|
For those
who don’t know, can you tell me about the show and the character you play?
Happy Town is a show –
in a long tradition of shows – about a small town where everything seems very Norman Rockwell on the surface, but when
you look beyond it a little bit you see the underbellies. We’re dealing in a small town where a murder
takes place that – there’s chaos and mayhem. The writers and producers of the show really wanted
to do an old school mystery style – that really slow burns. By the end of the first season everything
was way out of control, but at the very beginning everything was very normal. They wanted to avoid –
where right off the top as soon as the bodies are found where everyone starts to act out of character. So,
the first couple of episodes are actually very very slow paced – and in the end that was something that either ABC or
the audience couldn’t catch onto. Unfortunately by episode eight people may regret the decision to
cancel that show. The show was supposed to be a mid-season replacement, and the goal of any mid-season
replacement is to catch an audience so that the network will pay for the remaining shows to finish up the season – and
then hopefully continue on.
Since there won’t be a second season, will there be any mysteries that go unsolved?
Um, the structure of the show – there’s no easy answer.
Even if it had been a success and went on to do more seasons, the structure of the show was to always answer a big
question that began in the season at the end of each season. So by the end of the eight episodes, which
they call a mini-season, you do in fact find out who the Magic Man is… it is revealed at the end of episode eight.
And it’s one of those great endings where when you find out who the Magic Man is you could not see it coming,
it’s one of those great written endings where you sort of slap your forehead… so I think the audience will be
quite happy with that. And then the idea was at that point to switch genres… you go from a murder/mystery
to a thriller, and now the audience knows who the Magic Man is, but the characters don’t know. So
the idea was to do a second season where the Magic Man had to stay ahead of everyone else, and they’re trying to find
the Magic Man – so it’s one of those great things where the audience gets to be part of the secret, but the characters
are still in the dark… but alas that will never come to pass. It
was truly one of the best experiences I have ever had. It was an amazing cast – every individual
on that cast was a joy to work with, which is so rare in television… there’s usually a couple of bad apples,
but everybody was so fantastic to work with. Scott, Josh and Andre are probably the best producers I’ve
ever worked with – just a great bunch of guys, they really cared about the process in writing something and having fun.
Every script that came down the barrel we couldn’t wait to get our hands on to find out what was going to happen
next – not just to our characters, but to everybody’s character. It was the first time I have
ever seen a cast so proactively involved in a series, and embracing it full heartedly.
And it has a great cast too.
Amazing cast, that’s another thing when I heard it got cancelled –
I shook my head and I looked at the sky and said “what do you have to give an audience to make a show successful?”
I mean you’ve got the cast – you’ve got a great mystery – you’ve got witty writing, you
just never know.
Now days it seems to be all about reality television.
Yeah, that seems to be the case – it’s harder and harder to hook an audience.
 Tell me about your character, Dan Farmer.
Dan was in the pilot – and then he wasn’t in the pilot – and then he was back in it…
they kept on going back and forth. Originally I had read for one of the other parts, and had got it.
One of the producers said to keep “Handsome” Dan in the pilot and so we shot the sequence where Dan meets
Georgia in the cafeteria and he stalks her down the hallway, it didn’t need to be me – any actor could have done
that. I had a lot of fun with Dan – I can’t imagine any actor that wouldn’t have fun
because they kept on writing weirder and weirder things for me to do. And even then, the reveal for Dan,
which I can’t really say much about… in the end nobody is what they seem to be on the show. So
in episode eight when we finally reveal who Dan really is, there again I think the audience is going to be… it’s
going to be one of those forehead slaps again. It was a lot of fun. As the episodes
unfold, I think the writers also realized that in that character they have a fantastic device to do weirder and weirder things
– so I don’t know how much of Dan was actually realized by the writers before the show started going along.
