Tag Archives: Alias Grace

Cardinal, Letterkenny and Kim’s Convenience top 2018 Canadian Screen Award nominees

Cardinal, Alias Grace, Murdoch Mysteries, Mary Kills People, Letterkenny, Workin’ Moms, Kim’s Convenience and The Disappearance—and many of those in the projects’ casts—are among the nominees for 2018 Canadian Screen Awards.

The announcement was made Tuesday morning at The Globe and Mail Centre in Toronto with Kim’s Convenience‘s Paul Sun-Hyung Lee, Cardinal‘s Karine Vanasse and Rise host Sarain Fox serving as hosts.

Here are the nominations in the key television categories. Here is a link to the full list of nominations.

Best Drama Series

  • 19-2
  • Anne
  • Mary Kills People
  • Pure
  • Vikings

Best Comedy Series

  • Letterkenny
  • Workin’ Moms
  • Nirvanna the Band the Show
  • Michael: Every Day
  • Kim’s Convenience

Best Variety or Sketch Comedy Series

  • The Beaverton
  • Baroness Von Sketch Show
  • Rick Mercer Report
  • This Hour Has 22 Minutes

Best Reality Competition Series

  • The Amazing Race Canada
  • The Bachelorette Canada
  • Big Brother Canada
  • MasterChef Canada
  • Top Chef Canada

Best Limited Series or Program

  • Cardinal
  • Alias Grace
  • The Disappearance
  • The Kennedys: After Camelot
  • Bruno & Boots: This Can’t Be Happening at MacDonald Hall

Best Children’s or Youth Program or Series

  • The Next Step
  • Odd Squad
  • Degrassi: Next Class
  • L.M. Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables Fire & Dew

Best Lifestyle Program or Series

  • Dead Set on Life
  • Property Brothers
  • The Goods
  • Backyard Builds
  • Great Canadian Homes

CBC

Best Lead Actress, Comedy

  • Annie Murphy, Schitt’s Creek
  • Catherine Reitman, Workin’ Moms
  • Catherine O’Hara, Schitt’s Creek
  • Andrea Bang, Kim’s Convenience
  • Jean Yoon, Kim’s Convenience

Best Lead Actor, Comedy

  • Gerry Dee, Mr. D
  • Jared Keeso, Letterkenny
  • Paul Sun-Hyung Lee, Kim’s Convenience
  • Eugene Levy, Schitt’s Creek
  • Daniel Levy, Schitt’s Creek

Best Lead Actress, Drama Series

  • Amybeth McNulty, Anne
  • Caroline Dhavernas, Mary Kills People
  • Jennie Raymond, Sex & Violence
  • Tatiana Maslany, Orphan Black
  • Meaghan Rath, Rogue

Best Lead Actor, Drama Series

  • Brian Markinson, The Romeo Section
  • Richard Short, Mary Kills People
  • Christopher Heyerdahl, Van Helsing
  • Alexander Ludwig, Vikings
  • Shawn Doyle, Bellevue

Best Lead Actress, Drama Program or Limited Series

  • Sarah Gadon, Alias Grace
  • Maxim Roy, Bad Blood
  • Karine Vanasse, Cardinal
  • Camille Sullivan, The Disappearance
  • Helene Joy, Murdoch Mysteries: Home for the Holidays

Best Lead Actor, Drama Program or Limited Series

  • Kim Coates, Bad Blood
  • Edward Holcroft, Alias Grace
  • Billy Campbell, Cardinal
  • Alan Thicke, It’s Not My Fault and I Don’t Care Anyway
  • Yannick Bisson, Murdoch Mysteries: Home for the Holidays

Best Performance, Sketch Comedy (Individual or Ensemble)

  • Baroness Von Sketch Show
  • Rick Mercer Report
  • The Beaverton
  • This Hour Has 22 Minutes

Best Performance, Children’s or Youth

  • Ella Ballentine, L.M. Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables Fire & Dew
  • Amanda, Arcuri, Degrassi: Next Class
  • Michela Luci, Dino Dan
  • Akiel Julien, The Next Step
  • Anna Cathcart, Odd Squad

 

The Canadian Screen Awards Broadcast gala airs live Sunday, March 11 at 8 p.m. on CBC.

Which shows and actors/actresses are you hoping will win big at the Canadian Screen Awards? Let me know in the comments below!

 

 

Facebooktwitterredditlinkedinmail

Links: Alias Grace

From Ben Lawrence of the Telegraph:

Link: Netflix’s Alias Grace is every bit the equal of The Handmaid’s Tale – review
And yet director Sarah Polley has managed to grasp Atwood’s challenging prose and create something that feels both obsessively faithful and cinematically ambitious. This production (now available in its entirety on Netflix) is literate film-making of the highest order. Continue reading.

