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I worked with dance a lot, for each character - different ways I could move my body, different music. It's the most fun thing in the world, because I love each and every one of the characters and I'd be happy just to play one of them, but the fact that I get to play upwards of six, seven, eight or whatever, it's a total dream.
I transitioned into theater and acting when I was about 9, community theater and musicals, being, like, chorus-kid-number-78 or whatever. But I just loved it. As a kid you just crave attention, and early on I just felt it was so cool and fun to play around and have people clap for me. But eventually I grew up and fell deeper into it.
Comedy scares me a lot. I feel like it's way harder than drama. I think my safety net is definitely drama and I would love to kind of be able to be able to push into the comedy world and do something kind of like a Christopher Guest kind of style show. That, to me, is my kind of comedy. Like, Ricky Gervais comedy. That's my kind of thing.
Comedy scares me a lot. I feel like it's way harder than drama. I think my safety net is definitely drama, and I would love to kind of be able to be able to push into the comedy world and do something kind of like a Christopher Guest kind of style show. That, to me, is my kind of comedy. Like, Ricky Gervais comedy. That's my kind of thing.
My favorite actor on the planet is Gena Rowlands and she plays women who, to me, somehow defy gender. They are women, they are feminine, they are masculine, they are everything. There's something exciting about that. I don't know how to articulate it exactly. I guess it's busting out of the archetypes a little bit and not feeling restricted.
Sexuality is so much more complex than our boobs. My sexuality isn't me as an object to be looked at. It's the way I say "hello" to somebody, the way I sit with somebody. A body is just a body. But we're really afraid of bodies. They hold a lot of power - I think that's why people can try to shame them so easily, because they are so powerful.
I think Amy Poehler and Tina Fey have done so much for women in comedy in the sense that they've normalized it. You don't think, 'I'm going to watch that comedy starring a woman,' you think, 'I'm going to watch that funny show.' They refuse to play the foils for men, or be reduced to the butt of every joke, and I love that about both of them.
I see a lot of things I'm so excited and hopeful about film and TV in Canada. There's just a huge movement, I think, in seeking an identity as Canadians, and really forging it and really embracing all the parts of us as Canadians that come from such varied experiences and such varied cultures. And I think there are strong voices that come out.
I think there's something really freeing about improv, that it's a collective, creative, in-the-moment piece. That's really exciting and really frustrating, because it's there and gone. There's an amazing interaction with the audience that happens because they are very much another scene partner. How they respond determines the kinds of stories we tell.
John Cassavetes' films have really altered the way I see film and acting and storytelling and emotion and love, so I see acting as this incredible revealing of human nature and this means of telling our story, sharing our voice with the world. That's what acting is for me. It allows for people to experience things through the character, through the story.
I think the sci-fi world allows for exploration of that that isn't on the nose and that isn't preachy, but it's kind of artful and explores it differently. I think there's more imagination in sci-fi. There's more chance to kind of explore perspective and not have it so grounded in this world that we live in, which is so stuck in a patriarchal kind of system.
I think in the inception and creation of the characters, improv was the most important part for me, because I wanted to feel at home in those characters. I wanted to feel like I could commit to them. And so much of improv is saying yes and committing, so I think that's where the improv came in. Even if I'm saying yes to the X across the room from me, or the tennis ball on a stick, I have to stay alive.
I think the fact that my parents are still, "Hey, great, that's great!" and not, "We need you to do this and be a star!" - it was never like that. My mom's a translator, my dad's a woodworker; that's the world I grew up in, that's the world I'm most comfortable in. The whole idea of Hollywood or any of that other stuff that unfortunately goes along with film, that wasn't part of my upbringing, thankfully.
I'm an actor, so I'm interested in the pursuit of storytelling and character and challenging myself and expanding my craft. That's not something that ever ends, because as you grow as a person, so does your capacity to play different characters. New things come up, new things you want to explore and new stories you want tell about life and your knowledge of things. I don't think there's ever going to be that satisfaction of "and now, comfort."
I'll never, never understand why people think it's their business to comment on other people's bodies. I go to a spa in LA sometimes, a Korean day spa, and all the women there are nude. And I've never felt so in love with the human form as when I'm walking around and seeing all those bodies, thinking, Oh my god, we're all just built so differently. And every single body is beautiful. I will never understand that shame, and the reinforcement of that shame. It's crazy.
I love performing. I love doing improv. It's a totally terrifying experience, but it's something that I've always felt so strongly about and that I'm kind of obsessed with. And just as an actor, it's a great exercise. It's a great playground, you know, to try things out and to work on your skills. Because the mandate of improv is kind of the same as acting: It's all about your scene partner, it's all about being present and in the moment and exploring together as a team, a collaboration.
I think that's why it's difficult for women when they watch TV and we see one version of a woman who is attached at the hip to a guy, and that's kind of her whole thing. You kind of go, 'I don't relate to this, I don't feel this.' You know? Maybe somebody does, but not everyone. That's the other thing about storytelling, is you can't represent everybody. You know, you can't seek to do that. You have to tell stories that you're interested in talking about and characters that intrigue you.
The whole press thing and who you are in the media, or what you have to project yourself to be, it feels very much like another person. People say to me, "Oh, your life must be changing," and I'm like, "Uh, I guess?" For me, it's such a gradual change, and I don't see it from the outside like everybody else does. It's weird, I see my face on a bus or online or somebody has my picture as their picture on Twitter and it's all a bit weird and I feel very disconnected from it and very much, "I guess that's me." It's very surreal.