Even I was completely in the dark; I kept on going up to the writers asking them to tell me something… I’d
keep doing the stuff they wanted, but can you just give me a hint to where I’m going? I kept begging
them… am I the Magic Man? Am I really a cop? And they just smiled and said to
trust them… just keep going on with it and that I’m doing all the right things… they’ll tell me
if I’m going astray. So I just put my faith in them and sure enough when I got episode eight and
I found out what was really going on behind Dan’s armor I was thrilled. I actually stood up in my
chair and said “Oh, that’s awesome”.
So how would you get into character not knowing where they wanted
you to go?
I literally had one note
from Scott where he said I’m not crazy, but I am obsessed… like compulsively obsessed. I’m
not crazy, but I’d have no problem if I want people to think I was crazy. So I had to keep people
guessing, and that was basically in the script. So to prepare for it, I literally just drew my faith into
the writers and said that I would play it exactly like it is on the paper, and if he said something bazaar… I will
say it in the most bazaar way possible. And sometimes we would do it a couple of different ways…
go way over the top or go way understated or do something in the middle of the road… so they would have many options
to create the character in the editing. But in terms of preparing for it, I literally stayed as close to
the script as possible and just trusted that they knew exactly where everything was going.
Without giving everything away, when you got
the first script… who did you think the Magic Man was?
Right off the top – I guess right off the top I thought it was Sam [Neill].
He was sort of my first guess, as obvious as that was… all evidence… all roads seemed to lead to Sam
and his creepy movie shop. As the show progressed I started thinking that the Magic Man was – and
I’m not saying that this isn’t the answer, but I started to think that the Magic Man was not one person, but was
sort of a conspiracy… and that there were many many people involved. But then it kept changing and
half way through it I was pointing at “Root Beer”… then Tommy… Tommy was the Magic Man.
And that was everybody on the set, every script that came down the pipe you’d change your opinion – you’d
change your mind. It’s funny because on the last week of shooting we had a competition – we’d
put twenty dollars into a pot and you got to guess who you thought the Magic Man was and why you thought the Magic Man was
this person. Everybody in the cast and crew put twenty bucks in and there was one winner! One
person got it right, and I think the producers did that to say… could somebody figure this out on their own?
Is it possible that the audience could figure it out on their own? One person got it, and they pointed
at all of the clues… they got it right and they won the pot.
That’s amazing
that even amongst the cast and crew that only one person got it right.
Exactly… and that means it’s a good mystery… it wasn’t an easy solve,
but it is solvable. If you watch each episode and you really pay close attention to the information that
is revealed, you can in fact figure out who the Magic Man is. And sure enough this one person got it.
One thing I noticed ever since the first episode;
I used to live on the border of Minnesota [where Happy Town takes place]… I noticed that there is no Minnesota accent.
Was that intentional?
They
intentionally did that, and I think the reason why they did that was to – I think maybe they were worried that since
they were going to have to flush out most of the cast with locals from Canada… that maybe they were worried that the
Canadian accent would be way too prevalent… so they told the Canadian actors to do a neutral North Americanized accent.
But the fact is that Minnesota in some places is more north than Toronto… so the Northern Minnesotan accent
is very similar to a rural Canadian accent, so it actually probably would have worked in their favor if they just let the
Canadians use their accents. But they sort of shied away from it, and I think it was because they were
worried that the Canadian accent would sound too strange to a Middle American audience.
Exactly. Because I’ve
noticed a few scenes where it seemed as though it was based out of New York or at least a bigger city.
Sure – and well, there’s a clue there… accents and locales
play prominently towards the end of the show as things are revealed. People say they’re from certain
places, but they don’t actually speak with an accent that is from that place. As various characters’
pasts are revealed you start to realize that the person has been lying the entire time. So there’s
a clue to the whole accent thing, but not the Minnesotan accent. What
else are you currently working on? Currently, I just finished a mini-series for the broadcasting
company up here… it’s a Canadian period piece about our first prime minister. And now I’m
looking for work… got anything going?
|
