Tag Archives: Adam MacDonald

Slasher: Ripper takes the franchise to a bloody great new level

What would Detective William Murdoch say? And would he be able to solve the crime? Those were the first two thoughts when I watched screeners of the first two episodes of Slasher: Ripper.

Returning Thursday at 9 p.m. ET to Hollywood Suite, Slasher: Ripper is the latest instalment of the gruesome, gory whodunit from creator-executive producer Aaron Martin and fellow executive producer Ian Carpenter.

Set in the late 19th century, and partly filmed on the backlot where fellow Shaftesbury project Murdoch Mysteries is created, Ripper catches up with a Toronto galvanized by fear. There is a vengeful killer on the loose slaughtering the city’s elite in horribly creative ways. Charged with solving the case is Detective Kenneth Rijkers (Gabriel Darku), who becomes increasingly desperate to connect the deaths before the body count gets any higher.

Toplining this tale is Eric McCormack, who dons 19th-century garb to play Basil Garvey, a supremely nasty tycoon who holds Toronto in his greedy grip. Easily the evilest character McCormack has ever played, Martin and Carpenter were positively giddy with his performance.

“Not unlike last year, when we brought David Cronenberg in [for Slasher: Flesh & Blood], we were looking for that type of person for that and [executive producer] Christina Jennings said, ‘I wonder if we can get him?’ He told me that as soon as he read one of his first lines of dialogue he said, ‘I have to do this part.'”

Complementing McCormack is Martin and Carpenter’s stable of Slasher performers in Paula Brancati as heiress Viviana Botticelli, Jefferson Brown as pimp Horatio Dixon, Lisa Berry as physician Dr. Melanda Israel, Jo Vannicola as newspaper editor Enid Jenkins, Steve Byers as man of God, Andrew May Jr., Sabrina Grdevich as Viviana’s sister, Venetia, Christopher Jacot as brothel owner Terrence Crenshaw and Salvatore Antonio as sex worker Salomé. And while all are familiar faces to the franchise, Martin and Carpenter ensure their characters are always unique.

“We like to give them a chance to play outside of the roles they are usually cast in,” Martin says. The result is performances that are mesmerizing and truly memorable. That goes for the acting chops provided by new faces alongside McCormack. Murdoch Msyteries‘ Clare McConnell goes against type as Regina Simcoe, Frankie Drake Mysteries‘ Sharron Matthews as housekeeper Gladys and Killjoys‘ Thom Allison as Georges Rondeau.

Written by Martin, Carpenter, Shelley Scarrow and Lucie Pagé, the eight-episode scripts are taut, enthralling, exciting and deliciously over-the-top. And, thanks to director of photography Scott McClellan and director-executive producer Adam McDonald, the setting is disturbing and very un-Murdoch.

“That backlot is beautiful,” Carpenter says. “We set some visual goals, and Scott and Adam shot the hell out of it. We wanted to get the dirt, the animals, the feces, the blood … it was really exciting.”

Slasher: Ripper airs Thursdays at 9 p.m. ET on Hollywood Suite.

Images courtesy of Shaftesbury.

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Slasher’s Adam MacDonald: “Hang in there, because sometimes things just need to blossom in their own time”

Adam MacDonald is a busy guy. When he’s not acting on series like Tribal and Rookie Blue, he can be found behind the camera, writing and directing his own projects, like the horror films Backcountry and Pyewacket.

MacDonald’s latest directing gig has been for TV’s Slasher: Flesh & Blood. Airing Mondays on Hollywood Suite, Flesh & Blood reunited him with series creator Aaron Martin and showrunner Ian Carpenter.

We spoke to MacDonald about directing Flesh & Blood, his career and his next film, Out Come the Wolves.

Director Adam MacDonald with Sabrina Grdevich

You first came onto my radar on Rookie Blue and Being Erica, but it’s been a real blast over the last few years to see you writing and in the director’s chair. I’ve gotten a chance to see Backcountry and Pyewacket, so congratulations on writing and directing those.
Adam MacDonald: Thank you so much. Bruce McDonald gave me the advice, ‘Go write something, because someone’s not going to hand you a feature film to direct.’ It’s just very rare if it’s not impossible. And then attach yourself to that script. That proved to be very sage advice. I gave it my all and then, yeah, it worked out.

