Tag Archives: Christopher Jacot

Slasher: Flesh & Blood’s Paula Brancati: “It’s very rare that you get to come back and work with people that you trust again and again”

If you’re a fan of the Slasher franchise, you’re already aware of the unique casting around it. There are, from season to season, a handful of actors who check in, usually playing very different characters from the seasons before. That’s certainly the case for Paula Brancati, who returns to Slasher: Flesh & Blood playing a very different role from Violet, the social media addict on Slasher: Solstice.

On Flesh & Blood, airing Mondays at 9 p.m. ET on Hollywood Suite, Brancati portrays Christy, who has married into the Galloway family, a group currently battling each other for the family fortune while dodging a killer called The Gentleman.

We spoke to Brancati, who is currently prepping her first project as a director with Junior’s Giant, written by Deb McGrath, about her experiences this season.

When Aaron Martin and Ian Carpenter reach out to you and say they’ve got you in mind for a new season of Slasher, are you all in no matter what?
Paula Brancati: Oh, yeah. It’s no question. I love them as people and as creators. And it generally starts with Aaron and Ian and I over a Bellini at Milestones, which is where we like to take our creative meetings. And they often lead with one of our more graphic scenes. They’ll tell me something wild that they’re thinking of for the character. So the pitches are always so colourful. And it’s a very easy yes for me.

It’s very rare that you get to come back and work with people that you trust again and again, who keep writing for you and continue to challenge you as an actor. Because I think, a lot of times, with the Slasher series, I get to come back and act in roles that I don’t think I necessarily would be auditioning for. So they see something, I think, in all their casting choices. They really trust their actors and push them. Christy, this season, cannot be more different from Violet in Solstice.

From the first two episodes that I have seen, Christy is more low-key, part of a somewhat dysfunctional family unit. So what was it like playing her?
PB: I really loved Christy from the get-go. It was the first time I was playing a mother. And [director] Adam [MacDonald] and I, who are old friends and worked together last season as well, of course, we had really great conversations about her early on.

She is levelheaded. But as you can imagine with this show, nothing is ever what it seems. And a lot unravels very quickly. We talked a lot about Jennifer Lawrence’s character in Mother. That was somebody that Adam really took to early on as a reference for Christy. And I think we really held onto that, because I think she is this sort of grounding centre, and she really operates as eyes in for the audience. She really is a moral compass. And I think she’s fully aware of the dysfunction of the Galloways and has been married into that family for so long. But as you might have been able to see from the first two episodes, if you aren’t a blood relative, you are never fully accepted. And even when you are a blood relative, nothing is off bounds with those family members.

You said something interesting about talking to Adam about Christy. Do you like to do that with your characters, talk them out with the director? Or is that the case of you’ve known Adam, and so there’s that comfort level?
PB: That’s such a good question. I love working with all kinds of directors and really love to kind of adapt to what their process is too. But I think what’s really special about Slasher and about Adam as a director is that he’s taking on something that really is Herculean. His relationship with Ian and what they bring in leading that set is really special.

We are block shooting all eight episodes out of order for many months. So we do have the advantage of coming in with all the scripts prepared and arching that together. And I know Adam, we just love every character so much and have a full life for them. So I know that he spoke to everybody really, about different references I think. And that is the joy of the show. It really is. It feels like we’re building it all together.

And then add to that, the chemistry of the cast that doesn’t get to meet—unless we’ve known each other previously, we don’t get to meet before we start shooting. So a lot sort of evolves on the floor as well. And especially in some of those bigger group scenes, which you’ll see a lot more of in this season until people start dying. We are all sort of together a lot and absorbing a lot of the madness together. And I think Adam is so great at seeing what chemistry pops up on the day and really running with that.

I’ve really enjoyed the big, family meeting scenes. As an actor, do you like that too, the bigger the group, the more people to play with in one spot?
PB: I love it. I’ve been doing this for 25 years, and I feel like I should be more jaded or something, but I do really enjoy it all. I do. I really relish in some of our quieter, two-hander moments myself and Breton [Lalama], myself and Chris Jacot got to do some stuff in the first couple of episodes together that was on the sort of more intimate side. And I love acting opposite those two actors and opposite our entire cast.

And then something like a big dinner scene, where we’re all sparring, and David Cronenberg is at the centre. Those are so exciting to me. And I think it does feel like theatre. I find those really long scenes, where the pace is quicker, and we’re jumping on top of each other, I find it really thrilling. I like it when I feel a little nervous and have butterflies for the scenes that we’re doing, which I think happens a lot on our show, because we are doing scenes that are pitched very high, and the stakes are very high. So that’s kind of the thrill of it as well.

With this cast of familiar faces, if I start crossing faces off the list, and I haven’t seen a particular face yet, am I on the right track as to who’s behind that mask? Or do you think I’m going to be surprised?
PB: I see what you’re saying there. Very tricky way of wording it there, Greg. I will say, that I was very surprised.

I scare easily, but I tend to be inherently suspicious, so I love a whodunit. Every season, you have a cast of characters that are all so, so rich. I would watch shows about all these characters, honestly, on their own. So we have all these people in one room now, all these characters that have very full lives, that all have a lot of secrets. And I think once those secrets come undone, you’ll see that it really could be anyone behind that mask. And also, you can’t really predict what these characters are going to do to each other. And I think that’s actually possibly even more terrifying, honestly.

