from Insidious: The Red Door (2023)
Season 2 status	Confirmed; filming underway as of late 2025, premieres November 2026
Most overlooked fact	His Stick interview with the Boston Globe was, per the article, his first-ever press interview

Who He Is Before the Hype Gets There

Here’s the thing about “rising star” profiles. By the time a journalist gets around to calling someone that, the story they’re telling is already a little bit manufactured. The struggle has been aestheticized. The journey has been packaged.

Peter Dager is interesting precisely because the packaging hasn’t fully happened yet. The content-farm articles about him are a disaster — one site claims he was “born in 1982” and is “in his late 40s,” which would make him either a time traveler or a hallucination. Another gives him birth in 1974. A third correctly notes he’s in his early twenties but gets the exact birth date wrong. There are two competing dates — November 2, 2002 and March 20, 2003 — and neither source can claim the moral high ground.

What’s actually confirmed: Miami. Cuban-Venezuelan roots. New World School of the Arts. Musical theatre. A career that started in short films when he was still in primary school, a pair of Spanish-language TV credits at twelve that almost nobody writes about, and a decade of grinding in the spaces between.

Think about what that means. He has a credit from 2013. That’s not “started acting at 18.” That’s a kid who committed to something before he’d finished elementary school and just… kept at it.

The Spanish-Language Career Nobody Talks About

In 2015, two things happened simultaneously. Peter Dager booked a role on Nickelodeon’s WITS Academy — a witch-and-wizard teen sitcom, a spinoff of Every Witch Way, which ran for exactly one month and twenty episodes before quietly cancelling — and he also appeared in Demente Criminal, a Venezuelan-Colombian-American telenovela about a psychiatrist who’s secretly a serial killer. Produced by Venevisión, filmed in Miami, aired on Univision and Venevision.

He played Miguelito Morand in Demente Criminal. Thirteen episodes. He was billed on that show not as Peter Dager but as Peter López. His character’s mother, Consuelo de Morand, was played by Isabella Santodomingo. The show was a serious prestige property for Spanish-language television — based on a true-crime bestseller, ambitious production, distributed internationally.

Nobody includes this in articles about him. Every mainstream bio jumps from “early short films” to WITS Academy to the gap years to Insidious. The Demente Criminal credit is sitting right there on IMDb Pro but doesn’t fit the “promising young American actor” narrative, so it gets quietly omitted.

But it matters. A lot. Because it tells you this kid was working in bilingual spaces from the start, building skills across markets, doing serious dramatic work in Spanish for adult audiences while simultaneously doing fantasy TV for Nickelodeon kids. At age twelve.

That’s not typical. Most American-trained young actors stay firmly on one side of the language divide.

The Gap Years (2016–2022) and What They Actually Were

Between WITS Academy in 2015 and his first feature credit in 2022, there’s a six-year stretch that most profiles just gloss over. “He continued building his career.” Right. Sure.

What actually happened: he graduated from New World School of the Arts in Miami in 2021 — specializing in musical theatre, which is worth noting because it’s not a casual training track. New World is a serious performing arts high school, and musical theatre there means voice, movement, ensemble work, the whole apparatus. It’s technique-building, not just audition practice.

During those years, he appeared in a short film called Island Dreams in 2016. That’s all the screen record shows. One short. Five years of schooling and presumably a lot of auditioning and rejection that nobody documents because rejection is the default condition of being a young actor and it doesn’t make for a compelling bio section.

He moved to New York City. That detail appears in one source — New York being his “current residence” — and it suggests he went there post-graduation to pursue the industry on his own terms. Not LA. New York. Which, again, tells you something. Musical theatre training, New York base. He wasn’t coming at this as a film-and-TV commodity. He was coming at it as an artist with a specific theatrical discipline.

Then Who Invited Charlie? (2022), a low-key comedic ensemble that at least got him a feature credit and played some festival circuits. Then Insidious: The Red Door (2023). Then Stick.

