All posts by Greg David

Prior to becoming a television critic and owner of TV, Eh?, Greg David was a critic for TV Guide Canada, the country's most trusted source for TV news. He has interviewed television actors, actresses and behind-the-scenes folks from hundreds of television series from Canada, the U.S. and internationally. He is a podcaster, public speaker, weekly radio guest and educator, and past member of the Television Critics Association.
Burden of Truth, Featured

Burden of Truth: Kristin Kreuk reflects on her past and looks to the future

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Kristin Kreuk has, literally, grown up on television. The Vancouver native, who landed roles on both the Canadian teen drama Edgemont and The WB/The CW superhero series Smallville in 2001, has seen steady work since.

Her current role? Playing Joanna Hanley on CBC’s Burden of Truth, where she also serves as an executive producer. With Season 3 of the CBC legal drama in production for a winter return, we sat down with Kreuk during the Banff World Media Festival, where she received the Canadian Award of Distinction.

How do you view it when it comes to women being represented either in front of the screen or behind the scenes? Obviously, there’s an issue. Do you feel as though it’s getting better?
Kristin Kreuk: Absolutely. Are we there yet? No. We’re not. I’ve said this many times, but prior to, I think I’ve worked with two female directors on my seven and a bit years on Smallville. Maybe one more than that. So going from that to, I worked with a few more on Beauty and the Beast, and with Burden, we don’t get a lot of directors but for our first two seasons it was like 50:50. Now it’s not, but a part of the reason why it’s not is that so many women are hired across the board until mid-2020. So that’s great. It just means that there are spaces now for the young ones to come up and fill that void. And they need to be supported to do that. And given the chances.

But yeah, I think that it is changing. And in Canada, I feel like we may be a little further ahead and I don’t know for 100 per cent because I haven’t worked in the States for a while, but from what I hear anecdotally you can still end up in a writers’ room in the U.S. and it isn’t even close to par. It’s very much weighted towards male voices. So I know that they’re working on it too.

It feels as though, to me, this has been a natural evolution for you, to move towards being an executive producer. Has it been a conscious decision?
KK: It was a conscious decision for me. I was just joking with these guys. I have been saying for years that I’m done with acting. I want to produce. And I’m moving in that direction. And so it was a decision I made because A, some of this is very practical. I have no other skill sets. I’ve been doing this since I was 17 years old. I understand, I’m going into my 19th season as lead on a television series, which is so insane to me. So I have all this experience with storytelling and I’ve seen how you start a story and I can kind of imagine where it’s going to go and how it might fail or what might happen to it. So all of that lends itself to moving into a more creative producing role.

A woman looks off into the distance.It’s still hard for me to make the transition. I think that it will be a process over time to the point where I can take on a show more on my own and not have other producers that I need. I will always have people, I think because I’m not a money person and just it’s not my skill set yet. Maybe it will be one day. As of now, I don’t feel like I have the entire skillset required to do the job, but I think that I’m getting closer and closer.

Directing? Does that interest you at all?
KK: You know what, it doesn’t. And I wish it freaking did. I wish that’s what I wanted to do. I think I’m a visual person. I think I’m just uncomfortable handling a set. I think that it’s a very specific environment that I just don’t… And it’s not even out of fear. I just don’t want to do that. I don’t think. I mean, never say never, I suppose. But I have friends who are like, ‘Yeah, I want to direct,’ and they’re former actors who are moving into other fields. Women especially want to move out of acting because as you get older, sadly, you sort of age out a little. Which we can also change when we’re in positions of power. But yeah, I wish, I wish, wish. Directing, I wish, directing.

It was interesting watching those Season 1 and Season 2 clips again this morning because, specifically the Season 2 clips that I made note of, where the camera was in tight. I feel like that’s different from season one.
KK: It’s new. We made a conscious decision to change the look of the show between Season 1 and Season 2. And then Thom Best, who was our Season 2 director of photography, and director Grant Harvey got together and kind of pitched a whole look. And they were like, ‘We want to get more intimate close-ups of the characters,’ which we had certainly not done and I’m always like, ‘Blah, I don’t want to be that close.’ But it really was effective. Really effective.

Not only that, they shift compositionally. So they changed the compositional palette of the show and the colour palette, too. The whole thing is a little more cinematic versus season one, which was also beautiful, but much more like small-town and warm and glowy and I think that the shift was really great for the story that we were telling for season two.