From Julia Raeside of The Guardian:

Link: Alias Grace review – another poignant adaptation of a Margaret Atwood novel
Those craving another story of female oppression from Atwood’s estimable pen will do well to watch this six-part period drama. Writer and producer Sarah Polley has wanted to adapt Alias Grace since she was 17 and has clearly poured herself into the project. Atwood herself also acts as consulting producer. Continue reading. 

From Melanie McFarland of Salon:

Link: A different maid’s tale: The beautiful deceit of “Alias Grace”
Sarah Polley, produces and wrote the script for “Alias Grace” and she steeps the plot in such layers of mystery, prodding at our assumptions about its main subject and the place of women in that era. She and Harron also toy with popular expectations of how women are portrayed and comport themselves in period dramas. Initially, the story takes on a gentle tone, but soon flashes of violent assaults Grace sustains in the asylum hint at a darker truth. Continue reading.

From Kelly Connolly of Entertainment Weekly:

Link: Alias Grace is a true crime drama with the spirit of The Handmaid’s Tale 
As a lead, Gadon is electrifying, her quilting needle always one stab away from drawing blood. The show makes little attempt to age her across the decades, which does underplay the physical toll her traumatic experiences likely would have taken on her, but Alias Grace is better for being left in her hands. Gadon makes Grace magnetically interesting without losing sight of her unreliability as a narrator, the defining framework of Atwood’s novel. Continue reading. 

From Danielle Turchiano of Variety:

Link: Sarah Gadon Calls ‘Alias Grace’ the ‘Most Complicated, Intelligent’ Job She’s Ever Had
“As a character study, she’s fascinating. The way that Margaret writes her is very multi-dimensional. She doesn’t really commit to one narrative of the murder, and the show is trying to unwind her story. When I read the book I oscillated between all of these different ideas of who Grace was and what she was capable of doing, but I didn’t feel resolved in any of those.” Continue reading.

Link: ‘Alias Grace’ Team on the ‘Beautiful Mindf—’ of the Unconventional Female Protagonist
“What’s so delicious about Grace is she’s kind of like [raises her middle fingers] to the whole notion because maybe she did it and maybe she didn’t. She got punished but also she got set free. It’s a beautiful sort of mindf— as far as the conventions of female protagonists.” Continue reading. 

From Chelsea Tatham of Tampa Bay.com:

Link: Review: ‘Alias Grace’ a spellbinding tale of true crime and quiltmaking
Alias Grace is a remarkably complex portrait of a young servant girl who eventually becomes a “celebrated murderess.” The series quickly becomes more of an attempt to understand Grace beyond her titles of maid and murderess. Continue reading. 

From Nathan Now of KSDK:

Link: Review: Netflix’s Alias Grace is a harrowing and masterful journey
The series is superbly acted throughout, but no one outshines the stunning Gadon. Her Grace remains coy in the present and is emotionally laid bare in the past. The actress deftly seesaws between the young, naïve girl shown in flashbacks to the older, wizened prisoner accustomed to abuse and deception. Continue reading. 

From Stephen Parthimos of The Iris:

Link: Murder Mystery Alias Grace is a gripping character study
Sarah Gadon’s performance is phenomenal from start to finish. She commands the screen in every scene, delivers dialogue with much conviction, conveys drastic emotional highs and lows incredibly well, and right down to the subtleties of her character never once breaks formula. Continue reading.

From Phoebe Reilly of Rolling Stone:

Link: ‘Alias Grace’: How a True-Crime Drama Became the Most Relevant Show on TV
“My main objective was to track a woman’s journey through a man’s world where she’s endlessly harassed, abused – and expected to remain silent.” Continue reading.

From Katherine Cusumano of W Magazine:

Link: Alias Grace Star Sarah Gadon on Why Grace Marks’s Story Matters So Much Right Now
“The whole notion of exploring this woman who’s very repressed and everything that’s going on in her life has this kind of resonance because people aren’t thinking about their own repression or their own experiences with abuse and harassment privately—we’re thinking about women with this massive collective consciousness right now. It’s amplified the meaning of the show and I think it really is starting to strike a chord with people that goes beyond Grace’s story. It connects to their own story.” Continue reading.

From Adrian Hennigan of Haaretz.com:

Link: Netflix’s ‘Alias Grace’ Paints an Authentic World of Masters and Servants
I state with confidence that I will be breaking new journalistic ground with my next sentence: I have just watched two very good Canadian TV shows. I’ll start with the most prestigious: the six-part adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s 1996 novel “Alias Grace” (now available on Netflix). Continue reading.