The gap wasn’t a gap. It was training.

Nick the Dick and What That Role Actually Did For Him

Let’s be real about Insidious: The Red Door for a second. It scored a 38% on Rotten Tomatoes. It made $189 million worldwide on a $16 million budget, which is an insane return, so Columbia Pictures was thrilled. Critics were less thrilled. Patrick Wilson’s directorial debut is generally considered the weakest entry in a franchise that itself wasn’t exactly hanging with prestige horror.

Peter Dager’s character is named “Nick the Dick.” That’s the role. That’s the credit.

He’s a frat antagonist at the college campus scenes where Ty Simpkins’ character, Dalton, starts his freshman year. The kind of movie bully part that exists to generate antipathy and occasionally scream. It’s a nothing role in the traditional critical sense.

But practically? It put him in a $16 million studio horror production. It got him on a screen test list somewhere. It got him in a room with Patrick Wilson, whose fingerprints are all over the Blumhouse extended universe. It proved he could show up on time, hit marks, and perform in a professional film environment.

One review site described his character as “Nick” without even including the Dick portion of the name, which suggests they may have edited for decorum. The We Got This Covered cast breakdown was the only outlet I found that specifically noted “WITS Academy alum Peter Dager portrays a new character in The Red Door known only as Nick the Dick,” which is a sentence that exists in a universe I never expected to spend time in.

The credit matters even if the role doesn’t. That’s just how the industry works.

Seven Rounds to Land Santi

Stick required seven rounds of auditions. That number comes from the Boston Globe profile. Seven rounds for a co-lead role in an Apple TV+ series opposite a movie star.

For context: most significant TV roles have three to five rounds of auditions. Pilots sometimes push to six. Seven means they were either extraordinarily careful or extraordinarily indecisive. Either way, Peter Dager went through every single one of them and came out the other side.

The logistics of that are worth thinking about. Seven auditions means seven sessions of preparation, seven sessions of recalibrating what you understand about the character, seven sessions of potentially being told “not yet, come back.” At some point you’re not just auditioning, you’re doing character work. You’re building Santi from the inside.

By the time he actually got to set, he already knew who this kid was.

“I would journal as Santi,” he said to Sharp Magazine. “I woke up at 5:00 a.m. I didn’t go out.” This is not standard young actor behavior on a feel-good sports comedy. This is someone who knew he was being tested in front of professionals who could spot when someone was coasting, and made a deliberate choice not to coast.

The result is a performance that, honestly, holds its own next to Wilson’s considerable charm. That’s not easy to say. Owen Wilson is very specifically excellent at the relaxed, self-deprecating, effortlessly likeable thing. He has been thirty years. Dager’s Santi has to hold the same emotional space while also representing a generation that Wilson’s character literally doesn’t understand. The intergenerational tension is the show’s central engine. If Dager plays Santi as simply “sullen teenager,” the whole thing collapses. He doesn’t.

The Part About Golf That’s Actually Funnier Than the Show Makes It Seem

He’d never played golf. His mother is Venezuelan. His father is Cuban. He grew up playing baseball. Golf was not a thing.

“For Latinos, I don’t think golf is the biggest sport,” he told Sharp Magazine with genuine amusement, then mimicked his baseball swing and explained how he’d tried to adapt it for the show.

This might be the most refreshingly honest thing a young actor has said in a major press interview in a while. No “I’ve always loved golf” revisionism. No “I took to it immediately.” Just: this is a sport that had zero cultural presence in my upbringing, and now I’m playing it on camera, and I’ve gotten good enough that my swing looks real, even though it very much grew out of a baseball motion.

The show’s creator, Jason Keller, apparently wanted the golf to be real enough that actual golf fans would believe it. He raised a sincere question during production: “Is Peter’s swing right?” The answer, apparently, is: yes enough.

Dager got there the same way he got through seven audition rounds. He just worked at it until it was believable.

