Link: CBC’s This Life kicks off its second season
CBC’s This Life won over so many fans with its intuitive tale of a 40-something single mother juggling a cancer diagnosis with family drama, it even turned trenchant TV critics into believers.
But with a highly-anticipated second season kicking off Sunday, the sophomore jinx is staring down the show’s star. Continue reading.
This Life is often compared to Parenthood. It’s an apt association, as both shows blend melancholy and humour in a similarly touching fashion. But it’s also fitting because This Life, which is an adaptation of popular Radio-Canada series Nouvelle adresse, has faced the same uphill battle for ratings that Parenthood and other superb family dramas like Friday Night Nights always seem to face in a crowded TV landscape. It wasn’t a given that CBC would bring the Lawson family back for a second season, but, thankfully, it did.
Hopefully, more viewers will give this gem a chance in Season 2. Based on the first few screeners, we can promise it’s worth your time. Here are a few non-spoilery details about This Life‘s second season premiere, “Stay Positive,” written by showrunner Joseph Kay.
Natalie embraces hope
While the Season 1 premiere began with Natalie receiving devastating news, Season 2 begins in a much more hopeful place as Natalie undergoes a drug trial that could buy her time. But is she receiving the real drug or a placebo?
Can David be trusted?
Natalie’s wayward ex-husband, David, showed up on her doorstep at the end of Season 1, asking to resume his fatherly duties. Expect the tensions between the former couple to immediately escalate as David’s motives remain unclear.
School’s out for the summer
The Lawson kids are on summer break and each of them is dealing with their mother’s illness in very different ways. Look for Caleb to explore his freedom, Emma to ponder her employment options and Romy to make surprising plans for her future.
Matthew and Nicole and Maggie … and Natalie
Maggie told Nicole about Matthew’s affair and son last season, resulting in a broken marriage and a brother-sister blowout. All three parties are still dealing with the fallout as Season 2 begins, and the situation could bleed over into Natalie’s looming custody battle with David.
The ensemble cast is top notch
Beginning with the sublime Torri Higginson and continuing with Rick Roberts, Lauren Lee Smith, Kristopher Turner and throughout, This Life features an immensely likeable cast you look forward to spending time with each week.
One of the primary reasons to rejoice in this Sunday’s return of CBC’s excellent family drama This Life is the beautifully nuanced work by series lead Torri Higginson. As terminally ill Natalie Lawson, the Burlington, Ont., native deftly shuffles through angst, defiance, hope and humour each week as her character faces the unknown. Her talents are put to great use in the show’s Season 2 premiere, “Stay Positive,” as Natalie takes part in a cancer drug trial that could extend her life and confronts her deadbeat ex-husband David (Louis Ferreira) about the custody of their kids.
During a phone interview from Montreal—where This Life had just wrapped production for the year—Higginson told us about Natalie’s Season 2 journey, the emotional toll of playing a dying character and her roles on Dark Matter and Inhuman Condition.
When we last saw Natalie in Season 1, she had chosen to take part in a clinical trial for an experimental drug treatment. How are things going for her at the beginning of Season 2?
Torri Higginson: We end Season 1 with her choosing to take part in a drug trial, which is interesting because when you’re part of a drug trial you don’t know if you’re getting the placebo or the drug. So we start the second season with her taking this drug not knowing but believing it’s doing her good. She chooses to actively be positive.
I think nowadays, especially with Google, once you’re given any diagnosis, you go online and you look at everything. I think she’s probably done a lot of reading. I think she’s been reading, going, ‘What can I do? What control do I have? I have no control over my body. The Western doctors, they are taking control of that, so the only thing I can control is my attitude. It’s the only thing I have control over.’ So we see her at the beginning of Season 2 really trying to embrace that fully and go, ‘OK, I will put all my energy into hope and into positivity and into fighting this with love as much as I can.’
