Nothing creates an atmosphere of glamour and pageantry quite like a red carpet, and the powers-that-be behind the 2014 Leo Awards saved the candy apple floor-wear for its third and final night.
Sunday night’s ceremony was all about the big-ticket awards: Best Motion Picture; Best Director; Best Dramatic Series; not to mention the bulk of the acting awards (scroll down for the complete list of winners; for coverage from Friday and Saturday, click here and here).
And so, for a couple of hours before the ceremony, dozens of British Columbia’s rising and established film and television stars (some with champagne flutes in hand) strolled the red carpet in a small ballroom in the Fairmont Hotel Vancouver — and yours truly spoke with many of them:
CHRISTOPHER HEYERDAHL (Hell on Wheels)
On hosting the Leos: “We have a writer this year, Mark Leiren-Young, so he’s given us something to work with. I think a lot of times, you get up and you’re not quite sure what to say and you start making potty jokes, which have their place, but we’re trying to stay away from the potty tonight and trying to keep it classy. Hopefully we’ll stay on script. You’ll hear Mark screaming off stage when we go off script.”
On his 3 Days in Havana nomination: “It was a special project. Tony [Pantages, writer and co-director] and I went to high school together, we’ve known each other for a long time, and we’ve never worked together before. But we have an understanding, we have a short hand, and he can ask me to do pretty much anything and I feel safe to jump in.”
On Hell on Wheels: “The reason I’m so heavily barbed is I’m in the middle of doing season four of Hell on Wheels, in Calgary, just on the other side in the foothills. We’ve got lots of new characters. There’s new trouble for both Bohannan and for Durant. They both have equal and opposite forces against them, and the people who they’ve cast — and I won’t name any names; I’ll let that come as it’s released — but the names are fantastic. The characters are really becoming juicy this year.”
ANDREA MENARD (Blackstone)
On her new album: “I’m launching a new idea with this music — it’s not a new idea, but it’s new for me. I’m launching music with a good message and music that makes you happy and music that this world needs. Obviously, the response has been very positive, because if you’re open to it, you feel changed by it. There’s no walking away from it. “
On her Leo nomination for Blackstone: “I have a little nasty character. Here’s me, trying to go for joy, and my character is a bitch. This is my first Leo nomination. I’m relatively new to Vancouver, so it’s nice to feel like I’m part of the community.”
On chilling in Vancouver: “I’m a dog walker. I’m a seawall-er. I’m a Stanley Park-er. I love trees. When you’re all jacked up and nervous, nature calms you down. Being out in nature probably prepared me for all of the stuff that’s coming.”
LORNE CARDINAL (If I Had Wings/Corner Gas)
On his If I Had Wings character: “Angus Coleman is the guy’s name. He’s handsome [laughs]. He’s the father of a troubled teen. He’s a single dad and he’s trying to do his best. The young cast was so much fun to work with. I worked with Jaren [Brandt Bartlett] on Arctic Air. He killed me on that show, so when I became Angus Coleman [Jaren’s onscreen dad], I grounded him. I took away his iPhone and told him, ‘you’re done.’”
On what the Leo nomination — and Leos — mean to him: “It’s great to be recognized and it’s an honour to be amongst my fellow nominees who are all incredible actors. I think these awards are just celebrating the fact that we get anything made in this country in the first place, because it’s such a challenge. We’ve got a lot of obstacles out here [in BC], but we’ve got a lot more talented people who stay here and choose to work here and live here. It’s a great acknowledgement to the industry itself for its toughness to face the challenge and keep moving forward.”
On the upcoming Corner Gas movie: “That polyester is waiting for me. It’s calling my name. It’s so exciting. I’m so glad everyone’s come together again. It’s like getting the band back together. It’s a whole new story, a little further down the road. It’s good to know the writers have still got the same comedy, the same humour. It’s got that Corner Gas feel to it, and I am totally touched and in awe of the support that we got from across Canada [via a crowdfunding campaign].”
MICHAEL EKLUND (The Call)
On staying sane while filming psychological thriller The Call: “For me, the way I work — and I don’t come from any classical training or background of any kind — I’m completely winging it as I go. The only way I learned to work is my own technique, which is to get as deep underneath the skin of the character as you can, and take that role into your real life, on set and off set. So when I’m working, there is no decompressing. I go off on my own and disappear for a couple of months and live as that character.”
