Tag Archives: Kari Matchett

Fortunate Son’s Kari Matchett: “This part is perfect for me. I can’t even imagine a better part for me.”

How would the stresses of breaking the law—no matter how well-intentioned—affect a marriage and a family? That’s explored in Fortunate Son, CBC’s Wednesday night miniseries.

Created and written by Andrew Wreggitt, Fortunate Son stars Kari Matchett as Ruby Howard, an American activist in Canada who isn’t merely happy with vocally protesting the Vietnam War; she does something about it. That includes helping smuggle American soldier Travis Hunter (Darren Mann) over the border into Canada. And though her husband, Ted (Rick Roberts), supports his wife, increased scrutiny on the family hints something has got to give.

We spoke to Kari Matchett about Ruby, getting into character and signing on to Fortunate Son.

I was speaking to Andrew Wreggitt and I asked him about the casting of you and he said that as soon as he saw you audition, he knew that you were the perfect person for this role. What’s your reaction to that?
Kari Matchett: That’s great. I didn’t know that. He didn’t tell me that. Wow. Well you know, my initial reaction through reading the character description was, ‘I must play this part. This part is f–king perfect for me. I can’t even imagine a better part for me.’ It encapsulated so much of what I’m interested in. The late 60s … I’ve always, since my teens, been obsessed with that era. I also love what was happening at the time politically. The social unrest, the issues with inequality of the sexes, of the races. All of those things are still happening now.

And it, I felt, was the perfect time to do a show about this. And I also thought, ‘I can’t believe nobody’s ever done a show about this time, this era before.’

I knew nothing about the sheer number of Americans that were coming over the border during this time to avoid the Vietnam War. This was all new to me.
KM: In 1968 after [Pierre] Trudeau became prime minister, he instructed the border guards—which doesn’t mean they did this, but he instructed them—to not ask draft-age men, whatever in the way you want to look at them, not ask them anything about it. Trudeau stood up against what was going on in Vietnam. When you see American governance, he was anti-Vietnam. So it’s a really proud moment in Canadian history as well.

I was talking to an older friend of mine the other day and I said, ‘Look, was it the political arena that was less heated, but in terms of was it easier? Would it have been easier for Trudeau at that time to do that then, let’s say now?’ And he said, ‘No way.’ Which is why we love Pierre Trudeau. It is a real proud time in Canadian history, that Canada did that.

Getting into the characters a bit, I love the interaction that Ruby has with Travis. I just loved his performance and the scenes that the two of you had together are just fantastic. 
KM: I loved working with him. In fact, I think Darren and I are very similar in that we’re actually quite serious and so we gave each other a lot of space and oxygen, but we also when we’re not shooting, we have a great time together. So it’s sort of serious on the set, plus it is really serious stuff, and he was going through serious stuff. Ruby’s going through serious stuff. We’re both quite quiet when we’re working and we both do our own thing and then when we’re not working we sort of have an amazing time. He’s a lovely guy. I just love him.

How did the wardrobe and hair help you get into Ruby’s headspace?
KM: Every character that I’ve done, whether or not it’s a period piece, the clothing is a major part of the character. It took us a long time with the wardrobe to find the right things that worked for Ruby. Ruby is in her mid-40s so, I mean she was born in about 1922 so it’s not like Ralph and Destiny where I was just like, ‘Let’s throw on a long skirt and big hoop earrings and let’s go do the hippie thing.’ I would’ve loved that, except that that just wasn’t the case. Women were not allowed to wear pants in institutions.

Ruby hasn’t been working in an institution for two years, but she’s still a woman who was born in 1922 and she’s a firebrand and a political activist and she’s her own woman. So who is she? The coming together of all of those worlds, how does that work in terms of what she wears? So, just naturally from having worked in Princeton, she would have had a lot of skirts in her closet that she would still wear, because she grew up wearing skirts, she’s comfortable in skirts. She wore skirts, you know, but also has to wear pants. It’s a political thing. And I’m going to wear pants because I can wear pants. But it was still relatively new for women to do that at that time.

And then deciding to wear a pair of boots because it rains a lot and she lived in a country that’s being muddy. So putting all of those things together. When we finally got to her skirts with her boots and she put her hair up because she’s working in the scarf. Then suddenly it was like, ‘Here she is.’ She appeared, but it was a lot of elements to put together to make that happen. It didn’t fall off the truck that way.