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

Featured image courtesy of Salvatore Antonio. Series images courtesy of Cole Burston.

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X Company and Slasher stars guest on Saving Hope

Last week’s episode of Saving Hope was certainly memorable, wasn’t it? It’s not every day a car comes crashing into Hope Zion’s ER. Not only did the accident send shockwaves through the hospital,  but caused Thomas Leffering to seriously rethink cutting so many of Hope Zion’s services. And what about Alex realizing she’s pregnant?

Thomas’ rethink continues in this week’s new instalment, “Knowing Me, Knowing You,” which I visited the set of during production last year. Here’s what CTV has revealed regarding some key storylines:

Dr. Charlie Harris and Dr. Manny Palmer treat two love birds who have an annual weekend-long love fest, despite the fact the woman is married to someone else. Meanwhile, when Charlie assigns Dr. Maggie Lin to evaluate the interns, it brings out her nurturing side and leads Dr. Billy Scott to ask Maggie to be his mentor. Following Dr. Zach Miller’s advice to use the “kill them with kindness” approach to negotiating, Dr. Dawn Bell struggles to bring out her nurturing side when she tries to get her Chief of Surgery position back. Maggie and Dawn find themselves at odds when they work together to treat a single dad with a ninja star lodged in his neck.

And here’s what we can tell you after watching a screener.

Shahir shines …
I’ve been missing Shahir’s eccentricities of late, so it’s nice to have him back—and full of quips—on Sunday. Also, we finally meet Jonathan, played by Slasher‘s Christopher Jacot, who is hoping to score some business from the hospital.

… and Michelle Nolden does too
Dawn is a pretty uptight individual, so her quest to reclaim her Chief of Surgery gig is odd and incredibly funny. The scenes allow Nolden to showcase her comic timing and we want more.

X Company star in the house!
Lara Jean Chorostecki guest-stars as Claudia, who is in the ER with her injured love match when things go really bad.

Thomas has a change of heart
Let’s just say the events of the last episode has had a profound effect on Thomas.

Saving Hope airs Sundays at 10 p.m. ET on CTV.

Images courtesy of Bell Media.

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Slasher’s latest suspect/victim: Christopher Jacot’s Robin Turner

Robin Turner has been through a lot on Slasher. First, The Executioner chased him down Waterbury’s darkened streets and slashed his arms open. Then the serial killer murdered Robin’s husband, Justin, via poisoning—after first sending flowers to the bedridden Robin. But as Christopher Jacot—the man behind Robin—says, if it wasn’t for great writing, we wouldn’t care about him, or any other characters, in the first place.

In our fourth instalment, we spoke to Jacot about what makes for a good horror script and his extensive work as a voice actor.

You’ve been in some pretty interesting and diverse projects. Eureka, Degrassi, Murdoch Mysteries, Rogue and a bunch of voice work as well like Beyblade.
Christopher Jacot: I have. I’ve also done Johnny Storm in Fantastic Four: World’s Greatest Heroes.

Do you like doing voice work?
I do, it’s interesting. It’s not something I wanted to do, necessarily, it just sort of happened. I think they were looking for voice actors to kind of expand the group because at the time it was pretty small. That said, I do it, but I’m still not in that voice group. It’s a lot tougher to do than you think it would be. I remember that Marvel would be on the line while I was recording Johnny Storm and the script would say, ‘throw a fireball seven feet,’ and I would be like, ‘Unnhh!’ And they would say, ‘Um, no, that sounded like four feet.’ And then I’d go, ‘Unnnhhh!!’ and they’d say it sounded like 10 feet. And that’s why I think the community is so small; it’s crazy what you have to be able to do and the actions you have to create with your voice.

When you see footage of a voice actor working, their whole body is into it.
You are doing everything possible in the room … but trying to keep your head close to the microphone.

Let’s talk about your Slasher character, Robin. Tell me about him.
Robin and his husband, Justin, are the two entrepreneurs of the town. They’re adding the urban element to Waterbury. Justin has bought up a lot of the property, so we kind of own a lot of the town. That has a positive and negative effect. We’re generally accepted by the town, but there is another side; the side of ignorance. I’m the real estate agent who comes in and sets Sarah up with the gallery, and we become really close. We develop a nice bond and become the only people that we can trust.

The show in constantly moving and changing based on who dies, who is the potential murderer and who is in prison for it. The victims, the suspects, it’s a constant circle of moving chairs.

As an actor, you know who the killer is. Does who it is make sense?
I was surprised, but it totally makes sense. I telling Aaron when I was first cast, ‘It’s awesome to read something that’s essentially an eight episode novel.’ It’s cool to go from beginning to end and really sort of binge-read a show. The minute you suspect someone, it changes, and you have no clue what to expect.

It must be nice to be on a show that keeps the viewer thinking. It’s easy to fall into horror tropes.
You can have the archetype of the quintessential horror films—and if you look at them they all follow in some regard—but what makes it good is how fleshed-out the character are. How much we invest in them and that’s what I think is wonderful about what Aaron wrote. He really got into the complexities of a character. Robin, as much as he presents himself as having a flair for the dramatic in the beginning, really ends up diving into so many different emotional landscapes. Therefore, the audience becomes emotionally invested in the story and what happens to people.

Shitty things are going to happen to people.

Slasher airs Fridays at 9 p.m. ET on Super Channel.Facebooktwitterredditlinkedinmail