All posts by A.R. Wilson

A.R. Wilson has been interviewing actors, writers and musicians for over 20 years. In addition to TV-Eh, her work has appeared in Curve, ROCKRGRL, and Sound On Sight. A native of Detroit, she grew up watching Mr. Dressup and The Friendly Giant on CBC, which led to a lifelong love of Canadian television. Her perpetual New Year's resolution is to become fluent in French.
Bletchley Circle: San Francisco, Featured

The Bletchley Circle: San Francisco: Writer Laura Good on the spin-off’s origin story and the Season 1 finale

When The Bletchley Circle was cancelled in 2014, millions of viewers were heartbroken. Not only did the series provide a fresh twist on the British mystery genre by focusing on four sleuthing women in the 1950s, but it also unearthed the fascinating history of female codebreakers during the Second World War. Its premature demise seemed like a wasted opportunity.

Writer Laura Good was one of the viewers disappointed by Bletchley‘s end. However, unlike most fans, she was in a position to do something about it. As then-script development manager for Omnifilm Entertainment, she saw a lot of untapped potential in the show’s concept and pitched the idea of a series spin-off set in North America. Her idea led to the creation of The Bletchley Circle: San Francisco, which will broadcast its Season 1 finale, “In for a Pound,” written by Good and showrunner Michael MacLennan, on Citytv Friday night at 8 p.m. ET.

To help prepare us for the big night, we asked Good—whose other credits include CBC’s Burden of Truth and the upcoming Citytv series The Murders—to tell us more about BC:SF‘s origin story and to give viewers a few hints about the “ambitious” finale.

First, can you explain a little bit about what a script development manager does for a production company?
Laura Good: It differs from company to company, but in my work with Omni it meant endlessly pitching series ideas to the development team, writing short pitch packages to hopefully woo a writer into taking over the project, reading books and scripts and recommending them to the team, and supporting writers and showrunners to develop pitches, bibles, and scripts all the way through funded development with broadcasters.

I was so excited to learn that The Bletchley Circle was getting a spin-off. What was it about the original show that made you want to resurrect it? 
LG: When I first saw The Bletchley Circle, it got me thinking: if thousands of women had played such a vital role in WWII and yet we’d never heard of them until the Official Secrets Act was lifted, is it possible that the same thing was happening over here as well—that women were cracking codes in the U.S. and Canada—and we just don’t know about it yet? I dug into the history of WWII codebreaking and found evidence that women had contributed to key codebreaking achievements during WWII, but their stories had been lost due to the secrecy of the war effort. At the time that we started developing the show, all that we knew of these stories were footnotes, whispers, and a small handful of notable codebreakers, but I thought, ‘Even if there were only three women breaking code during the war, that’s enough for a TV show.’ Eventually, more research would come out and I discovered that over 10,000 women were, in fact, part of the Signal Intelligence Service during in America during that time, and I have to admit, I felt pretty vindicated for my leap of faith.

From a producing standpoint, the spinoff made so much sense—taking a beloved show and transplanting it west of the Atlantic to bring a new side of the conflict to light that we really hadn’t explored yet on this side of the pond. I was intrigued by these stories and felt like the world should know about these women, whose work shaped Allied victory and, as a result, the Western world we all live in today.

When working on the treatment, did you always plan to transplant some original Bletchley characters to San Francisco? How did you decide on Millie (Rachael Stirling) and Jean (Julie Graham)?
LG: We always hoped to bring over some of the original characters in order to honour the roots of the show and the viewers who were already in love with the series. It was established in the first series that Millie travelled the world after the war, so the runway had already been paved for this kind of crossover. Millie and Jean had a deep friendship and history on screen, as do Rachael and Julie, so it felt like a natural progression for the story and the characters. At every juncture, we tried to really serve the story and make the most authentic decisions, building off of what had been established by [writers] Guy Burt and Jake Lushington in the first series.

The first table read, hearing Rachael and Julie reading their first lines—it felt like magic.

Was it at all difficult to sell World Productions, who made the original show, on reviving the series in a new location? 
Working with World Productions was a dream from the word go. I had prepared two versions of the show to pitch them on our first call, and I only got through the first pitch before they were sold. They sent over outlines they had developed for future episodes of the original series, and we married them into what became the series pitch document that helped sell the show. Jake has excellent instincts and had a significant hand in shaping the San Francisco series from beginning to end—and always with enthusiasm and style.