As the first two episodes unfold, there is this relationship with her husband, played by Rick Roberts. He’s into the smuggling and helping. But to a point, he’s still got to keep that front up and is urging her to keep that front up as well. It’s fascinating to see this relationship become very at odds because of this kid that she’s helping out.
KM: It’s a complicated relationship, and I mean we find out later that Rick’s character is actually sort of the original activist, but then he sort of pulled back and things changed. And, as marriages do and people evolve in different ways. He became a little calmer and a little mellower and didn’t want to be so on the front lines of the activist world. How does a marriage survive that? How do you parent together? How do kids fare in that world? And Andrew, he’s such a brilliant writer, he wrote these complicated characters in situations that were just rich.

Fortunate Son airs Wednesdays at 9 p.m. on CBC.

Images courtesy of CBC.

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CBC’s Fortunate Son recalls a history that fits in the present

Being born in 1971, I didn’t know much about the Vietnam War. I learned about it through music and the movies, from First Blood to Platoon, Apocalypse Now to The Deer Hunter and countless others. But all of those films dealt largely with the U.S. angle. It turns out Canada had a role in that conflict as well.

I learned about it through Fortunate Son. Bowing on Wednesday at 9 p.m. on CBC, the eight-part drama is based on the life of Tom Cox, a Canadian TV producer most recently known for his work on Heartland and Wynonna Earp.

Created and written by Andrew Wreggitt, Fortunate Son stars Kari Matchett as Ruby Howard, an American activist in Canada who isn’t merely happy with vocally protesting the Vietnam War; she does something about it. Also starring Stephen Moyer, Darren Mann, Rick Roberts, Patrick Gallagher, Ty Olsson and Kacey Rohl, Fortunate Son is as much a history lesson as it is an examination into what the world is going through today.

We spoke to writer, showrunner and executive producer Andrew Wreggitt about the project.

When Fortunate Son was first announced, the thing that jumped out at me was Tom Cox’s name because it’s based on his life. Did you know Tom before you were attached to this? 
Andrew Wreggitt: Tom and I have been colleagues for, oh, I want to say 30 years. I actually first met Tom in Calgary. We happened to be neighbours and I didn’t have any idea he was in the same business as me. We were neighbours and we got to be friends and he and I worked together on North of 60 and so we go back a long way together.

I always knew Tom’s background and he had this very interesting family and Seven24 got in touch and said that they were interested in developing a show that had to do with Tom’s background. Tom grew up in a household where his mother was an activist and she brought up the kids to make protest signs and be out there every Saturday morning protesting something or other. And they were involved in bringing draft dodgers and deserters across and helping them settle in Canada.

They were definitely a kind of a halfway house and so they were involved in that and that’s kind of how Tom grew up, in this household where they were being watched by the police and they were very active in many causes. I’ve always loved that era and that story and so we kind of took it from there and developed the idea of this show around that idea.

I can’t believe that it’s taken this long to be made.
AW: Ten years ago I don’t think you could have made this show, the way the television industry was. People were looking at different things. A period piece would have been extremely difficult to make. So in a way, it’s a story that it really required the times to be the way they are for it to, for one thing, to resonate the way it does with what’s actually going on in the world.

Some of the things that are happening politically in the world are starting to feel pretty darn familiar to things that were happening 50 years ago.

I knew virtually nothing about draft dodgers being smuggled into Canada and the danger involved.
AW: Yeah, it was a big deal. You know, the anti-war movement in the U.S. was a huge, huge political deal and there were over 30,000 draft dodgers, which is incredible when you think of it across the country. I remember in university there were … I had a teacher in high school who was a draft dodger.

There were university professors who came up. There were people that brought a whole perspective to Canada in a lot of different ways who wouldn’t have been in Canada under any other circumstances. So yeah, it was a big cultural shift in the U.S. and it had a big impact on Canada.

How much is Tom’s story and how much has been adapted? Are there characters that are a combination of people in this time period? 
AW: Well, yeah, for sure. Tom’s actual family was a bit of a jumping-off point, so I kind of made up a lot of the people around it, but it was based on, they were composites of course of what was really going on at the time. The Catholic church was obviously very involved in the U.S. in the anti-war movement and so we had our church and our priest was very, very involved in the community. It was pretty common that people came through the churches and they were very involved in as they are now bringing refugees from Syria, for example.

