Tag Archives: Dalmar Abuzeid

Winners: The 18th Annual ACTRA Awards in Toronto

From a media release:

ACTRA Toronto is proud to announce the winners of the 18th Annual ACTRA Awards in Toronto.

Outstanding Performance – Female Voice
Bryn McAuley
as Mavis in Hotel Transylvania: The Series, “Portrait of Mavis as a Young Vampire”
(Corus Entertainment)

Outstanding Performance – Male Voice
Carter Hayden as Klaus in Hotel Transylvania: The Series, “Freakerheads” (Corus Entertainment)

Outstanding Performance – Female
Cara Ricketts as Mary Handford-Lacroix in Anne with an E, “What Can Stop the Determined Heart”
(Northwood Entertainment)

Outstanding Performance – Male
Dalmar Abuzeid as Sebastian ‘Bash’ Lacroix in Anne with an E, “What Can Stop the Determined Heart”
(Northwood Entertainment)

For the second consecutive year, the Members’ Choice Series Ensemble Award went to Schitt’s Creek.

Michaela Washburn presented ACTRA Toronto’s 2020 Award of Excellence to Kim’s Convenience‘s Jean Yoon.

Matt Birman presented the ACTRA Toronto Stunt award to stunt performer Kevin Rushton who passed away last year.

The 18th Annual ACTRA Awards in Toronto were presented at a live show and gala tonight at The Carlu. DJ Salazar Solomon performed the show together with saxophonist Geoff Bournes and trumpeter Howard Leathers. The show was written by David Galeand Diane Flacks and directed by David Gale.

ACTRA Toronto is the largest organization within ACTRA, representing more than 15,000 of Canada’s 25,000 professional performers working in recorded media in Canada. As an advocate for Canadian culture since 1943, ACTRA is a member-driven union that continues to secure rights and respect for the work of professional performers.

Facebooktwitterredditlinkedinmail

CBC’s Anne with an E blooms in Season 2

Moira Walley-Beckett and Anne with an E are on a roll. The former landed the Showrunner of the Year award at the 2018 Rockie Awards gala at the Banff World Media Festival earlier this year while the latter was feted with individual awards and Best Drama Series at the Canadian Screen Awards.

With Season 2 of Anne with an E returning to CBC this Sunday at 7 p.m., we spoke to Walley-Beckett in Banff about what’s to come for Anne Shirley (Amybeth McNulty), Marilla Cuthbert (Geraldine James), Matthew Cuthbert (R.H. Thomson), Gilbert Blythe (Lucas Jade Zumann) and newcomer Sebastian (Dalmar Abuzeid).

There are some new characters in the second season, but the most important question that I want to ask is … the Season 1 finale, the two guys that came into the house … do we catch up with Season 2 right in those moments after? Do we find out what these guys are plotting? Because it would appear that they were plotting nothing but bad things.
Moira Walley-Beckett: They’re bad, bad, bad grifters. Season 2 picks up nine months later, and they are still there at Green Gables, pretending that they didn’t know each other before. We’re going to see how they’ve integrated into the household, what their master plan was in being there in the first place, what transpires, and how it affects everybody and the town.

It isn’t like there is this quick revelation that these guys are grifters and that they may be bad, and let’s get rid of them. They are part of life.
MWB: It’s a long game. It’s a very long game.

How much fun is it to do that to the audience?
MWB: It’s so fun.

You’ve got some diversity in characters in Season 2. I recorded a podcast with Dalmar Abuzeid. Now, we didn’t specifically talk about Anne with an E at that time. What can you tell me about his character Sebastian?
MWB: I’ve been chagrined by the fact that the story of Anne of Green Gables and Avonlea does not culturally reflect the diversity in Canada and the colour in the world. So, my master plan at the end of Season 1, which was my plan from the beginning, was to earn Gilbert’s exit, and put him aboard a steamship, and send him out into the world. It afforded me an opportunity to introduce this new character, played by Dal, who’s a person of colour, who becomes a very, very good friend of Gilbert’s. They travel to exotic ports of call, where we see a whole other part of the world and certainly a whole different cultural experience through the eyes of Gilbert.

Dalmar Abuzeid as Sebastian

That explains the filming in Port Dalhousie.
MWB: Yes. Which is unrecognizable. My art department and my production designers … I brutalized them this season. Because it’s a huge season they just did phenomenally detailed work. I mean, you’d have no idea that you weren’t actually there. Then we have our steamship and the interiors and exteriors of the steamship that we built. It’s just an incredible season.

