I got myself in a mess trying to change the background color of the component during runtime and after different trial and error finally I figured out that it had to do with this declaration:

[as]

[/as]

Once removed I was able to use

[as]this.setStyle(“backgroundColor”,0x00afe1);[/as]

I don’t really understand why having the backgroundFill declaration within the body of the component, it would affect the behavior to the point that I wasn’t able to change the color of the object but when I find the explanation I will for sure post it here.