The characters in the spin-off are a bit more diverse in terms of race and sexual orientation. Was that a stated goal from the outset?
LG: This was something that the Omnifilm team decided early on that we wanted to bring to the story. We knew there were some important stories that needed to be featured in a North American perspective of WWII codebreaking. Black women were doing incredible work as mathematicians at the time, helping to turn the tide in the war, and leaving an indelible mark on science and computing.

We also found records of the incredibly complex situation that Nisei codebreakers found themselves in as the few remaining Japanese-Americans on the west coast, breaking code for the Americans, against the Japanese fleet, while their families were interned by the very country they were fighting for. It’s worth stopping here to really think about the significance of that experience for a moment. We felt that if we were painting a picture of the United States and Canada at the time, this story had to be included.

The queer element dovetails with some interesting history in codebreaking—there were few disqualifying factors for women in signal intelligence, but being outed as a lesbian was one of them.

I think everyone on the creative team was excited to get to add new stories and perspectives in the San Francisco series, but these are also very realistic, relevant representations of who was there, doing the work, at the time that American women were cracking codes in the west, and so I don’t know how you tell this story without these characters. It was a very organic process and a stated intention from the beginning.

Can you give readers a preview of what they can expect in the last episode? Last we saw, poor Jean had been abducted by the Soviets. Is everything going to get wrapped up or will there be threads left over for another season?
LG: Episode 8 sees the women coming together and using each of their skills in concert in a way that we haven’t seen before. It’s the most ambitious episode yet, and it’s hard to say much more without spoiling, but suffice to say lives will be forever altered, characters will change in ways that they can’t take back, and I think there’s room for new bonds to be made and even broken between characters in the future.

What about The Bletchley Circle: San Francisco makes you most proud?
LG: Two things. One is the way the cast and crew really put their hearts into the show. It was an ambitious and challenging project to bring to life, but over and over, I saw people really showing up in a big way for each other, and they were passionate about telling these stories. I had an incredible time working with people who were proud of their work, who loved what they were doing, and who put that love into the show.

The other thing that stands out for me was a moment while we were filming block three, [Episode 5, “Not Cricket,” and Episode 6, “Iron in War”]. I was sitting behind the monitor when a set dresser walked up to me and whispered, ‘Is Hailey my people?’ I looked at her and knew she was queer, and it made me immensely proud to say, ‘Yeah girl. She’s canon now.’ I feel that way about all the characters on the show. That’s the nature of The Bletchley Circle, that some people will be able to watch it and feel seen in a way that maybe doesn’t happen as often as they’d like. But here is a place they can.

The Bletchley Circle: San Francisco airs Fridays at 8 p.m. ET on Citytv.

Images courtesy of Omnifilm Entertainment.

Facebooktwitterredditlinkedinmail
Bad Blood, Featured

Bad Blood: Melanie Scrofano on Valentina, shooting emotional scenes, and Wynonna Earp

1 Comment

Melanie Scrofano says things are “relentlessly bad” for Valentina Cosoleto on Bad Blood this season, and based on the first three episodes, it’s hard to argue.

A momentary marital indiscretion put Val under the thumb of Detective Bullock (Lisa Berry), who is squeezing her for info on her husband Nats’ (Dylan Taylor) organized crime activities. To make matters worse, in the last episode, Declan (Kim Coates) kidnapped Val and Nats’ young son to get back at meddling mobster twins Teresa (Anna Hopkins) and Christian (Gianni Falcone) for abducting Reggie (Ryan McDonald), which unfurled a disastrous turn of events that landed Nats in prison.

While Val has her son back, “she still doesn’t feel safe,” explains Scrofano. She also says her character now feels the need to “right some wrongs.”

We caught up with Scrofano while she was filming a new project in Toronto to learn more about Valentina’s dilemma, how she unwinds after filming emotional scenes, and the possible “chaos” coming up in Wynonna Earp‘s fourth season.