The Owen Wilson Situation

Let me just say the quiet part out loud: going into a screen test with one of the most recognizable comedy actors in American film, never having seen any of his movies, and describing the experience as “natural” — that takes either supreme confidence or a very specific kind of emotional intelligence.

Dager admits he was one of the few people on the planet in that room who had no relationship to Wilson’s film legacy. “I didn’t get it before and it was probably for the best,” he told Sharp, describing watching Wilson’s filmography after wrapping the first season. “I saw all of Owen’s films, including Midnight in Paris, Wedding Crashers, The Grand Budapest Hotel, and Bottle Rocket. I was like, ‘Holy shit.'”

I believe him. And I think the show is better for that blank slate. Because Santi Wheeler — who is also, in the show’s world, a kid who’s never heard of Pryce Cahill’s golf legacy — needed to look at this older man with genuine curiosity rather than inherited reverence. Dager brought that naturally because it was literally his reality.

Art imitating life imitating art. Whatever.

The Birth Date Problem (And Why It Matters for Understanding the Career)

I need to address this because it’s emblematic of the content-farm garbage surrounding him. Two serious inconsistencies float around his birth date.

The first is the comedy AI-generated nonsense: “Peter Dager, born 1974, is in his early 50s.” Ignore this. It is hallucinated.

The second is a genuine discrepancy between two plausible dates — November 2, 2002 (from one source that specifically addresses the “actor vs. esports Peter Dager” confusion) and March 20, 2003 (from a different biographical site that credits New World School of the Arts). Both claim Miami.

This matters for one reason: if he was born in 2002 and appeared in a short film credit in 2011, he was nine. When he was born in 2003, he was eight. Either way, someone put this kid in front of a camera before he was ten years old. And he kept showing up.

The esports confusion — there’s a completely separate Peter Dager who captained Evil Geniuses to win the 2015 Dota 2 World Championship — adds its own layer of search-result chaos. That Peter Dager is thirty-four and has nothing to do with acting. The name collision is just one of those things.

What’s Actually Next

Season 2 of Stick premieres November 4, 2026, with a December 30 finale. He’s in it. That’s confirmed. The show got renewed immediately after Season 1 wrapped, which is not nothing — Apple TV+ is selective about what it brings back, and Stick‘s renewal was announced the same day as the finale.

There’s also an untitled project listed as “filming” on IMDb Pro. No details publicly available. The film pipeline is moving.

The Boston Globe profile, which was explicitly described as his first-ever interview, dropped in May 2025. His mother, who apparently attended Emerson College, was apparently proud it was for a Boston publication. That detail is so specific and so humanizing that I have no idea why more profiles don’t lead with it.

He’s 22 or 23, depending on which birth date is correct. He’s been doing this since he was a single-digit age. He trained in musical theatre, did bilingual work in telenovelas nobody talks about, survived seven audition rounds for the role that’s making people notice him.

The overnight success people will eventually write about took more than a decade to build.

Final Words

Here’s what I actually think about Peter Dager, stripped of all the press release framing: he’s someone who did everything the right way in an industry that barely rewards doing things the right way. He trained seriously. He took roles other people’s bios would quietly omit. He showed up at a screen test with Owen Wilson and felt nothing but professional engagement, which is either a superpower or the product of spending so many years preparing that the environment itself stopped being intimidating.

The content mills have already started generating garbage about him — fake birth years, invented credentials, the usual fog that follows anyone with a searchable name and moderate public interest. They’ll get worse as he becomes more prominent.

The actual story is better. A bilingual kid from Miami who played a witch’s assistant on Nickelodeon and a psychiatrist’s son in a Venezuelan thriller in the same year, spent six years building himself up in New York theatrical training, landed a “Nick the Dick” credit in a horror franchise, made it through seven audition rounds, and then held his own against one of the most naturally charming actors of his generation.

He’s going to keep working. And at some point, people will notice him separately from Owen Wilson. That’s when the real conversation starts.