When did you picture this big season? Was it in your grand plan from the very beginning?
MWB: Yes. From when I was first conceiving of the show and how I not only could go deeper emotionally with all the characters, and Anne particularly, her backstory, but certainly Matthew and Marilla too. But also, how do I want this series to grow? How do I want to expand the world? How do I want to foster conversation in families who are watching? So, it’s always been part of the master plan to expand the story and expand the world.

It must have been really great to get the Season 1 feedback, first from the fans watching on CBC and then the Netflix fans telling you how much they love these characters and your version of it.
MWB: It’s been really exciting to see how excited fans around the world are by this beloved Canadian story and how embracing they’ve been of the departures that I’ve taken from the book, which are, as you know, enormous departures. Basically, by the end of the first episode of the first season, we were off [the book]. I was like, ‘We’re doing this instead,’ and purposefully doing so, because it’s a beautiful template, but for me to have wanted to engage with it and develop it, I wanted it to be more, and deeper, and expansive.

The writer’s room for Season 2, what was dynamic? The female to male ratio, the veterans to new people? 
MWB: Interesting question. Well, I’ll just start by saying I didn’t have a writer’s room for season one, and I wrote every episode myself. I mean, I’m such a control freak. I so loved that experience, but I had the luxury of time to do it that way, and I didn’t have that for Season 2. When I imagined how I wanted to undertake Season 2, I decided to have an all female writer’s room for the show. So, I hired five Canadian writers and one U.S. non-writing writer to break story with me in the room. It was an extremely invigorating experience, and intimate, and safe, and I think corrective for some of the female writers. It’s a diverse room, which was also super important because it’s … why limit? I want all the voices. I want different perspectives. It was a great crucible.

What can fans expect from this second season? You’ve already said big. We’re going to have diversity in the cast, going to places that the books have never gone before. What else can you say?
MWB: I guess I can say it’s a challenging season. I’m exploring some topics and themes that are very challenging, and very topical, and very relevant right now. We’re diving deep into bullying, and prejudice, and racism, and intolerance, and gender issues, and sexuality. It’s a major, major season, and it’s 10 episodes.

How is Matthew doing?
MWB: Matthew’s doing OK.

Because that’s got to happen. Well, I guess it doesn’t.
MWB: This is the thing, I’m an unreliable narrator of the book.

Anne with an E airs Sundays at 7 p.m. on CBC.

Images courtesy of CBC.

Facebooktwitterredditlinkedinmail

Link: After 110 years, Avonlea has its first Black resident

From Tony Wong of the Toronto Star:

Link: After 110 years, Avonlea has its first Black resident
“It puts a huge smile on my face and I’m absolutely honoured to see a role like this, where there is more and more inclusion and possibility for actors of different ethnicities,” says Abuzeid in an interview. “This story is such a part of Canadian culture and to be a part of that is something I can’t even begin to understand.” Continue reading.

Facebooktwitterredditlinkedinmail

TV Eh B Cs podcast 82 — Degrassi, Shoot the Messenger and basketball conspiracies with Dalmar Abuzeid

Dalmar Abuzeid was most recently seen in CBC’s comedy Crawford (after an initial run online, Crawford debuts Thursday, June 14, at 9 p.m. on CBC) and will appear as a series regular this July in the new season of Netflix’s Anne with an E (Season 2 returns in September on CBC), an award-winning series produced by Northwood Entertainment. Other recent credits include guest arcs on DirecTV’s Condor and CBC’s Shoot the Messenger.

Best known for his role as Danny Van Zandt in six seasons of the acclaimed series Degrassi: The Next Generation, Dalmar’s screen roles extend beyond television. Feature credits include the role of Felix in the film Pompeii, opposite Emily Browning, and he just wrapped hockey biopic Goalie, shot in Sudbury, ON.

Born in Toronto, Dalmar is a Meisner-trained actor and still regularly attends acting classes in spite of his theatrical accomplishments.

With a keen interest in all genres and platforms of entertainment, Dalmar also produces and writes comedy, fantasy and parody shorts for YouTube. Together with his former Degrassi castmates, Raymond Ablack, Scott Paterson, Shane Kippel, and Michael Aube, Dalmar is working on writing and producing the first season of the original sketch comedy series, O’Brother, set to release in summer 2018.

Season 1 of Crawford debuts Thursday at 9 p.m. on CBC.

Listen or download below, or subscribe via iTunes or any other podcast catcher with the TV, eh? podcast feed.

Want to support TV, eh?’s work? Become a Patreon!

Facebooktwitterredditlinkedinmail