 

 

Facebooktwitterredditlinkedinmail

Alias Grace: Rebecca Liddiard previews Mary’s influence on Grace’s life

Rebecca Liddiard is taking over CBC one Monday night drama at a time. At least, it sure feels that way. The Toronto-based actress can be seen in Season 1 of Frankie Drake Mysteries, which just happens to debut after her run on Alias Grace is complete.

In Alias Grace, airing Mondays at 9 p.m., Liddiard portrays Mary Whitney, the lively housemaid who befriends Grace (Sarah Gadon) when the latter arrives at the home of Thomas Kinnear (Paul Gross) to work. Grace, who lived through hardship in Ireland and survived a horrible ocean crossing to Canada, views the Kinnear farm as heaven on earth and Mary as her best friend. At least, that’s the way Grace remembers it as she tells Dr. Simon Jordan (Edward Holcroft) the journey that led Grace to murder and incarceration at the Kingston Penitentiary.

In our latest exclusive interview, we chat with Liddiard about working on Sarah Polley’s adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s book and what’s to come later this season.

This is a spooky project. Anyone who has already read the book knows Mary appears to play a part in Grace’s actions. What is the relationship between these two women?
Rebecca Liddiard: Mary has also had an incredibly difficult life, just being part of this lower class, working in service, but she has lived through the Rebellions of 1837 and 1838 and her parents were very involved in it. She has this incredibly optimistic, idealistic view of the possibility of what her life could be. That lends herself to her incredible spirit that she tries to pass on to Grace. Mary gets caught up in life and her ending is just as tragic, but I think that spirit of something better and somehow transcending this life that they’re in sticks with Grace.

This is a speculative account of what’s going on in Grace’s mind, but I’m with you … I like to think Mary’s influence—if not her spirit—continues on with Grace as the rest of the story unfolds.

Mary passes away as a result of a medical issue. That must have been an intense scene to film.
Those scenes were the first ones I shot on Alias Grace and the first shots of the whole series!

How do you even prepare for that?
A lot of it is done in the moment. It was sort of a weird day. It was the beginning of the whole thing for everybody. We went to this house in the middle of the woods at Black Creek Pioneer Village and we filmed this scene. And, you just start screaming. It was really heavy.

The climax of the miniseries involves Mary as well, when Grace allegedly channels her during a hypnosis session.
Sarah [Gadon] and I talked a lot about that. How much is Mary still a part of the story at this point? I also did some recordings for Sarah reading her script in my voice so she could play around a bit. The effect is very terrifying. It’s incredible and chilling.

Alias Grace airs Mondays at 9 p.m. on CBC.

Image courtesy of CBC.

 

 

Facebooktwitterredditlinkedinmail

Links: Alias Grace

From John Doyle of The Globe and Mail:

Link: Alias Grace: An ambitious, almost brilliant Margaret Atwood adaptation
Alias Grace (Monday, CBC, 9 p.m.) is tightly wound, stark and knowing about its central female protagonist. It is a very literary and at times elliptical adaptation, one that soars when it reaches into the elusive soul of Grace Marks (Sarah Gadon) and at times the six-part series hits you like a headache, it is so charged and sententious. It is sometimes gloriously exciting as Grace is revealed in oh-so-many twisted ways and, simultaneously, it suffers from the great curse of Canadian TV drama – it becomes visually inert when imaginative vigour and freshness of expression are called for. Continue reading.

From Victoria Ahearn of The Canadian Press:

Link: Alias Grace comes at a ‘critical moment,’ says star Sarah Gadon
Sarah Polley’s new TV adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s novel “Alias Grace” has been about 20 years in the making.

As it turns out, the timing couldn’t be more perfect.

Debuting Monday on CBC-TV and Nov. 3 on Netflix globally outside of Canada, the Ontario-shot miniseries comes after the smash success of another recent adaptation of Atwood’s work, eight-time Emmy winner “The Handmaid’s Tale.” Continue reading.

From Sonia Saraiya of Variety

Link: TV Review: Netflix’s ‘Alias Grace’ 
For a book that is essentially un-adaptable, though, “Alias Grace” presents a remarkably faithful and dazzlingly complex portrait of servant girl Grace Marks (Sarah Gadon), a real-life “celebrated murderess” who was found guilty and imprisoned, at 16, for the killing of her master and mistress. Continue reading. 

From Daniel Fienberg of The Hollywood Reporter:

Link: ’Alias Grace’: TV Review
Polley and Harron (and Atwood’s source material) represent a powerful and thoroughly in-synch writing-directing team, spinning six episodes of television out of a story that is, on its surface, barely a film’s worth of plot. Continue reading. 

From Courtney Shea of Toronto Life:

Link: Q&A: Sarah Gadon, the star of CBC’s new Atwood adaptation, Alias Grace
My agent sent me the script. When I saw it was a Sarah Polley project, I flipped out. Growing up in Toronto, I had always looked up to her as an actress, and I’ve watched her evolve into a director, producer and writer. I’ve always carried around a secret dream that maybe one day I might get to work with her.  Continue reading. 