Natalie’s ex-husband David showed up at the end of last season, and he will be a major presence in Season 2. How does Natalie deal with that?
I refer to him as the baby daddy, not the ex-husband. Because he hasn’t been there, he disappeared. And I love [showrunner] Joseph [Kay] so much, I love his writing so much, and bless him because he’s put up with me a lot. I would go up to him and say, ‘Ahhh! I don’t even want [David] in the show because he doesn’t deserve it. How can you leave your kids?’ I was so angry at [the character].
But I think for Natalie what’s interesting is that we don’t see her ever angry about her diagnosis. We see her scared, we see her hopeful, we see her sad, but we don’t see her angry. I think David is this great thing for her to use to express her anger over her cancer. She’s legitimately angry at him for choosing to come back now in this way, and yet she’s really got to juggle with, ‘Well, is my anger beneficial for the kids? What is the best thing for the kids?’ And that’s a journey she’s got to go on. You know, ‘If I’m not here, what is the best thing for them?’ But I think there is almost a therapeutic thing about allowing her anger to have a place to live and a place to land. And it’s him, which I think is completely justified.
Natalie’s relationship to her children is central to the show, and James Wotherspoon (Caleb), Stephanie Janusauskas (Emma) and Julia Scarlett Dan (Romy) give wonderful, believable performances. Tell me about working with them.
The actors are remarkable. Those kids, all three of them are superb actors. They amaze me. Stephanie and Julia, I have more scenes with them than I do James. And also because there’s that mother-daughter thing. It’s very easy. I feel a very deep relationship, especially with Julia. She’s the youngest, so she’s the one that Natalie is the most worried about. And Julia has this openness. She’s just this very grounded but very open, beautiful young woman, and she’s just like 12 years old. And she comes across as this wise sage who’s so honest. She’s very much like Romy in a lot of ways, I find. Very easy to connect with. I miss them when we’re not filming.
Julia Scarlett Dan, Torri Higginson and Stephanie Janusauskas in This Life Episode 201, “Stay Positive.”
You have said that filming Season 1 was emotionally draining for you as an actor. Was shooting Season 2 just as difficult for you?
I actually had a similar curve in both Season 1 and Season 2. In the beginning of it, it’s a gift to be given a job that lets you meditate on mortality, and it gives you a closer relationship to gratitude. Because when you’re not filming and when you’re feeling tired, you just have to think, ‘Oh, my God, I could have cancer and I don’t. Oh, my God, I’m so grateful for everything I have.’ And that happened to me last season too. In the first block or two, I constantly felt gratitude and grace and lucky, and then by the end of the season—as you are having to act that every day and sit every day with that rushing through you—as a human you get tired.
By the end of the season, my skin gets very thin and I start having the same panics about ‘What is my life about?’ and ‘Have I done enough?’ and ‘What if I did die tomorrow?’ and ‘How have I justified taking up this space in my life?’ So, it gets it bit overwhelming.
I’m pretty shattered right now, I’ve gotta say. But, again, grateful. I feel [Natalie] has taught me so much over the last year. I get teary-eyed thinking about the end of the show, and this, as all things, will come to an end. For her, this character is going to come to an end in a different way than most shows. And I’m already very nostalgic about that.
This Life is shot in Montreal with a francophone crew, and you’ve been trying to learn French. How’s that going?
Well, I still feel embarrassingly bad at it, but the crew is very kind and very supportive, and they told me, ‘Oh, your French is so much better! Even from the beginning of this season. It’s so good.’ But I think they’re all just very, very kind and encouraging. [Laughs.] It’s not near as strong as I would like it to be.
I love when I have a day off and I’m able to just sort of walk the city. When there’s no one around me that I know, I’m much braver to try my French.
You also have a recurring role on Dark Matter. Was Commander Truffault supposed to have such a long arc?