Slasher: Flesh & Blood reunites you with Ian Carpenter and Aaron Martin. Take me back to Slasher: Solstice. How did that all come about? Did Aaron have you in mind for directing?
AM: I found out from Enuka Okuma, who’s a good friend of mine who was in Rookie Blue. She was in the first season of Slasher. I knew Aaron Martin from Being Erica. I’ve always liked him, always been a fan of his work. I loved working with him and I love his writing, as an actor. And, so I knew of Slasher, and I went to the premiere with Ian at a theatre when they premiered Season 1 and we were in the audience. I remember Ian and I looked at each other like, ‘We’d love to work on a show like this.’ And we meant it, and Ian’s really close with Aaron. So it wasn’t a jealousy thing, it was more like, ‘This is really good. This is cool, man. It’s just like a perfect fit.’

But going back to Enuka, she told me that Aaron saw Backcountry and was talking really highly of it and he really liked it, and that meant a lot to me. We met after that and he just expressed how much he liked Backcountry. When Season 2 came around, he asked if I was interested and I was blown away. I was like, ‘Yeah, this is amazing,’ but I was shooting Pyewacket at the time. And then Season 3 came around and I got another chance to come in and pitch and all that stuff to be part of the team.

I was so excited, and I drew up some storyboards, got really jazzed, went over, pitched in front of them and it just worked out. Working with the writing, I can see these visuals and it’s just really fortunate.

So, when you’re reading through a script, do those images pop right into your mind?
AM: Oh yeah, right away. I was the kid in class daydreaming constantly. And I’m a very voracious reader, so my imagination is pretty visual anyway. I’d read the script and I could see it in my mind, and I would be like, ‘Oh that’d be great if I could do that.’ And Ian, being very supportive, we’d try some things. I’d say, ‘This is what I want to do here.’ And he’d be like, ‘Yeah, go for it.’

And certain scenes, certain emotions, would be written and some things would be a certain angle. I would go for that to try to accentuate what’s already written there by Ian and Aaron. When it works, it’s just the best feeling.

Adam MacDonald with David Cronenberg

I can’t ask a director question without asking you about working with David Cronenberg. What was it like to work with him and direct him?
AM: Wow. Just hearing that from you almost seems surreal. It was pretty incredible. It was very satisfying because he came on set as an actor and I treated him like an actor. I think he appreciated that, but I was just, of course, this is natural to do that. This is what he’s coming in for. So I’d give him notes and all that stuff. You’re telling them where to go, what to do and all that stuff, you just hope it jives with everybody. And he was great.

And I remember the second day shooting with him, it was a big scene and I was nervous, but it went away within five minutes. I never really get nervous directing, but it was one of the only days I was ever a little nervous because of him. It was definitely a memorable experience.

Last question. What’s the status of Out Come the Wolves?
AM: That’s going to camera next year. It takes a while and certain things have to come into place, but we’re finally at that finish line and we are scheduled to go to camera in 2022, finally, after nine years of development. We’ve got Missy [Peregrym to star] and Enuka wrote the script.

If someone reading this is an aspiring director or just wrote a script and things are taking longer than they think they should, just hang in there, man. Hang in there, because sometimes things just need to blossom in their own time. And when they do you’ve just got to be ready. Sometimes it takes a year. Sometimes it takes 10 years. It’s about perseverance.

Slasher: Flesh & Blood airs Mondays at 9 p.m. ET on Hollywood Suite.

Images courtesy of Cole Burston.

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Slasher: Aaron Martin and Ian Carpenter preview Flesh & Blood

There are several new faces added to the cast of the new season of Slasher. Dubbed Flesh & Blood for Season 4, the blood-soaked horror anthology series created by Aaron Martin boasts perhaps the biggest name in the genre: David Cronenberg.

The actor and director jumped at the chance to play Spencer Galloway, a manipulative businessman who gathers his family together to compete in a deadly game, with the winner to be declared sole inheritor of his fortune.

Alongside familiar Slasher faces playing different characters fighting for Spencer’s fortune are Paula Brancati, Jefferson Brown, Patrice Goodman, Sabrina Grdevich and Christopher Jacot are new faces in Rachael Crawford, Jeananne Goosen and Alex Ozerov. We spoke to creator Aaron Martin and showrunner Ian Carpenter about how the new season—kicking off Monday at 9 p.m. ET on Hollywood Suite—came about.

Ian, how did the writing room work for Slasher: Flesh & Blood?
Ian Carpenter: Aaron and I were in the writing room, and we did all of that on my porch. When we started the show, we were in the heart of [the pandemic]. One of the very first [times writing] was when I took one of the last flights around when I visited him in Vancouver to kind of gestate all of this. We did it all in person, and I don’t know of a writer that doesn’t think that’s essential. There is something about a Zoom meeting that puts pregnancy on every single second and all of this pressure for it to be loaded. Aaron and I are very productive, and I bet 50 percent of [writing] it is us being idiots and cracking jokes. I just feel so strange via Zoom.