You mentioned Edgemont so I have to ask you about that. It’s on Encore+. Have you gone and looked at any old episodes?
KK: God, no. I can’t do it.

Isn’t that incredible that this show that you made is now available on YouTube for people to stream any time they want?
KK: It is so bizarre to me that Edgemont was and continues to be popular. It was so popular. Not just in Canada. In France, it was massively popular. I would get recognized for Edgemont in France. So funny. And I was on Smallville simultaneously. I did both those jobs at the same time. And I think that it’s great. It’s such a fun small little show and we did five seasons of that show. And it was great. I loved it. I mean, I hated it at first because I had no idea what I was doing and I felt so uncomfortable, but I grew to love it.

A woman, looking angry, talks to a man.What would you have told your younger self?
KK: I would’ve told myself to take classes. I would’ve told myself to make an effort to develop a deep relationship with acting because I didn’t have one and I didn’t understand it. I had only done theatre. So when I started acting, I didn’t know how to be smaller. And then when I did smaller, I lost all of my feelings. And so it was this weird thing and instead of just going like, ‘I’m uncomfortable and I don’t know what I’m doing. I’m just going to go and work really, really, really hard.’ I got scared. And I was like, ‘I’m not doing this any more.’ And it turned out that I just kept doing it and I never really gave myself the time to develop a craft. And I did it all on set. Which is fine, I guess, in the end, but it put me through a lot of discomfort of being like, ‘God, I suck, I suck, I suck, I suck, I suck.’

There are just so many things I would’ve told myself. Also, ‘Don’t stress so much,’ is great too. I think the big lesson, too, is getting over the hump of caring too deeply about what people think of you in a negative sense, because when we started on Smallville, there were no social media. Thank God. But there were forums on the Internet and, I forget, there’s actually a technical term for it, but when you’re drawn to reading the worst things you can about yourself.

It was just something that I was compelled to do. It was almost like I was trying to numb myself to this thing. But why did I care what these people thought? If they thought my eyes were too far apart or they thought that I looked too young or they thought whatever. Or that I was this or that. I’m like, ‘Why was I obsessed over this?’

Season 3 of Burden of Truth returns in winter 2020 to CBC.

Feature image courtesy of Kristian Bogner. Other images courtesy of CBC.

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Private Eyes

Link: Jason Priestley leaves it on the dance floor for Private Eyes

From Debra Yeo of the Toronto Star:

Link: Jason Priestley leaves it on the dance floor for Private Eyes
When you think of Jason Priestley, the first word that comes to mind isn’t “dancer.”

The Vancouver-born actor studied dance in theatre school back in the mid-1980s “and that’s probably as far as that goes,” he says. But he had to put that training to use earlier this year for an episode of his Global TV series Private Eyes. Continue reading.

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Featured, Workin' Moms

Workin’ Moms: Juno Rinaldi recalls going from shining shoes to a dream role

I’ve spoken to many Canadian actors who augment their incomes—and fill hours between gigs—by waiting tables in a restaurant. Why not? With flexible hours, it makes total sense. But shining shoes? That was a new one for me.

That’s what Juno Rinaldi was doing when she landed the role of Frankie Coyne on Workin’ Moms. The Vancouver native was trying to make connections in Toronto with casting agents—and having zero luck—and was working in the city’s underground mall system when she was hired by Catherine Reitman. With Season 4 of the CBC comedy heading into production for a winter return, we sat down with Rinaldi during the Banff World Media Festival, where she hosted the Rockie Awards International Program Competition.

Catherine Reitman has always had this vision for what the show would be. Did you ever think that you would be beginning Season 4?
Juno Rinaldi: No. Honestly, I feel like the last four years of being on the show has completely changed my life in a way. Before I started the show, I was shoe shining in the PATH, in downtown Toronto …

Wait, really?
JR: I was shoe-shining shoes in the PATH [at Penny  Loafers Shoe Shine Company] in downtown Toronto, and auditioning. Nobody knew me because I’d come from Vancouver. It was a different transition, so I was trying to make some connections. But none of the casting directors would see me because they didn’t know who I was. I had a body of work but nothing that was super splashy.

Then, getting this job, I had to send in a self-tape and then I got to get in the room with Catherine. Then actually booking the gig really changed everything for me. So then I went back to the PATH a year later and they had a big ad of Frankie and Jenny all just in Union Station. I was walking through those doors with my big mug on it, where I would go to shine shoes.