Did Kari Matchett audition for the role? She’s the perfect fit to be playing Ruby.
AW: She really is. When we first saw her audition, we were just blown away. She was just Ruby. She totally embodied that role and so for me, as soon as I saw her, I felt like, ‘Yeah, this was Ruby.’ And you can feel her, she’s a mom, she’s committed politically, she’s trying to hold all these things together and it’s not easy. It’s hard to be politically committed and doing stuff, especially as a woman in 1968 there were expectations of you that she certainly didn’t fit.

The music of this time period is great and really helps with the storytelling. How did you decide what songs you were going to use? I imagine maybe licensing had something to do with your choices.
AW: We knew music was going to be a big, big part of the show. You can’t say the 1960s without music coming up, so we knew that from the beginning and luckily we had a reasonable budget to bring to the table so we were able to license some songs and get some stuff. I have to admit, as I’m writing, I’m looking at these scenes thinking, ‘Oh, wouldn’t it be amazing if we could have Magic Carpet Ride. Wouldn’t it be amazing if we could have In A Gadda Da Vida’ … and of course you can’t have everything you want because there are certain limitations on music and what we can afford and can’t afford and so on. But I’m absolutely over the moon about some of the songs that we’ve gotten for the show throughout.

What type of writer are you? Are you the type that needs to shut yourself in a room? Can you do writing in a coffee shop with a cacophony of noise around you? How does it work for you?
AW: I can write just about anywhere. I made a 1968 playlist and I’ve played it a thousand times and I’ve got lots of Jimmy Hendrix, lots of my favourite tunes and so I’ll put that on and blast it away and start working, so I’m totally cool writing to music. I’m totally cool with writing in a coffee shop or. I’ve even driven across the country, my wife driving and she’ll put on a radio mystery station or something. And I’ll get in the back with my headphones on and I’ll write in the back of the car, so I’ll write anywhere.

Fortunate Son airs Wednesdays at 9 p.m. on CBC.

Images courtesy of CBC.

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Casting announced as CBC original series Fortunate Son begins production

From a media release:

With production now underway in Calgary, SEVEN24 Films and Lark Productions today revealed casting for new CBC original drama FORTUNATE SON, set to premiere in winter 2020 on CBC and the free CBC Gem streaming service. NBCUniversal has international distribution rights. Inspired by a true story and created by showrunner Andrew Wreggitt (Pure, Borealis), FORTUNATE SON is a spy drama set in the social and political chaos of the late 1960s.

Kari Matchett (Covert Affairs, 2 Hearts) plays Ruby Howard, an American who fled to Canada as a fugitive from the law. Set in the chaos of the late 1960s, the Vietnam War and the anti-war protest movement, Ruby helps smuggle Vietnam War deserters and draft dodgers across the Canadian border. What she doesn’t know is how these actions will unfold and who is watching her. Rising star Darren Mann plays Travis Hunter, a Vietnam war deserter whose troubled past follows him into Canada and the lives of the Howard family. Mann is known for the Chilling Adventures of Sabrina series and the critically acclaimed film Giant Little Ones. Stephen Moyer stars as Vern Lang, a CIA agent. Moyer is well-known for his roles in True Blood and most recently, The Gifted. Additional lead cast includes Kacey Rohl (Arrow, Hannibal), Rick Roberts (This Life, Designated Survivor), Patrick Gallagher (Night at the Museum, Glee), Ty Olsson (War for the Planet of the Apes, Supernatural), Alex Nachi (1991, Clash) and Zoé de Grand’Maison (Riverdale, Orphan Black).

FORTUNATE SON is filming in Calgary and the surrounding areas including Drumheller, Tsuu T’ina First Nation Reserve, and High River in Alberta, Canada.

Executive Producers are Andrew Wreggitt, Tom Cox, Jordy Randall and Erin Haskett. The series is produced by Brian Dennis. Stefan Schwartz is Co-Executive Producer, while Jessalyn Dennis is a Consulting Producer. Stefan Schwartz (The Americans, Dexter) and Ken Girotti (Vikings, Orphan Black) are the show’s directors.

A CBC original series, FORTUNATE SON is produced by SEVEN24 Films and Lark Productions in association with CBC and NBCUniversal International Studios with the financial participation of the Canada Media Fund, Government of Alberta – Alberta Media Fund, the Canadian Film or Video Production Tax Credit, the Ontario Film and Television Tax Credit and the British Columbia Production Services Credit. For CBC, Sally Catto is General Manager, Programming; Trish Williams is Executive Director, Scripted Content; Helen Asimakis is Senior Director, Scripted Content; and Deborah Nathan is Executive in Charge of Production.

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