You are an Italian-Canadian. Did it excite you to work on a project that tapped into that part of your background?
Melanie Scrofano: I think being Italian-Canadian is very different than being Italian-American, which is what we usually see on TV or in the movies. There’s a certain flavour to it. It’s something that I know very well, and it’s something that’s so familiar to so many people. So it was really cool to just lean into the way that I grew up. But also, you realize how eerie it is that all these people seem so normal. Like my husband in the show, our family is so normal. And it just makes you go, ‘Wow, what is going on in these families that you don’t even realize?’ 

I really feel for Valentina. She made one mistake and now she’s being squeezed by the police—and forced to have too many manicures—under threat of her secret being exposed. 
MS: I think when Valentina and Nats got together, part of her wanted to be like Teresa but without having to do all the work. She wanted to have the clothes and the lifestyle and all of that. And over the years, life was just sort of normal. I think for a minute, she was just—like a lot of people—you have a kid, and your marriage gets a bit stale, and I think she just wanted some excitement, so she had an affair. And that one mistake sort of turned her life around. I think by the time we’re in Episode 3, she’s realizing that maybe this isn’t the life that she wanted after all. I think it’s hitting home what the reality is, and it takes her aback.

Episode 3 was tough on both Val and Nats, with Declan kidnapping their son, Adamo. The scene where Val finds out her baby is gone was very raw and emotional. Was that hard to film?
MS: I was very nervous about that scene, and I said to Jeff [Renfroe], the director, and [showrunner] Michael [Konyves], ‘Is there any way we could shoot it so that it can feel messy and we can talk over each other’s lines and just make it more real and make the urgency more palpable?’ And they were like, ‘Yeah, we’ll have two cameras and we’ll shoot it and just make a mess of it.’ They were very generous with that, and I think that’s what helped Dylan and me get to some really honest places. There was nothing slowing us down. And I think because we both had kids, it’s just terrifying. The little boy had the same hair as my son. He was so similar to my real life boy, and they were actually the exact same age while we were shooting, they’re a week apart. So I think it just hit close to home.

It was a very intense, real-feeling scene.
MS: I did feel bad. The slap wasn’t scripted, and poor Dylan had no idea it was coming. I just watched it back today, and you can see where it’s red on his face. I felt terrible.

Last week’s episode ended with Nats accidentally shooting an innocent bystander and getting sent to prison. How will this impact Val in Episode 4 and beyond?
MS: I think Val has her baby back, but without Nats, she still doesn’t feel safe. So I think her priority is going to be to do whatever she can to get her husband safe. And she’s also, at this point, acting in self-preservation because the fact of the matter is that she’s not only cheated on her husband—which in any culture, but certainly in the Italian culture, is frowned upon—but in addition to that, she’s been talking to the cops. So there’s just going to be a lot of trying to right some wrongs for Val.

What did you find most challenging about playing Val?
MS: It was just relentlessly bad for her. There was no levity. So every time I came to set, I had to go to some dark places. You know, she’s either angry or crying or terrified. This is the worst time of her life, and there’s nothing about it that’s light. So I think it was just coming to set every day and trying to honour what she’s going through without being exhausted by it myself. Because it’s hard. You shoot those things and you get really emotional and, afterwards, the world just moves on, but you still felt all those things and you really need a hug and nobody is there. So you have to sort of take care of yourself. But on the other hand, the hard part is, what if I can’t get there emotionally? So you’re always stressed. You’re either stressed because you’re scared you won’t be able to deliver, or you’re stressed because you did deliver and it hurt.

Do you have a go-to way to decompress after a difficult day of filming?
MS: It sounds so stupid, but I need to be hugged. I come home and I feel like such a drama queen, but [I say to my husband], ‘Jeff, I need you to hug me for as long as possible.’ It’s just that human connection. I think it’s the feeling of being so vulnerable. You just need to have somebody to heal that wound for you with a good, old-fashioned hug.