On his role in the upcoming film Dark: “That’s a very different role [from The Call]. Not a dark guy. Just a sweet, lovable boy. He’s a nice guy who’s meeting a girl on a special night [the night of the 2003 Eastern seaboard black-out].”
On being known for bad guy roles: “What I try to do is play fifty per cent good guys and fifty per cent bad guys. The thing is, the fifty per cent darker characters are the ones that people know. They’re the ones that people remember. I have a whole career and history of good guys. Nobody cares. They like the bad guys. Next year, I have a movie called Eadweard Muybridge. He’s another good guy. So the good guy stuff is trickling in.”
On the film that changed his life: “I was born in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, and I saw my first film when I was five years old, and it changed everything. It was Lassie Returns. I saw that movie, and it made me want to be an actor. Coming from Saskatoon, there were no opportunities, and as I got older, I had this whispering voice in me telling me to be an actor, so I eventually moved to Vancouver, because I knew this was where The X-Files shot.”
AGAM DARSHI (Played/Fade Out)
On the lead actress and composer of her directorial debut, Fade Out, being nominated for Leos: “I felt like a proud mama when I found out. They put so much work in, and there’s nothing nicer than seeing someone reap the rewards of a film that they helped you out with so much. Ona [Grauer] was so present. As for Andrew [Halliwell], he’s a brilliant composer.”
On future creative projects: “Leena [Manro, a Vancouver actress and writer] and I just finished writing a feature. We’re shopping it around. We have a director who’s interested. It’s a comedy, and it’s bringing the West and the East together in a really funny way with two hilarious female characters. Our collaboration has been going on for a few years. We write together and apart. It’s been a little tricky, because we both have very different styles, and different ways of working, but I think we’ve done a pretty good job.”
RYAN ROBBINS (The Killing/Delete)
On the roles for which he was nominated for Leos: “One is an extremely good guy, and one is just not a good guy. I tend to gravitate more towards complicated characters. I find them fun and like piecing a puzzle together that you know you’re never going to finish.”
On his new role on Continuum: “Talk about complex and layered. Whether he’s good or bad, it doesn’t matter. He’s just got so much going on. I’m having such a blast on that show. He’s figuring himself out, the audience is figuring out who he is, the rest of the cast is figuring out who he is. And he’s an ass-kicker. They presented it to me saying, he’s like Kyle Reese from The Terminator crossed with Jason Bourne. I’ve been a fighter my whole life, and I rarely have roles where I get to use that skill.”
On Project Limelight and attending a script read-through with the kids: “Programs similar to Project Limelight are the reason I’m here doing what I do. Since Cory [Monteith, a huge supporter of Project Limelight] passed, the rest of us felt like we needed to pick it up a little bit and take the torch, because Cory was such a force for Project Limelight that it’ll take more than just one of us to fill those shoes. Those shoes will never be filled, but it’s up to the rest of us to do our best to contribute and move forward.”
KRISTIN LEHMAN (Motive)
On her Motive character, Angie: “Angie is pretty marvelous. Daniel Cerone wrote a remarkable female character, which is what I jumped at the chance to play. And she’s sort of close to me in some places and sort of different from me in some places. She’s always nice to put on like a reliable pair of pajamas because she makes me feel strong in the places where I might not usually be.”
On shooting in Vancouver: “It’s beautiful. I’m always happy to get o be home, and we use the city in a beautiful way. I feel like I get to visit parts of the city that I wouldn’t normally get to go to, and that matters to me. On sunny days and even on rainy days when I’m in a place I wouldn’t normally go, I feel lucky.”
NICHOLAS CARELLA (Afterparty/The True Heroines)
On plans to take Afterparty across the country: “One nice thing about having such a great cast is that everyone’s working, but the problem is everyone’s working, so to try and coordinate nine actors to go on the road together is really tough. We’re only going to be going with four at a time.”
On his wife, Afterparty & The True Heroines director Michelle Ouellet: “Both projects are one hundred percent a result of how talented she is. She crossed genres. She did a sci-fi comic book, she did an improvised drama, and she mastered everything. You’re going to make me cry, Sabrina. You got me.”
On how they decompress: “We work until we’re too tired to work any more, any then we find the closest bar. Honestly, if your hobby is your job, you never need a vacation.”
BEVERLEY ELLIOTT (Once Upon a Time)
On hosting the Leos the previous night: “It was wacky! It was a great crowd. Initially I thought [Walter Daroshin, president of the Leo Awards] was going to ask me to sing again, but he said, “I want you to host,” and I said, ‘What?! I’m in!’ I had to ask myself, ‘do I drink?’ If I was doing theatre, I would never drink, but when you’re hosting, it’s probably a good idea to have a glass of wine to take the edge off.”
