Zach Smadu recently wrapped his third season as Daniel Svensson, an exceedingly tidy lawyer with an exceedingly messy love life, on the locally shot and produced Family Law . As Daniel, Zach – whose filmography also includes plum roles on The Expanse , Cardinal , Kim’s Convenience , Titans , and Letterkenny – is one of Harry Svensson’s three children; the other two are masterfully portrayed by Genelle Williams and Jewel Staite. In this fun and fascinating conversation, Zach talks about food, why...
Feb 15, 2023•1 hr 12 min•Season 8Ep. 28
Ian Hanlin’s long list of voice credits includes an egg pirate, a black-furred anthropomorphic hedgehog, and an entire cadre of well-coiffed superheroes. Ian voiced Thor in LEGO Marvel Avengers: Loki in Training , Owen Grady in LEGO Jurassic World: Legend of Isla Nublar , Ant Man in LEGO Marvel Avengers: Time Twisted , The Purple Pie Man in Strawberry Shortcake: Berry in the Big City , Lance Richmond in LEGO: Nexo Knights , and Mr. Pocket in Polly Pocket , and can currently be heard as Shadow th...
Feb 10, 2023•59 min•Season 8Ep. 27
Alison Araya’s work can be summed up in a single word: bold. Whether she’s playing a loving if slightly overzealous Tia on Julie and the Phantoms , a family court judge with a firm hand on Family Law , a fastidious social worker on Riverdale , or a strong-willed woman who ends up in a superhero threesome on Peacemaker , Alison consistently delivers bold performances that reveal a real mastery of craft, a joyous heart, and a keen mind. In this introspective and at times funny conversation, Alison...
Feb 08, 2023•54 min•Season 8Ep. 26
Door Mouse is the feature film directorial debut from Avan Jogia, the celebrated writer and actor from Vancouver who is well known for a lot of projects, including the wildly bonkers Netflix series Ghost War s. Door Mouse is a neo-noir thriller about a burlesque dancer and struggling comic book artist (the titular Door Mouse) who is compelled to investigate the disappearances of two of her fellow burlesque dancers and finds a whole world of trouble in the process. Door Mouse is at once wildly en...
Feb 03, 2023•59 min•Season 8Ep. 25
Actor and playwright Hiro Kanagawa ( Star Trek: Discovery ) returns to the YVR Screen Scene Podcast to talk about Forgiveness , his adaptation of Mark Sakamoto’s acclaimed memoir that tells the story of a real-life family confronting the atrocities of the past and finding within itself a way forward. Forgiveness tells the parallel stories of Sakamoto’s maternal grandfather Ralph, a Canadian soldier of European descent who spent years in a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp, and Mitsue, his paternal g...
Jan 31, 2023•53 min•Season 8Ep. 24
Brenna Coates lit up the screen as Lucy on CBC’s Coroner and in the indie horror thriller The Sinners, and also won a 2018 Dora Mavor Moore Theatre Award for her work in Jez Butterworth’s Jerusalem. Jessica Steen’s long list of credits includes Stargate SG-1, Republic of Doyle, NCIS, and Lisa Stillman on Heartland, the longest-running hour-long scripted drama in Canadian history. Brenna and Jessica are both powerhouses in their own rights, so it’s little surprise that they make absolute magic to...
Jan 18, 2023•32 min•Season 8Ep. 23
Johannah Newmarch and John Emmet Tracy are equally matched in terms of talent, fearlessness, and generosity of spirit. Johannah is beloved for her work as Molly on When Calls The Heart , and for her many film and television projects spanning all genres, including Garage Sale Mysteries , Project Mc2 , Gracepoint , and Polaris . John Emmet Tracy is known ’round the world for his scene-stealing roles on Batwoman , iZombie , Supernatural , and as ruthless legal eagle Ellis Steele on Yellowstone . Se...
Jan 13, 2023•1 hr 9 min•Season 8Ep. 22
Michelle Harrison has portrayed Nora Allen on The Flash for all of its nine seasons. Being Nora Allen is a big responsibility: Nora’s untimely death in the pilot is the event that sets everything in motion. Nora is seen in multiple timelines, as the embodiment of the Speed Force, and as the ultimate representation of motherhood, love, and sacrifice – and the woman who portrays her contains just as many multitudes. Michelle’s lengthy list of credits includes inventive sci-fi like Continuum and Th...
