A young piano prodigy from Newry lands a spot on a hit sitcom.

In front of a studio audience, 8-year-old Noah Gray-Cabey is Franklin, a child genius who cooks like a master chef and has authored his own science textbook.

Off the set, Noah is a young piano prodigy who gets giggly when talking about his acting job.

“I got to wear a hazmat suit once,” he said. “It was fun. Except it’s really, really hot.”

Noah is both a typical kid and a rising star. He’s an energetic boy who loves soccer and space camp, but also a record-breaking pianist who happens to have a role on ABC’s hit sitcom “My Wife and Kids.”

For most little boys, such chaos would be a lot to handle. But for Noah, it’s just fun.

And it all started in Newry, Maine.

Discovered

Noah was 4 years old, the youngest of four children living in rural Newry, when he first begged his father to teach him to play the piano. One quick lesson revealed talent. A few more showed he was a prodigy.

By age 5, Noah was performing benefit concerts with his family. He became the youngest soloist to perform with an orchestra at Australia’s Sydney Opera House.

For the precocious little boy with a bright grin, local attention led to national attention: “The Tonight Show” and “48 Hours,” “Good Morning America” and “The Oprah Winfrey Show.”

“We just thought, You’ve done Oprah; you’ve done everything,'” said Noah’s mother, Whitney Gray, in a phone interview from the family’s new home in California.

It was Noah’s “Oprah” interview that caught the attention of writers on “My Wife and Kids,” a new half-hour comedy created by and starring Damon Wayans, a former star of Fox TV’s “In Living Color.”

The writers of the new show invited Noah to appear in an episode.

His mother said no.

Noah thought it sounded like fun.

When the writers called again, Whitney and her husband reluctantly agreed to a cameo.

Noah’s short appearance as the Kyle family’s genius neighbor, Franklin Aloysius Mumford, quickly won raves. The show invited him for a second appearance. And a third.

Viewers loved Franklin, the young know-it-all who pined for the Kyle family’s youngest daughter. By the time the sitcom started its second season, producers had offered Noah a contract.

Fun

Whitney and Noah commuted between Maine and California when Noah’s sitcom appearances were infrequent. Last July, the entire family moved to a Los Angeles suburb.

Although Noah is under contract to appear in about half of the show’s 26 episodes, he’s been in almost all of them.

“It’s really fun,” said Noah. “I think that everyone’s so nice.”

He spends about eight hours a day on the show’s set. During breaks he plays pinball with the crew or rides his bike around the ABC lot with his young co-star.

When not at work, he plays with his dogs, attends fencing lessons and plays the piano. A home-schooler even before he got the part, he studies on the set or at home.

As Franklin, a boy who seems to know everything, Noah has learned some Latin and Tae Kwon Do. Playing a genius, his lines can be filled with words some 20-year-olds wouldn’t understand.

Noah never knows how long it will take to learn his part.

“It depends on the lines,” he said. “Sometimes it takes short, sometimes it takes long.”

He has been nominated for a Young Artists Award for his role on the show.

Ask him why he likes performing on “My Wife and Kids,” and Noah eagerly rattles off a dozen reasons, but he barely factors acting into his future.

Instead, he plans to become an inventor, an astronaut, a paleontologist, a game warden, a photographer and a veterinarian. Piano playing will be a hobby, he said.

But he plans to continue with the show for as long as it remains fun.

“We’re trying to manage it as it happens,” his mother said. “As long as he loves it, we’re fully supportive of him doing it.”

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