Aaron, did you have multiple seasons in mind when Season 1 of Slasher was conceived or was it more organic?
AM: It’s been more organic. There have been ideas for locations or settings or backgrounds for seasons. Every season is a new thing and, usually, it starts with a theme or an issue. [Flesh & Blood] came about because Shaftesbury and, I think Shudder had already come on board, said we could develop it. I had just spent the Christmas holidays with my family. I love them, but by the time I was done, I wanted to kill a few of them. I think that’s when I said to Ian, ‘What if we did a family reunion where they actually get to kill each other?’ That’s how we approach every season. Season 3, Solstice, [was inspired by Justine Sacco] who tweeted something she thought was funny and was horribly offensive, and by the time she landed 12 hours later, it had blown up and ruined her life.

Because the show isn’t killings every five minutes, we need the stuff to build around, the thematic stuff and dramatic stuff is how we do that.

One of the things I love about Slasher is the dialogue is so believable. Aaron, is it difficult to write dialogue?
AM: I don’t think so. I think, in my scripts if you go back to Degrassi and definitely Being Erica, I never try to do dialogue that is cool and flippant. I write how I think people talk. And then, when I’ve finished a script I’ll go back and read it and if I’m stumbling over words or it doesn’t seem real, I’ll change it.

Ian, Adam MacDonald returned to direct Slasher: Flesh & Blood. You have known each other for years. Do you two have a shorthand, where there’s not a lot of discussions? Do you each know what the other is thinking?
IC: I’m really fortunate that Adam and I were close friends before Slasher started. Incredibly, we were both hired within weeks of each other on Solstice. This season, we felt absolute confidence in each other, what we were going to do, what we were strong at, what we needed to talk about. It is shorthand with him, just as it is shorthand with Aaron. It lets you focus on what matters, which is also important when it comes to hiring key creatives on a crew. We’re so lucky to have so many of ours come back.

Aaron, having so many cast and crew return to the Slasher family season to season must be very fulfilling.
AM: The great thing about working in Canada is that it’s a small community, and that’s great because it’s of that. I love actors and I love bringing back actors, for this show especially, because it’s a great opportunity for them to show different facets of themselves. It is a great feeling to have them respond that way, and you want them to.

Ian, what was it like to have David Cronenberg as part of the cast this season?
IC: He was amazing. He was so complimentary, so excited about the material and really saw the depth in it. He is so crucial to the story, so it was exciting to hear how he was connecting to that. And then, as much as we are this scrappy little show, David Cronenberg has said, ‘Yes, I want to be on this show.’

Slasher: Flesh & Blood airs Mondays at 9 p.m. ET on Hollywood Suite.

Images courtesy of Cole Burston.

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Slasher: Flesh & Blood in production for Shudder and Hollywood Suite

From a media release:

Shudder, AMC Networks’ premium service for horror, thriller and the supernatural, announced today that it has teamed up with award-winning production company Shaftesbury to make a new eight-episode installment of the hugely popular horror series, Slasher. Hailed by Bloody Disgusting as “top-notch horror storytelling”, Slasher: Flesh & Blood will stream exclusively on horror platform Shudder in the US, Australia and New Zealand in 2021. Shudder will also be the streaming home for Flesh & Blood in Canada, the UK and Ireland following its linear premieres in those countries. The series will be broadcast exclusively on Hollywood Suite in Canada. Production is underway now in Ontario, Canada.

Slasher: Flesh & Blood follows a wealthy but dysfunctional family gathering for a reunion on a secluded island. Their old wounds and competitive rivalries flare up when the family realizes a masked killer is on the island, intent on cruelly picking them off one by one. As with the past installments of the series, Slasher: Flesh & Blood will combine elements of traditional murder mystery with the intense horror and bold kills that audiences have come to expect.

Canadian horror legend David Cronenberg has joined the cast for the new season, which will also continue Slasher’s trend of bringing back cast members in new roles. Returning from previous seasons are Paula Brancati, Jefferson Brown, Patrice Goodman, Sabrina Grdevich, and Christopher Jacot. New faces this year include Rachael Crawford (Heartland), Jeananne Goosen (The Walking Dead), Sydney Meyer (Departure), and Alex Ozerov (The Americans).

Slasher is developed and produced by Shaftesbury and created by Aaron Martin. Slasher is executive produced by Aaron Martin, Christina Jennings, Scott Garvie, David Ozer, Thomas P. Vitale, and Ian Carpenter, who also serves as showrunner; Adam MacDonald is director.