You’ve been in three very different but very Canadian hits the last few years: Bad Blood, Letterkenny and, of course, Wynonna Earp. Does it mean a lot to you to be getting so many great roles in Canada?
MS: Yes, but here’s the thing: All these shows—well Bad Blood has mostly aired in Canada at the moment, but I suspect it will be viewed elsewhere as well—are known and respected all over the world. So I think we’ve really found our own the last few years in Canada with our programming. And I think finally people are starting to—instead of saying, ‘Oh, it’s so Canadian,’ as if that’s a bad thing—they are searching out Canadian shows. In Australia, I remember doing a panel, and people were naming all these Canadian shows that they loved, and I was on the other side of the world. So it means a lot to me, of course, to be a part of these amazing shows, but it means even more to me that people all over the world are starting to understand that what we make here is special.

Speaking of Wynonna Earp, Season 3 ended with some huge changes for Wynonna, most notably, that she broke the curse. Can you say anything about what that will mean for her in Season 4?
MS: I will say that when we read the script when Wynonna breaks the curse—and the whole premise of the show is to break the curse—we were all just shocked. How do we move forward from this?  I think what I look forward to in Season 4 is going, ‘How is Emily going to dig herself out of this one?’ I mean, what kind of person solves the problem to their show before Season 3 is even over? And what kind of chaos will that lead to in Season 4? I have no doubt that it’s going to be incredible.

Any idea when you’ll begin shooting Season 4?
MS: There’s a rumour about January, but that’s just a rumour.

Oh, Calgary in January. Bless you. 
MS: Oh, I know. That’s such a pain, but I’ve learned to love it.

Bad Blood airs Thursdays at 8 p.m. ET/PT on Citytv.

Images courtesy of Rogers Media.

Facebooktwitterredditlinkedinmail
Bletchley Circle: San Francisco, Featured

The Bletchley Circle: San Francisco: Julie Graham on “liberating” Jean and working with “superstar” showrunner Michael MacLennan

1 Comment

It never appears like Julie Graham is hurting for work. The Scottish actor has starred in an impressively long list of TV series in the UK, including The Bletchley Circle, Benidorm and Shetland. Still, she knows that good roles for women are never a given, especially after reaching a certain age.

“I’m now in my 50s,” Graham says. “These opportunities don’t come along that often.”

That’s why she was “delighted” to learn she was going reprise the role of Jean in Bletchley spin-off The Bletchley Circle: San Francisco, currently airing on Citytv.

“It was a show that I was very proud of and a show I was very fond of,” she says. “I was really excited about it. Plus, you get to do foreign travel.” That foreign travel was to “beautiful” Vancouver, where the series was filmed this spring.

“I’d never been to Canada before,” she says. “I loved it.”

We caught up with Graham just as she finished a day of filming on the set of Queens of Mystery, an upcoming Acorn TV mystery series, in England. She shared her experiences shooting the first season of The Bletchley Circle: San Francisco, previewed how the last two episodes will impact Jean’s life, and dropped some hints about what could happen in a hypothetical Season 2.

Were you shocked to learn that Bletchley was not only being revived, but it was being relocated to San Francisco and filmed in Vancouver?
Julie Graham: It’s a bit of a dream come true in a way. If you work on a show and then it gets cancelled, it depends on the experience you’ve had on the show, obviously. But we were all very disappointed when it was cancelled because, not only had we had such a good time making it, but we just felt that it could have gone on. So when Jake Lushington, the [original series] producer, called us up and said it might happen, they were quite far down the line with it because I don’t think he wanted to get our hopes up. But I was absolutely delighted because I had such a wonderful time shooting it, and I also thought it was a brilliant subject matter, and I love working on female-led dramas, so it ticked all the boxes for me.

Did you find working on Canadian set at all different from working on a UK set?
JG:  It’s pacier there, I have to say. There wasn’t a lot of hanging about, which I loved. I really love working at that sort of pace. I mean, we were shooting an episode a week, an hour of television a week. In the UK, it probably averages 10 days to two weeks, especially for an hour [show]. And the Canadian crews, I was really impressed with their work ethic. They were really lovely. Everybody was so welcoming, and the calibre of the guest stars that we had on the show just blew me away. They were so impressive. I mean, brilliant actors. And then, of course, we had two Canadian actresses [Crystal Balint and Chanelle Peloso] playing the other leading roles, who were just terrific, and we all hit it off really well. So it was a really enjoyable experience, the whole thing.