On her upcoming one-woman show for the Fringe: “We’ve got six shows starting in September at Performance Works. The show is called Didn’t see that coming. It’s a collection of true stories, most of them about bumping into a stranger and having some epiphany in life happen that I did not see coming at all.”
DAVID LEWIS (Evangeline/Stalled)
On working in different genres and mediums (including the web series, Parked): “I’ve been acting for 23 years and making a living at it for 14 years. In Vancouver, you can be limited to sci-fi or drama. You don’t get an opportunity to do a lot of comedy, but I do love comedy. I kill it. I’m obviously awesome. Look, I’m just proud to be part of this community. There are some crazy people out there, but they’re mostly good crazy.”
On producing and writing his Leo-nominated short, Stalled: “It’s my first time producing, and the third thing I’ve ever written. I sent [award-winning director Karen Lam] a rough cut of the script and she said it was fantastic and that she’d love to direct it. I’m sort of like her muse. I’ve worked with her one five things and she’s killed me four times. In the fifth one, she just bloodied the shit out of me.”
ENID-RAYE ADAMS (Leo Awards night #1 host)
On how she reacted when they first asked her to host: “I dropped my colon on the floor, because I was so nervous. I’m not going to lie about that. And then I got immediately excited and we got down to the business of writing the show.”
On the importance of the Leos: “Sometimes in this industry, you can really take a beating, so to be able to have a weekend where we celebrate each other, and promote each other and boost each other up and say that what we’re doing really matters, it’s very important and it’s special.”
GABRIELLE ROSE (The Dick Knost Show/The Corpse and the Courier)
On what the Leos mean to her: “It’s heartwarming. You do a lifetime of work, and then you get to party and be up for awards. You might win; you might not. It doesn’t really matter. It’s just fun. I’m excited for everybody here who’s nominated. I know what it’s like to win, and I know what it’s like to lose. I hope all of those who’ve been nominated before and never won get to win.”
WINNERS FOR SUNDAY, JUNE 1
Best male performance in a short drama: Ryan Beil – Anxious Oswald Greene
Best female performance in a short drama: Gabrielle Rose – The Corpse and the Courier
Best male guest performance in a dramatic series: Mackenzie Gray – Bitten
Best female guest performance in a dramatic series: Katherine Isabelle – Motive
Best stunt coordination in a dramatic series: Kimani Ray Smith – Continuum
Best stunt coordination in a television movie: Lauro Chartrand – Forever 16
Best stunt coordination in a motion picture: Lauro Chartrand – Force of Execution
Best casting in a motion picture: Candice Elzinga – Lawrence & Holloman
Best student production: Backward Fall
Best male supporting performance in a dramatic series: Swo-Wo Gabriel – Blackstone
Best female supporting performance in a dramatic series: Lexa Doig – Continuum
Best male supporting performance in a television movie: Dylan Playfair – Mr. Hockey: The Gordie Howe Story
Best female supporting performance in a television movie: Molly Parker – Pete's Christmas
Best male supporting performance in a motion picture: Michael Eklund – The Call
Best female supporting performance in a motion picture: Jennifer Spence – Down River
Best direction in a short drama: Marshall Axani – Anxious Oswald Greene
Best direction in a dramatic series: Andy Mikita – Motive
Best direction in a documentary program or series: Damon Vignale – The Exhibition
Best documentary series: Emergency Room: Life and Death at VGH
Best short documentary program: Lady in Number 6
Best feature length documentary program: Take Back Your Power
Best direction in a television movie: Steve Barron – Delete
Best direction in a motion picture: Ana Valine – Sitting on the Edge of Marlene
Best male lead performance in a dramatic series: Louis Ferreira – Motive
Best female lead performance in a dramatic series: Carmen Moore – Blackstone
Best male lead performance in a television movie: Michael Shanks – Mr. Hockey: The Gordie Howe Story
Best female lead performance in a television movie: Kathleen Robertson – Mr. Hockey: The Gordie Howe Story
Best male lead performance in a motion picture: Jaren Brandt Bartlett – If I Had Wings
Best female lead performance in a notion picture: Lauren Lee Smith – Cinemanovels
Best short drama: Anxious Oswald Greene
Best dramatic series: Continuum
Best television movie: Mr. Hockey: The Gordie Howe Story
Best motion picture: Down River