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Ian Carpenter lives his dream showrunning Netflix’s Slasher: Solstice

Ian Carpenter was convinced Aaron Martin didn’t like his writing style. Yes, Martin—the showrunner behind series like Degrassi: The Next Generation, The Best Years and Saving Hope—had hired Carpenter to work on Being Erica, but since then … nothing.

“He and I would meet for a work day in a café and I would ask him what he was working on, and he would tell me about this great thing and all of the great writers he had in the room with him,” Carpenter says with a laugh. “I hit a point when I said to myself, ‘Well, maybe he doesn’t like my writing.'” It turns out the right project hadn’t come along. Until now.

Slasher: Solstice is the third season of the franchise created by Martin—it’s available on Netflix now—and Carpenter is on board not just as a writer but showrunner too. Martin’s latest creation, Another Life starring Katee Sackhoff, had been greenlit by Netflix meaning he wasn’t available to handle Solstice. Enter Carpenter, horror fanboy.

“Every meeting that I was having with anyone, when they asked me what I wanted to work on it was horror,” he says. “That’s all I want to do for the next many years.”

Slasher: Solstice keeps the franchise’s cast intact by reuniting several actors from past seasons in Dean McDermott, Joanna Vannicola, Paula Brancati, Erin Karpluk, Jim Watson, Jefferson Brown and Paulino Nunes with new faces in Baraka Rahmani, Lisa Berry, Mercedes Morris and Salvatore Antonio. And, like the franchise, Solstice meets up with these characters as awful things happen in present-day to match a truly terrible occurrence in the past.

We spoke to Ian Carpenter about his dream gig.

How did the writing for this season come about?
Ian Carpenter: Aaron had pitched the season, it had been approved and he had written an amazing pilot that is, for the most part, entirely there. If I changed anything, it was maybe five per cent. Thirteen out of the 15 characters were there and he knew who [was behind the crimes] and the whole arc down the line. He had the tent poles worked out and then we sat down and broke the next four episodes. And then, once he became unavailable, I broke the remaining four with a writer named Matt MacLennan. At all times I was, of course, running things by Aaron. There were a couple of massive twists that I sent to him and got super-excited responses back. It was so much fun to freak out the creator.

Can an eagle-eyed viewer spot the person or people behind this during the season?
IC: I didn’t encounter anyone that had picked it out and wasn’t floored by the story. But, as a guy who has spent a lot of time with the episodes, I’m pleased with how much it is seeded in there. Like, ‘Oh my god, when this person is saying this, really this is going on.’

A woman screams while crouching over a dead body.A big part of Slasher’s storytelling is through flashback. I noticed this goes back as far as 20 years. It that the furthest?
IC: I think so. I’m obsessed with the emotional weight of everything and I want us to mourn the characters who die. As I’ve been working on this I’ve come to realize how much I want there to be hope, positivity or light in the show. In this season, as it is in past seasons, is that the deaths mean something. It’s not a nihilistic lopping off of people’s heads all over the place for no reason. For sure, there are a couple of characters people want to see die and probably celebrate their end, but at all times I want to feel the weight of what’s happening.

Adam MacDonald directed all of Solstice’s episodes. What was it like working with him?
IC: We’ve been friends for, I think, something like 20 years. I was hired maybe two weeks before Adam was and they were pursuing him ahead of time so it was just bizarre, amazing luck that we were on it together. We were close then and we are way more close now. I would put his work up against anyone’s. It’s so incredible. I have never worked with a director who has a more visceral connection to the camera. I love the expressiveness of the camera and he has done something that really stands out in the genre and on TV.

The apartment building serves as the main focal point for much of the action and story. Was it always the intention to have that claustrophobic feel?
IC: Aaron was riffing off the case in New York City where the woman was murdered in front of her apartment building and people watched but did nothing. We wanted to spin around that and I loved the claustrophobia of it, and of people brushing up against each other, getting in each other’s business and driving each other crazy. And it makes those moments where you leave the building extra special.

You not only have a diverse cast but you don’t shy away from storylines containing xenophobia, hatred, inclusion or acceptance.
IC: It’s a huge part of everything Aaron has ever done and I’m the same way. I wanted to make it carte blanche across the board and I feel like it led us to discover some really exciting talent. And, it’s a big part of some of the themes this season. Netflix was totally into that and was a big part of this season’s pitch. It’s fun to tell those stories right now because it’s so important. A lot of hard work went into not making it simplistic.

Slasher: Solstice is streaming on Netflix now.

Images courtesy of Shaftesbury.Facebooktwitterredditlinkedinmail