And also, we don’t tend to have showrunners in [the UK], but that is becoming more and more of a thing, one person sort of overseeing everything. So that was a new experience for me, I’ve never really worked in that way before. And Michael MacLennan, who was our showrunner, our lead writer, our executive producer, he was just wonderful because he was there all the time. He was there every day. It was a wonderful experience. I absolutely adored him because he was really inclusive and really wanted our opinions. He would send us scripts and he would ask us for notes, which is an unusual process. It felt like a sort of collaboration, and it felt like we had quite a lot of input into the kind creative writing process as well. And he was very keen for us to feel involved in that, not so much in the technical writing of it, but in terms of the knowledge and preservation of our characters, of these people that we played before. He was very keen to kind of have our input into their world. And apart from that, he’s just a fantastic human being. I really enjoyed that part of it because he’s a superstar.

In what ways do you think the move to San Francisco has changed Jean this season?
JG: It’s very rare that you get to revisit characters that you’ve already played. But then to put them into such a different environment and different world, it really sort of colours your whole view of how you play somebody because the possibilities are endless. For instance, someone like Jean, if she’d stayed in England and working in London, her life is so predictable because there are so many limitations on a woman like that in the 1950s. She was unmarried, she didn’t have children. The opportunities that she had were very, very limited. And obviously, because she worked at Bletchley Park, she wasn’t allowed to [talk about it]. The whole thing about trying to get a job in the Foreign Service, they just thought that she was mad. As far as they were concerned, she was just a cleric in the war. So when she’s then presented with this sort of whole new shiny world, you can take that in so many different directions. And it’s almost like a spring awakening for a character like her. She just allows herself to see things differently. We had a lot of fun with that. She’s quite a contained, closed character, and to open her up a little bit and have some fun was really liberating.

Jean is central to the last two-part mystery of the season. Can you give us a preview of what happens to her?
JG: She’s put in mortal danger. She’s in a situation where her life is kind of in the balance. And [the story revolves around] how she behaves in that environment, and it has a huge and lasting effect on her. It’s almost like a life-changing event, I think. The very fact that she’s chosen to stay in San Francisco is a huge thing for her anyway. She realizes that life is short and life is precious and that she only has one chance at it, and the situation that she’s put in in the last couple of episodes, it changes her life.

I hope the show gets another season because it still seems rare for a show to focus on the brains of women and also to have interesting lead roles for women in their 40s and 50s. 
JG: I would really love to do it again because it is much tougher when you’re older as a woman. There’s no doubt about it. And you do notice that certain parts dry up. To have these women who are just there and have their own narrative, and they’re not serving a man, and they’re not serving a male narrative, is incredibly refreshing, and I think the show has a lot more to say.

I also think it’s going into an interesting period of time as well. We’re going into the late 1950s and early 60s and, of course, the whole Cold War era is coming up, which I think would be a really interesting thing to explore. And I know Michael was very keen to explore that more. So yeah, here’s hoping. I’d love to do it again.

Is there anything, in particular, you’d like to explore with Jean in Season 2?
JG: I guess her just being a little bit more open and a little bit more relaxed. I mean the possibility that she might even [meet someone]. She’s a spinster. She’s never really had a relationship with anyone, so that might be a possibility. You never know. And the friendships between those women was something that I really loved. In [the original series], it was very driven by plot—it was also driven by character, of course—but it was very much about Bletchley and what these women had achieved. But in the reinvented version, it explores the relationship between them much more. To me, that was a really interesting thing to do as an actor. I’d like to explore that more if we get the chance to do it.

The Bletchley Circle: San Francisco airs Fridays at 8 p.m. ET on Citytv.

Images courtesy of Omnifilm Entertainment.

Facebooktwitterredditlinkedinmail
Bad Blood, Featured

Bad Blood: Ryan McDonald on “pure” Reggie and his return to acting

Actor Ryan McDonald has a major role in one of Canada’s best television dramas. He plays Reggie, the sweet-natured but troubled nephew of Montreal mafia boss Declan Gardiner (Kim Coates), in Citytv mob series Bad Blood.

McDonald’s performance is compelling and deeply sympathetic, weaving an important thread of kindness and decency into a fairly dark show. But it almost didn’t happen. After the cancellation of his last TV series, the delightfully irreverent comedy What Would Sal Do?, the British Columbia native was ready to give up acting and pursue a very different career.