No. They were actually going to kill her off. They asked me to do three episodes, and I said sure. We were shooting the second episode of the first season, and [showrunner] Joseph [Mallozzi] came and said, ‘Oh, you’re not going to be in the next episode because everyone in that episode is dying, and we decided not to kill you off.’ So I thought that’s kind of bittersweet. It’s a drag I’m not working next week, but yay, I’m not working next week because I’m staying alive. So it was a nice surprise because I’ve been killed off so many shows at this point in my career, I never expect anything past the day I’ve been hired for. It was lovely to be included as part of their season finale for the second season.
Truffault must be a nice change of pace for you.
She’s a fun character, I really like her. And I rarely get those kinds of characters. I usually get very big-hearted, good people. So it’s nice to play someone who’s sort of very mechanical and conniving and self-serving.
Things were looking pretty dire for Truffault and the Raza crew in the finale. Do you know if you’ll be back for Season 3?
I have no idea. For all I know, we blew up. [Laughs.]
You’re also in the web series InHuman Condition, which is a unique project. What was it like to film that?
We shot 35 episodes in five days. We shot six episodes a day. I was shooting about 40 pages of dialogue a day. I think I had a slight brain aneurysm during that process. I would sort of end every day in a fetal position, saying, ‘No more words, no more words.’ And I was amazed, when I saw what they did. Everyone was doing it for love, there was no money involved. The production looked better than I’ve seen a lot of stuff that had a really big budget.
Will there be a Season 2?
I know we all hope so. But we don’t know yet. Nobody ever knows anything until the camera’s rolling. Our gypsy lifestyle.
This Life‘s tagline on transit ads and billboards states “Every family has drama.” But in the case of CBC’s new Monday night drama, “Every family has secrets” would be just as apt.
After all, almost every major character was holding something back from their loved ones, from Matthew and his second phone to Ariel’s pregnancy, what happened to Oliver’s partner, Tom, and—of course—Natalie keeping her cancer diagnosis from the kids. (Caleb already knows, but Nat doesn’t know he knows.)
“My cancer’s back.” Those three words from Natalie on Monday brought a screeching halt to the bickering between Emma and Romy. Those words also send This Life into another direction; where do we go from here? If Natalie listens to Dee’s cellular reprogrammer, Sybil, who challenged her to stop trying to solve the kids’ problems and worry about herself, that would include embracing the days Natalie has left and being happy.
This Life may, at its core, be about a woman dealing with cancer, but everyone else has issues of their own and many of the aforementioned secrets came to light on Monday. Oliver, after a drug relapse, admitted to Matthew that Tom had passed away of an aneurism. Ariel told Caleb she was pregnant, and now the 19-year-olds need to weigh their parenting options. Emma wanted to go on the pill and turned to Maggie, of course, for help in that department. The only secret I can still see as being unresolved is why Matthew has a second cell phone and who he’s calling on it.
Meanwhile, the most intriguing character five episodes in is Romy. What I first dismissed as a rambunctious kid rebelling against the world because she’s smarter beyond her years has really drawn me in lately. Her questioning of faith and the levels of Hell is interesting (I did a lot of that when I was her age.), and the back and forth between she and the psychologist is fascinating to watch. I’m looking forward to seeing how she reacts to Natalie’s announcement in the coming weeks.
Don’t tell This Life‘s producers, but Torri Higginson would have worked on the show for free. The Burlington, Ont., born actress loved the humanity of Natalie Lawson, a single mom who discovers the cancer she beat has returned to take her life, so much she would have bypassed a cheque to participate.
Adapted  from Radio Canada’s Nouvelle Adresse by Joseph Kay (Bomb Girls), This Life—debuting Monday at 9 p.m. on CBC—not only deals with how the dire prognosis affects Natalie, but her family too. Sister Maggie (Lauren Lee Smith) and brothers Oliver (Kristopher Turner) and Matthew (Rick Roberts) all struggle to cope, as do Natalie’s children Emma (Stephanie Janusauskas), Caleb (James Wotherspoon) and Romy (Julia Scarlett Dan).