From Hermione Wilson of The TV Junkies:

Link: Alias Grace: Why You’ll Want to Catch Margaret Atwood’s True Crime Novel as it Comes to TV
f Making a Murderer had you hooked, and the first season of Serial made you wish you could read Adnan Syed’s mind, you’ll love Alias Grace! This latest TV adaptation of a Margaret Atwood novel (following close on the heels of the Emmy-winning The Handmaid’s Tale) is based on the true story of Canadian murderess — allegedly — Grace Marks, an Irish-Canadian maid who was convicted in 1843 of murdering her master Thomas Kinnear and his housekeeper Nancy Montgomery.  Continue reading.

 

 

Facebooktwitterredditlinkedinmail

Alias Grace: Sarah Polley’s excellent Margaret Atwood adaptation comes to CBC

CBC has made it part of their mandate to focus on adapting more Canadian novels into television projects. They’ve already done it recently with Anne—Moira Walley-Beckett’s take on Anne of Green Gables, in production on Season 2 now—and Allan Hawco’s Caught, his adaptation of Lisa Moore’s novel.

Now the network goes all-in with Alias Grace, Margaret Atwood’s novel about a murderess in 1840s Canada. Debuting Monday at 9 p.m., the six-parter has been adapted by Sarah Polley and stars Sarah Gadon in the lead role of Grace Marks. The project ticks all the boxes of what’s top of mind in society—women’s rights and the immigrant story among them—and a hot genre in true crime. Alias Grace is based on the real-life case of domestic servant Grace Marks, an Irish immigrant who was imprisoned in Kingston Penitentiary for teaming with stable-hand James McDermott (played by Kerr Logan) and murdering their employer, Thomas Kinnear (Paul Gross) and his housekeeper, Nancy Montgomery (Anna Paquin). The book and the production introduce a fictional doctor, psychiatrist Simon Jordan (Edward Holcroft), into the mix, who meets with Grace to discuss what she recalls of the crimes. Did Grace really commit the murders she was convicted of? And where does housemaid Mary Whitney (Rebecca Liddiard) fit into what happened?

“Adapting Alias Grace was like a boot camp for screenwriting,” Polley says during a media press day in Toronto. After buying the rights to the novel years ago, Polley initially thought Alias Grace would be a feature film. Those plans were scuttled because the book contained too many time jumps and changes in characters’ views and voices to make a movie feasible. A six-hour television series was perfect, giving her the opportunity to fit everything in. Once she had the scripts done, Polley began shopping them around; executive producer Noreen Halpern snapped it up for Halfire Entertainment after having a coffee with Polley.

“Sarah handed me the six scripts and I read them in one sitting,” Halpern recalls with a smile. “Once you start reading them, you can’t stop. The writing is so compelling.” Equally compelling is the colour palette devised by director-executive producer Mary Harron. Washed-out greys are the backdrop to scenes in the Kingston prison, dark grime on the ship from Ireland to Canada, rich browns in the prison governor’s office where Simon and Grace’s conversations take place, and golds seeping into Grace’s reflections of her happy days at the Kinnear farm.

“When she arrives in Toronto, which is supposed to be this promised land, it is a sea of mud,” Harron says. “When Grace sees the farm for the first time, it’s bathed in golden light. Even though terrible things happened at this farm, in her memory it was a beautiful place.”

What really makes Alias Grace hum is the cast. Gadon is spectacular as Grace and Holcroft is equally to task as Simon. In Sunday’s opening moments, Grace serves as narrator, describing her long prison term and the reason she was there in the first place.

“I think of all the things that have been written about me,” Grace says. “That I am an inhuman female demon. That I am an innocent victim of a blaggard forced against my will and in danger of my own life. That I was too ignorant to know how to act and to hang me would be judicial murder.” While she states each version of herself, Gadon twitches and teases her face to match each person the public views. With such skill in presenting the right face, who’s to say Grace isn’t playing the victim in her chats with Simon? Is she playing him for a fool, hoping he’ll help to have her pardoned?

“We have our own theories,” Gadon says with a smile. “Margaret Atwood was very, very against us sharing them with you. I will say that we all got so caught up in the whodunit aspect and the web of lies. What’s interesting is that the book is historical fiction but Margaret did take every piece of historical fact and weave it into the story, which makes it so difficult to make up your mind whether she did it or not.”

Look for more exclusive Alias Grace interviews with cast members Sarah Gadon, Kerr Logan and Rebecca Liddiard in the coming weeks.

Alias Grace airs Mondays at 9 p.m. on CBC.

Images courtesy of CBC.

 

 

Facebooktwitterredditlinkedinmail