Jan 11, 2023•56 min•Season 8Ep. 21
Amanda Tapping is beloved around the world for iconic roles on Stargate SG-1 and Sanctuary and her ever-growing list of television directing credits (including an impressive run as an executive producer on the cult favourite Freeform series Motherland: Fort Salem ); Sabrina Rani Furminger is host of the YVR Screen Scene Podcast. Since Amanda and Sabrina’s first interview together in January 2013 (for a Westender cover story entitled “What’s next for Amanda Tapping?”), the pair have grown to beco...
Jan 04, 2023•44 min•Season 8Ep. 20
Dr Jules Arita Koostachin wrote and directed Broken Angel , a thrilling dramatic feature that premiered at the imagineNATIVE Film and Media Arts Festival, won the award for Best Feature at the 2022 American Indian Film Festival, and screens at the 2022 Whistler Film Festival. Broken Angel is a story about healing and mental illness, family and acceptance, domestic violence and legacy, and trauma and survival. It’s also a bold narrative feature film directorial debut from Jules, and a stunning sh...
Nov 25, 2022•49 min•Season 8Ep. 19
Jewel Staite and Paul McGillion are two wildly talented actors with lengthy filmographies and stellar reputations. Jewel is beloved for her work on Firefly , Serenity , Stargate Atlantis , her hilarious tweets and TikToks, and for her leading role as Abigail Bianchi on the award-winning and critically acclaimed television series Family Law . And Paul is renowned for roles on Stargate Atlantis , Firefly Lane , The Flash , and for being one of the nicest humans in the Vancouver film and television...
Nov 23, 2022•58 min•Season 8Ep. 18
Leah Gibson has lit up the screen in an array of critically acclaimed shows like Manifest , Arctic Air , Batwoman , and Jessica Jones , where she played troubled nurse Inez Green. She was nominated for a 2022 UBCP/ACTRA Award for her work on Joe Pickett , Paramount Plus’ astounding neo-Western crime drama. Leah plays Jeannie Keeley, a wife and a mom who is all passion, all fire, and, according to another character, a “real live one.” This month, Leah will bring her passion and fire to the Vancou...
Nov 18, 2022•58 min•Season 8Ep. 17
In the fifth episode of our ongoing #IndustryBFFs series, actors Brady Roberts ( Paper Champions ) and Sachin Sahel ( The 100 ) talk about their friendship forged in wrestling, why the new monthly wrestling show Boom! Pro Wrestling is the hottest ticket in Vancouver, and the coffee meeting that changed everything. Episode sponsor: UBCP / ACTRA
Nov 17, 2022•56 min•Season 8Ep. 16
Karin Konoval is a highly accomplished actress with a knack for disappearing into complex, sometimes non-human, roles. Karin portrayed an orangutan named Maurice in the Planet of the Apes films. In 2018, she won a UBCP/ACTRA award for the dual role of Chucky and Judy in The X-Files , and in 2019, she was inducted into the BC Entertainment Hall of Fame. She’s beloved for playing Deena Petringa on the most watched television drama in the world, The Good Doctor , for her work as Dr. Pelton on Snowp...
Nov 09, 2022•45 min•Season 8Ep. 15
In the fourth episode of our ongoing #IndustryBFFs series, screenwriters Meredith Hambrock ( Corner Gas Animated ) and Jennifer Siddle ( Some Assembly Required ) talk the inner workings of a comedy writer’s room, Vancouver humour, guff-giving, and what a friendship between two comedy writers can look like IRL. Episode sponsor: UBCP/ACTRA
Nov 04, 2022•47 min•Season 8Ep. 14
Actor Adrian Petriw appeared on the YVR Screen Scene Podcast in 2019 and 2020 to talk about his voice acting career and eat babka with host (and fellow Ukrainian) Sabrina Rani Furminger. But those previous appearances were before February 24, 2022, when Russia fully invaded Ukraine, displacing and traumatizing millions of Ukrainians, killing thousands, and mobilizing Ukrainians in the diaspora to do whatever they could to help. In the first month of the war, Adrian and Sabrina co-produced YVR Sc...
Nov 01, 2022•1 hr 12 min•Season 8Ep. 13
On October 4, Women in Film and Television Vancouver – AKA WIFTV – announced that it would be making some significant changes to its name, its long-running Vancouver International Women in Film Festival, and its logo. In a letter to the WIFTV membership, they wrote, “We believe that everybody who has faced historical exclusion and marginalization due to patriarchy and sexism is deserving of our organization’s support. However, we have received ongoing feedback from our community members that WIF...
Oct 28, 2022•37 min•Season 8Ep. 12
Patrick Keating is the creative force behind Inside/Out: A Prison Memoir , a theatrical performance film in which Patrick shares his real-life story of years spent in and out of Canada’s penitentiary system. Patrick is an actor and storyteller who has performed in more than 40 stage productions and close to 60 television and film productions, including Virgin River , The Flash , Resident Alien , and The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina . Inside/Out: A Prison Memoir was created for a Virtual Screen...