Three women stand, talking.I speak with to so many actors and actresses, writers, directors that are trying to break in L.A., that are from Toronto, and say, ‘I can’t get a break in L.A.,’ so it’s interesting to speak to somebody from Vancouver that was having a hard time breaking in Toronto. But I have learned over the years how different those thousands of kilometres can be for people when they’re auditioning.
JR: Absolutely, very, very, very different. I think, for me, I’ve been doing this since I was a kid. So, in Vancouver I was so supported. They saw me go through theatre school, and they saw me grow up in the business. I had a very clear idea of who I was and what I could do. Then when I moved to Toronto and nobody knew who I was. So that was kind of a nice, sort of fresh start in a way, just change it up.

Being given this opportunity … I love Frankie. I love the writing. I love everything about it.

Did it strike you from the beginning this is something different?
JR: Yeah. From the first read, when I got the sides. I was like, ‘Oh, shit. This is funny. This is good.’ Yeah. You read a lot of stuff as an actor for all your auditions, that you’re like, ‘Yeah. I could make this work.’ Or you’re like, ‘Geez, this is going to be a tough one,’ or, ‘This is really great,’ or, ‘Oh, shit. I think this is amazing, but I don’t know if I’m the right fit.’ But reading those Frankie sides, I was like, ‘This is like a glove. This fits, for me, like what I wanted my whole thing.’

It’s interesting the way that Frankie has evolved over these seasons. The breakup with Giselle, now with Bianca on the scene. She’s been through so much in this short amount of time. As an actor, obviously, you love it when a storyline is shaken up. You get to play with different people in a different sandbox. 
JR: I’ve gotten to play with so many people. Olunike Adeliyi as Giselle, Aviva Mongillo as Juniper, who I love. We have a lot of great chemistry, her and I, and Tennille Read as Bianca. Frankie’s really gotten that option to try and figure out where she fits. It’s all of us, too, trying to find a community or family. When it looks a little different, like after the breakup with Giselle it looked different, so she’s really trying to figure out where she fits. Now she’s got this relationship with Bianca where it has the religious bent on it.

We were talking about this [recently], ‘Would you stay with somebody if you had such fundamentally different beliefs?’ So, that’s kind of the question, I think, for us moving forward. I don’t actually know the answers to what’s happening to Frankie. That would be an interesting thing. Is this something that the two of you can see eye to eye on?’

Season 4 of Workin’ Moms returns in winter 2020 on CBC.

Images courtesy of CBC.

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Amazing Race Canada, Featured

The Amazing Race Canada sprints into Season 7

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After seven seasons, I honestly didn’t think The Amazing Race Canada would still be interesting to watch. But, as it is with reality competition programming, it’s the contestants that make a show compelling. Kudos to the casting department at Insight for continuing to find Canadians we really care about as they hurtle around this country and parts of the world on a quest to win two 2019 Chevrolet Blazer RS, a once-in-a-lifetime trip for two around the world, the $250,000 cash prize and the title of champions.

As previously announced, nine pairs of new competitors were ready to race alongside Canada’s Choice, Jet and Dave, who first appeared in Season 1, where they placed fourth. Coming into Tuesday’s return, I wasn’t a fan of this decision. I much prefer a completely fresh cast, but you can’t deny the two friends are fun to watch.

The teams began Season 7 just down the block from Bell Media’s Toronto headquarters in a small park nestled up against Roy Thomson Hall. At the drop of Jon Montgomery’s finger, they were on the way, snagging knapsacks and Route Info to Extreme Reach Recording Studio. Couple Dave and Irina were the first to arrive, followed by Jet and Dave, grandfather and grandson Gilles and Sean, friends Nicki and Aisha, married couple Anthony and James, athletes Sarah and Sam, sisters Lauren and Joanne and dating couple Aarthy and Thinesh. Moms and friends Trish and Amy were the last to arrive.

Instructed to lend their voice to a trailer for The Lion King (the first of what will be many, many, sponsorship plugs this season), Irina, Jet, Aisha, Sean, Anthony, Sam, Meaghan, Lauren, Thinesh and Trish stepped up to the microphones for their teams. Irina completed her voice work in the first take—she took it very seriously—and she and Dave departed. It took some folks a while to realize that timing was the key to success. Sadly, Sam wasted precious time thinking he had to memorize the script.