“I was just fed up and feeling uninspired,” he explains.

We phoned McDonald, whose other TV credits include Rookie Blue, Saving Hope and Fringe, to find out how Bad Blood helped him get his acting groove back and get a preview of this Thursday’s Reggie-heavy new episode, “Una Vita Per Una Vita,” written by Patrick Moss and directed by Jeff Renfroe.

How did you become involved in Bad Blood?
Ryan McDonald: It’s kind of a strange story. I’d actually stopped acting at the beginning of this year. I was just fed up and feeling uninspired. I’d broken my lease in Toronto and come back home to Vancouver in anticipation that the previous show I did for New Metric Media, What Would Sal Do?, was going to get a second season. And, of course, it didn’t, so I ended up sort of stranded here. And in that time period, I kind of wanted to get away. I stopped auditioning, and my agent just put me on the shelf and respected my space. I started studying counselling here in Vancouver, and I was fairly certain I was going to go down that road.

I hadn’t spoken to my agent in about four or five months, and he called me because he just wanted to catch up. In the few days it took me to get back to him, that little tiny window, [New Metric president] Mark Montefiore contacted him about a role in Bad Blood, and it was perfect timing because I was just then open to doing something. If it had happened maybe a month before that, I don’t know that I would have been interested. My mind was in a completely different place.

I didn’t read for the role of Reggie, initially. I read for [Detective Tucker, played by Eric Hicks], and I thought that that was a cool part, and it wasn’t in as many episodes. I thought, ‘Great, I’ll just do that and then come back to Vancouver and go back to school with all my acting money.’ And then they had me read for Reggie, and I thought, ‘Oh man, this is really somebody that I want to play, and actually the kind of story I want to tell.’ I got it and it went from there. And there’s no better role to kind of get me back into the business.

What is it about Reggie that made him your perfect comeback role?
RM: It was really compelling to me the idea of playing somebody who was having to start over, who didn’t really have a place in the world, a thing that he could do, a group that he fit in with. And somebody who was an adult and had grown up hard and been in prison for so long, but was really sensitive and playful and kind of the opposite of what you’d expect somebody who’d been there to be. I think the idea that Reggie is a guy who knows darkness very intimately but chooses to smile was a really beautiful thing. I love characters in general that have either conditions like Reggie’s anxiety and depression or just feelings that they’re struggling to live with. I like people that are kind of carrying around baggage. And he’s very loyal, too. Reggie is kind of a beacon of light in this season. He’s a very pure guy in a lot of ways.

Reggie and Declan haven’t known each other long, but they’ve already developed a strong bond. 
RM: Reggie sought out some sort of family while he was inside and found Declan. And he’s all he could find. And Declan is not a guy who’s ever had much family attachment. He had a pseudo-family in terms of Vito, but in terms of real, blood relations, he’s been a lone wolf as long as we’ve known him. You’ve got two guys who are really trying to connect with somebody. Declan’s trying to learn how to take care of someone and what it means to be a father figure, and Reggie is trying to find out who he actually is through the only link he has left, his family.

Speaking of their bond, at the end of the last episode, Teresa [Anna Hopkins] and Christian [Gianni Falcone] abducted Reggie to force Declan into doing business with them. Can you give us any hints about what happens to Reggie in Episode 3?
RM: I don’t think Reggie ultimately blames Declan for anything that goes on. I think in Episode 3, he has pretty unwavering trust in his uncle and a belief that this person loves him and is going to take care of him. It’s also not the first time he’s been smacked around. He’s afraid for his life, but he’s kind of been shoved from spot to spot from the moment he was born. So I think there’s a fear and a fight to survive and a desire to get back into the light, but I think Reggie’s attitude is a little bit fatalistic about the whole thing.

You worked with Kim Coates a great deal in the series. What was that like?
RM: Oh, man. I worked with him every day all summer. It was incredible. He is, besides just being a total boss and funny as hell and a legend in this country, he’s just such an actor’s actor. He’s so generous. He’s so excited to collaborate. He’s so enthusiastic about the people who came together to make this season. Right from Day 1, when I got up to Sudbury, where we started shooting, he was down to hang out and go through the script and talk about the scenes and work on things and improvise. And he wanted to improvise on that. It was just so comfortable, and it’s the way I love to work. He’s very intuitive and very relaxed.