Far from being a pity party, This Life boasts many light-hearted and laugh out loud moments, something we discussed with Higginson days before Monday’s debut.
Had you seen Nouvelle Adresse before or after you were cast as Natalie Lawson?
Torri Higginson: I was actually down in the States when I did the audition and immediately went online to get a sense of the tone. But, because I was out of the country, I was geo-blocked. I watched a two-minute trailer, and it was in French and I don’t speak French very well. I was moved to tears and loved the tone of it. If I don’t understand a language I’ll often watch something with the sound turned off so that I get to read the body language and see the acting more clearly, and I was blown away. I did the audition and was cast and I’m really glad I didn’t watch it because it’s very hard to separate and not be intimidated or second-guessing your instincts.
And, also, we’re doing a very different show. Joseph has been working very closely with Richard Blaimert, who created the original, and has been anglicizing it. I really look forward to watching their show, but I’m going to have to wait until we’re done ours.
I love the humanity of it. We don’t talk about death in our culture enough and I think it’s tragic that we don’t.
You said you were down in the U.S. at the time of your audition. What was it about this role and show that grabbed your attention I have two answers to that, and my first, more artistic one is this. I loved the writing. I love the humanity of it. We don’t talk about death in our culture enough and I think it’s tragic that we don’t. Most religions, in their purest forms, were created to help us live in the moment but they haven’t. They make us live in fear. Until you truly accept the finiteness of life, it really is when you start living and really being in the present and understanding gratitude on a deep level. I read this script and thought, ‘How fabulous that we’re going to do a show that opens up that dialogue,’ and I hope that it does.
And the less artistic side is, we never make choices! [Laughs.] You’re offered something and you say, ‘Yes, thank you, I’ll take it!’ A lot of times you take things because you’re insecure about work and this year every single job this year—and this being the pinnacle—I would have done for free. Don’t tell the producers! [Laughs.]
This Life could have gone the pity party route but I’m not getting the sense from the first several episodes that it will. There is a surprising light-heartedness and humour. Does that continue?
Yes, it does and I’m glad you got that. I think some people are frightened about the subject because we don’t want to talk about it. Natalie is holding onto normal and wants that to last for as long as possible. And you want to laugh. You have to have that light and dark. The writing is wonderful and that’s because of Joseph and Rachel Langer. It’s funny and it’s human and we’re hoping that comes across.
You have a lot of moments when you’re by yourself as Natalie, absorbing what her doctor has told her. Was it hard to get into that headspace without people to play off of?
I did a one-woman play once and vowed I’d never do it again because I love to interact with people, having that energy. I find what she’s going through touches me very deeply. What’s hard isn’t accessing it. What’s hard it letting it go when you’re not there.
It seems as though Natalie is the rock among her siblings. Is that true?
I think so, yeah. Everybody ends up having a lot of plates spinning and some of that is upon hearing that someone they love is going to die. Some of them are a result of life choices they’ve made. I didn’t realize until about three episodes in that this is a soap opera and everybody has got these crazy story arcs. But yeah, she does seem to be the most grounded of the bunch.
Natalie’s kids have a lot going on as well; now we add Mom’s cancer has returned to the mix.
I love how they cast the kids. I think all three are wonderful. They way they have written Romy is the most honest of all the characters on the show. She is so wonderful and grounded … the character is 13 but the actress, Julia Scarlett Dan, is only 11. This girl is so present and so beautiful. Stephanie Janusauskas is a wonderful young actress from Montreal who is very strong, and Emma is going through a ton as well. And then Caleb, who is played by James Wotherspoon, is sort of new to acting. Caleb is sort of the man of the house and I think there is a weight to him that he expresses very wonderfully.
How much time passes within these 10 episodes?
Only about a month. I said to Joseph, ‘Keep that up and we can go 12 seasons!’ That would be awesome.