A group of people run toward the camera.Next up was the Ontario Food Terminal, where teams had to run around 100,000 square feet of cold space to find two halves of a postcard that revealed the next clue. Irina and Dave got there in first place, closely followed by Jet and Dave, Aisha and Nicki, Meaghan and Marie, Trish and Amy, Gilles and Sean, Lauren and Joanne and Anthony and James. Sarah and Sam and Aarthy and Thinesh, meanwhile, were still stuck at the studio. Thinesh finally completed the task, leaving the Olympic hopefuls in last.

Jet and Dave put the pieces together and headed off for Kamloops, B.C., on one of two flights. Irina and Dave, Aisha and Nicki, Joanne and Lauren and Trish and Amy were nipping at their heels and scored seats on the first flight. The others were on the second, delayed by 30 minutes.

In the Road Block, the person who didn’t voice the trailer were tasked with ziplining over an old copper mine and dropping a ball into a target below. Dave missed on his first try, as did Nicki, but Irina’s Dave landed it and they regained first place. Amy and Trish were befuddled by the map and argued over where to go. Sarah and Sam leapfrogged to fourth place, just ahead of Trish and Amy; Gilles and Sean were left behind. As Sean said, they’d need another team to make a mistake for them to recover. That seemed to come in the form of Jet and Dave, who were trying to navigate with no map and, ultimately, learned they had gone 80 km in the wrong direction.

Next was the Circle Creek Equestrian Centre, where teams searched moving cattle for a clue. Staying still was the name of the game for this test and Irina and Dave quickly learned their final destination: the Pit Stop at the Kamloops Bike Ranch. Sarah and Sam and Lauren and Joanne worked together to learn the destination. It was Dave and Irina who arrived first, confident and picking up a trip to South Africa and two Express Passes (one to use and one to give away). Sarah and Sam, who I thought would be eliminated, arrived on the mat next, followed by Meaghan and Marie and Lauren and Joanne.

It was Jet and Dave who arrived in front of Jon last, and they were eliminated from the Race. Wow, after the voting and the pomp and circumstance surrounding their return and the pair were cut in Week 1.

Here’s how the teams finished the first Leg of the Race:

  1. Dave and Irina
  2. Sarah and Sam
  3. Meaghan and Marie
  4. Lauren and Joanne
  5. Trish and Amy
  6. Anthony and James
  7. Aarthy and Thinesh
  8. Nicki and Aisha
  9. Gilles and Sean
  10. Jet and Dave (eliminated)

The Amazing Race Canada airs Tuesdays at 9 p.m. ET/PT on CTV. It airs at a special time, 9:30 p.m. ET/PT, next week.

Images courtesy of Bell Media.

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Wynonna Earp

Space, SYFY, IDW Entertainment, SEVEN24 Films announce return to production of Wynonna Earp

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From a media release:

IDW Entertainment, SEVEN24 Films, Space (soon to be CTV Sci-fi Channel), and SYFY announced today that “Wynonna Earp,” the award-winning series based on the IDW comic created by Beau Smith, has been greenlit to start production for its fourth season.

With a major commitment from Bell Media’s Crave as a new production partner and streaming platform, production is slated to begin later this year. Season 4 is expected to debut in Summer 2020 on Space in Canada and SYFY in the US, with Seasons 1-3 streaming on Crave in Canada in the fall.

Additionally, IDW Entertainment announced that Cineflix Studios has come aboard to co-produce, with Cineflix rights handling international sales for all four seasons of the series. Winner of the 2018 People’s Choice Award for Favorite Sci-Fi/Fantasy Show, “Wynonna Earp” follows the life of the great, great granddaughter (Melanie Scrofano, “Bad Blood”) of famous lawman Wyatt Earp. The action-packed supernatural sci-fi series stars Scrofano, Tim Rozon
(“Schitt’s Creek”), Dominique Provost-Chalkley (“Avengers: Age of Ultron”) and Katherine Barrell (“Working Moms”).

Known for having one of the most active social media communities – from arranging fan conventions around the world to raising money for LGBTQ charities – “Wynonna Earp” has been praised for its “fierce and committed performances”*, and has received and been nominated for numerous awards including Canadian Screen Awards, GLAAD Media Awards, Directors Guild of Canada, Writers Guild of Canada and Alberta Film & Television Awards.

SEVEN24’s Jordy Randall and Tom Cox, in addition to Cineflix’s Peter Emerson and Brett Burlock, serve as Executive Producers along with Todd Berger and Rick Jacobs.

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