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.
Welcome back to another bi-weekly chat about the latest news in Canadian TV! First, Greg and Amy go through debuts and returns on the Canadian TV calendar.
Then, we cover the latest Canadian TV news, which includesthe cancellation of CBC’s Pretty Hard Cases, Shelved to debut on CTV, Corus wants more Pamela Anderson, and another season of Shoresy on Crave.
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.
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.