After Bad Blood, I had a few weeks of downtime and then I went and shot the lead in a film [Canadian director Nicole Dorsey’s Black Conflux] out in Newfoundland, and it was my first time being the lead of a movie. I learned so much from him. Like how to show up to the set every day and not disappear into your own head. Stay open. Keep talking to people. Crack some jokes. Keep it light, no matter what you’re doing. And be generous; talk to the actor you’re working with. I think when I was coming up, there was always this idea that it had to be hard, like there had to be angst for it to be good. And now I’m just all about being chill and friendly, no matter what.

Bad Blood is quite a change of pace from What Would Sal Do? Do you enjoy working on dramas or comedies more?
RM: I feel a lot more at home in a story where everybody is weeping and dying, and there are moments of absurdity that you have to find funny. I find that is closer to the reality that I understand. I like drama and darkness with humour. That just seems like real life to me.

Sal was an interesting case because even though on the surface it’s a comedy and every scene is sort of built for laughs, we tried to play it like an indie film, we tried to play it as real and honest. I was disappointed in it not happening again because I thought its potential was so great. There was such an opportunity to find a different kind of energy with that show. It’s a real bummer, but it could pop up again, who knows? There’s always talk.

So far this year, you’ve done Bad Blood and shot your first lead role in a film. Does that mean you’re all in with acting, or are you still going to study counselling? 
RM: I’m pretty much back into acting right now, but I love studying counselling because it really teaches you the value of how to listen and be with the person and truly see them. And I think that’s beneficial for everybody, but as an actor especially. So I would like to go back to it, but it’s going to be some time. I’m moving back to Toronto in the new year, and we’ll see what happens then.

Bad Blood airs Thursdays at 8 p.m. ET/PT on Citytv.

Images courtesy of Rogers Media.

Facebooktwitterredditlinkedinmail
Bad Blood, Featured

Bad Blood: Anna Hopkins on “power-hungry” Teresa and the art of playing a great villain

Bad Blood‘s Season 2 premiere wasted no time in shaking up Declan Gardiner’s (Kim Coates) carefully laid plans. While the lone wolf mob boss’ grip on Montreal had been left happily uncontested by Ontario’s Cosoleto family for years, the arrival of fraternal twins Teresa and Christian (Gianni Falcone) Langana—the children of a bigtime ‘Ndrangheta boss in Italy—quickly threw a spanner in the works. After Declan declined their offer to become partners in the drug trade, the pair retaliated, intercepting his $5 million narcotics shipment from a Mexican cartel.

Playing the part of driven and calculating Teresa is Montreal-born actress Anna Hopkins, who stepped into the role just days before shooting began.

“I think it was a long casting process, and they weren’t finding anybody,” she says. “At the last possible second, [showrunner] Michael [Konyves] suggested me.”

Konyves was familiar with Hopkins’ work because he wrote the screenplay for Barney’s Version, her 2010 feature film debut. However, if he had been binge-watching Netflix series Shadowhunters earlier this year, he also would have been compelled to hire her on the spot. Her chilling turn as Season 3’s big bad Lilith demonstrated she has the onscreen presence and sophistication to believably portray a top-shelf Mafiosa on a series that echoes The Sopranos, Breaking Bad and The Sons of Anarchy. 

We caught up with Hopkins before this Thursday’s new episode, “A Grapefruit Worth 20 Million,” written by Konyves and directed by Jeff Renfroe, to learn more about Teresa, find out what it was like squaring off with Kim Coates, and get some hints about what’s coming up next on the series.

Teresa cuts an elegant but imposing figure in the season premiere, and I suspect that’s just the tip of the iceberg as far as what’s she’s capable of. 
Anna Hopkins: Oh, yeah. She definitely keeps her cards pretty close to her chest. She’s one of those characters who is really powerful but doesn’t really need exert or show that power very often. So in the first episode, you get a sense of maybe what she can do, but her first goal is just to let the business expand. So she’s just sort of trying to be as nice and cooperative as possible, but when things don’t go her way, I think the extremes she can go to are a little further than most of us.