FAQs

1. How old is Peter Dager from Stick?

Somewhere between 22 and 23, depending on which birth date is accurate — November 2, 2002 or March 20, 2003, both with Miami as origin. The confusion is real and no one source has resolved it definitively. He’s definitely not the “late 40s” nonsense some AI-generated sites claim, and he’s absolutely not the Peter Dager who captained Evil Geniuses at the 2015 Dota 2 World Championship. That guy is 34.

2. What else has Peter Dager been in besides Stick?

More than most profiles mention. His full filmography includes short film credits going back to Fourteen (2013), Demente Criminal (a Venezuelan telenovela, 2015, where he was billed as “Peter López”), WITS Academy (Nickelodeon, 2015), Island Dreams (short, 2016), Who Invited Charlie? (2022), Insidious: The Red Door (2023) — where he played a character called “Nick the Dick” — and various other shorts. He has a project currently filming as of late 2025.

3. Is Peter Dager actually Latino?

Yes. His father is Cuban and his mother is Venezuelan. He grew up in Miami and mentions his Latino roots regularly in interviews, most notably when discussing how golf wasn’t part of his family’s cultural world at all. He is of Cuban-Venezuelan heritage.

4. Did Peter Dager know how to play golf before Stick?

Not at all. He grew up playing baseball, describes golf as culturally not prominent in his Latino family background, and had to learn the sport from scratch for the role. His swing, per show creator Jason Keller, is authentic enough to pass, but it evolved from a baseball motion.

5. How did Peter Dager get cast in Stick?

Seven rounds of auditions. That’s confirmed by the Boston Globe. He went through the entire process, ultimately screen tested against one other actor alongside Owen Wilson, and got the part. He noted that not knowing Wilson’s work going into the screen test actually helped him feel calm and natural rather than star-struck.

6. What school did Peter Dager go to?

New World School of the Arts in Miami, where he specialized in musical theatre. He graduated in 2021. It’s a legitimate performing arts high school with serious training, not a fame school. He moved to New York City after receiving his degree.

7. Who are Peter Dager’s co-stars in Stick?

Owen Wilson (Pryce Cahill), Marc Maron (Mitts), Mariana Treviño (Elena Wheeler, Santi’s mother), Lilli Kay (Zero), Judy Greer (Amber-Linn, Pryce’s ex-wife), and Timothy Olyphant in a role across the season. The show also features cameos from real golfers including Collin Morikawa, Keegan Bradley, and Max Homa.

8. Is Stick coming back for a second season?

Yes. Apple TV+ renewed it for Season 2 the same day the Season 1 finale aired — July 23, 2025. Season 2 is confirmed to premiere November 4, 2026, with Peter Dager returning as Santi. The entire core cast was confirmed returning.

9. What’s the difference between the actor Peter Dager and the esports player Peter Dager?

Completely different people. The actor is 22-23, from Miami, Cuban-Venezuelan, and has a growing career in film and television. The esports Peter Dager (known as “ppd”) was born November 2, 1991, is 34 years old, captained Evil Geniuses to win The International 2015 (Dota 2 world championship), and later became CEO of Evil Geniuses. Shared name, completely separate careers. The name collision causes significant search confusion.

10. Was Stick Peter Dager’s first big interview?

Yes. The Boston Globe profile from May 2025, promoting Stick ahead of its June premiere, was described by the reporter as his first-ever press interview. He specifically mentioned that his mother, who had attended Emerson College in Boston, was happy it was for the Globe. That detail is either very sweet or very strategically placed for a Boston audience. Maybe both.

11. Was Peter Dager considered a breakout from Insidious: The Red Door?

Not really. His role — Nick the Dick, a frat antagonist in the horror film’s college campus scenes — is minor. The movie itself was the lowest-reviewed entry in the Insidious franchise despite being one of its biggest hits commercially. He’s in the film, it’s a professional credit, it got him on casting directors’ radars. But Stick is the first role where he’s carrying actual narrative weight.

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