I love that Teresa is near the top of a traditionally male-dominated business—even if that business is organized crime. Did it excite you to get to play a mobster?
AH: I hadn’t really seen any female mobsters until I got the role, and then I was sort of researching and found a few characters that show up in film and television. But there really isn’t a lot, and so I was really excited to play the role. Sometimes with roles like this, it can be written like a male and then at the last minute, they just switch it to female. That happens a lot lately. But there’s feminity and it’s used a strength and it’s part of her unique mobster characteristics, so she’s a really strange and interesting character. Especially with her brother, with them as a duo, they’re kind of a very new, interesting type of antagonist—although, I think every character in this is an antagonist at some point.

Teresa and Christian seem to be unusually close, even for twins. What can you tell me about their dynamic?
AH: The backstory is that their father is the head of the ‘Ndrangheta in Calabria, and at this point in time, even saying that word is essentially illegal in Italy. So the leaders of these factions are in hiding. The idea was that, when we were very small, our father sent us away together at various boarding schools, always with the intention of us eventually running things. We were pretty isolated in the fact that we weren’t necessarily making any friends in college, and we were really the only people that we had. So that’s how Michael [Konyves] built that relationship. Even from our father, we were always very distant from him. We’re very loyal to him, but really the only people we have in the world are each other. So there’s a closeness there that’s not very common, I think.

They’re a very intriguing pair to watch.
AH: They’re almost monarch-like, Game-of-Thrones-like power-hungry siblings, and there’s a closeness that is born out of that, in trying to gain a goal. Hopefully, they don’t get separated or turn on each other. So we’ll see what happens.

Episode 1 ended with Teresa and Christian nabbing Declan’s massive drug shipment. Can you preview how this will shake out in Episode 2?
AH: It’s one of those things like at the end of Season 1, where that little string is the beginning of the unravelling. It’s not going to be tied up by Episode 2. It’s just going to get more and more complicated, and the stakes are going to get higher and higher. So this is totally, just as you said, the tip of the iceberg of how these characters are intertwining and trying to gain power. It’s an intricate unravelling, and it’s just getting started.

The meeting between Declan and the twins was pretty intense. Will we see more face-to-face encounters between them, and what was it like squaring off with Kim Coates?
AH: Actually, it’s funny, it doesn’t happen a ton because we’re constantly in different cities in the show, so that is really one of only a couple of scenes where we get to speak face to face. And the way we shot the show, we were block shooting, so that was actually the last scene we shot of the whole series. So by that time, I had worked with Kim for three months. And to be honest, it was very intimidating coming onto the show and being, in a sense, his enemy, because he’s Kim Coates, and he plays the ultimate villains. But by the time we did that scene, we were just so relaxed, and we played a lot, and it was just really fun. I think it was one of our favourite scenes to do.

Speaking of villains, you just ended your run as Lilith on Shadowhunters, so you also know a thing or two about playing baddies. What do you think the secret is to playing a great villain? 
AH: I think the biggest thing is always having a character who has something to do and is doing it for reasons they believe are just and right. With Shadowhunters, even though it was fantastical, Lilith was trying to bring her son back. And if you believe in that, and you’re being told whatever you need to do, you do it. And I think it’s similar with Teresa. I think her father trusts her, and she wants to make him proud and she wants to get to the top of her career, even though that’s organized crime, and she’ll do anything that she needs to do. I think if the writing allows for the character to have a justified reason for doing what they do, then you can start to believe it and do some crazy things.

What did you enjoy most about working on Bad Blood?
AH: I think one of the biggest things is I love the writing. Michael did such a fabulous job, and having a shorter series of eight episodes really allowed us to develop our characters and the storylines. And, obviously, the ensemble of actors is really incredible. So we all really got to sink our teeth into something, and we all gave it our all. The environment on set was really creative and collaborative.

You also recently wrote and directed a short film, The Give and Take. Where can people catch that?
AH: It’s doing the festival circuit. The next stop is at the Austin Film Festival on Oct. 26.

Bad Blood airs Thursdays at 8 p.m. ET/PT on Citytv.

Images courtesy of Rogers Media.

Facebooktwitterredditlinkedinmail