Oct 25, 2022•49 min•Season 8Ep. 11
Roughly 6.2 million Canadians – or 25% of the population – live with some form of disability, but that high number hasn’t led to an accessible society. In the film and television industry, countless barriers exist for people with disabilities that simply don’t exist for people without them. In the first of our new series of episodes about disability and accessibility in #BCFilm, actor and advocate Amy Amantea joins Sabrina Rani Furminger to discuss the challenges faced by film workers with disab...
Oct 21, 2022•33 min•Season 8Ep. 10
Over the last several years, Kai Bradbury has made a name for himself playing characters who dabble in deception. On Motherland: Fort Salem , he played the bird-wielding male witch Gerit who shows up in Fort Salem to participate in Beltane and lies to Tally about his relationship status. As rogue scientist Nate on The Imperfects , he lured monsters Abbi, Tilda, and Juan into a potentially devastating trap. He can currently be seen on Virgin River as Denny, Doc’s long-lost grandson who comes to t...
Oct 18, 2022•1 hr 5 min•Season 8Ep. 9
For three seasons, Catherine Lough Haggquist portrayed General Petra Bellweather on Freeform’s Motherland: Fort Salem . The dramatic series imagined a world where the witches of Salem entered into a pact with non-magical humans that made them a celebrated and powerful military force – and General Bellweather rose through the ranks (and the series) to become the highest ranking witch in the military. This gave Cat the opportunity to kick ass both literally and figuratively, which she discussed du...
Oct 14, 2022•1 hr 7 min•Season 8Ep. 8
Morgan Holmstrom plays a nurse who takes no guff and gives everything she has to the people she loves on CBC and Paramount Plus’ action-packed dramatic series SkyMed . In the APTN limited series Shadow of the Rougarou , she lights up the screen as a Metis-Cree fur trapper who must face the curse that ripped her life apart as a child – a role for which she was nominated for a 2022 Leo Award. And in Day of the Dead , she played former Special Forces working on a fracking crew whose discovery of a ...
Oct 12, 2022•1 hr 25 min•Season 8Ep. 7
Anthony Shim ( Daughter ) directed, wrote, edited, produced, and acted in Riceboy Sleeps , the staggering coming of age film that screens at the 2022 Vancouver International Film Festival. The dramatic feature tells the story of a South Korean immigrant and single mom, So-young, who is raising her son Dong-hyun in the Vancouver suburbs in the 1990s. So-young desperately wants to instill a sense of pride in the boy. In turn, he only wants to be considered “Canadian” in hopes of avoiding bullying ...
Sep 30, 2022•52 min•Season 8Ep. 6
back home premieres this month at the 2022 Vancouver International Film Festival. The film follows filmmaker Nisha Platzer’s journey to get to know her older brother Josh 20 years after he took his own life. Over the span of five years, Nisha connects with the friends who knew Josh best as a teenager; it isn’t long before his chosen family becomes hers, too. back home is a haunting and nuanced film, shifting between past and present, employing 16mm and Super 8 footage, sometimes dream-like and o...
Sep 30, 2022•36 min•Season 8Ep. 5
You would be hard-pressed to find a bigger fan of the Vancouver Grizzlies than Kat Jayme. Not only did Kat grow up a fan of the ill-fated NBA franchise, but she’s parlayed that childhood passion into a number of films, including We The West , 2018’s festival hit Finding Big Country (in which she successfully tracked down NBA enigma Bryant “Big Country Reeves), and The Grizzlie Truth , in which she seeks to investigate a sprawling sports mystery: who is responsible for robbing Vancouver of the Gr...
Sep 30, 2022•41 min•Season 8Ep. 4
Showrunner Dennis Heaton returns to the YVR Screen Scene Podcast to talk about The Imperfects , his latest fantastical series that premiered on Netflix earlier this month. The Imperfects are Tilda, Abbi, and Juan, three 20-somethings who band together to hunt down the scientist responsible for turning them into monsters via experimental gene therapy and forcing him to make them human again. Tilda is a banshee. Abbi is a succubus. Juan is a chupacabra. But these monsters aren’t nearly as monstrou...
Sep 26, 2022•49 min•Season 8Ep. 3
Kandyse McClure’s filmography is populated by a staggering range of characters. On the critically acclaimed and beloved Battlestar Galactica , Kandyse portrayed Anastasia “Dee” Dualla, a passionate woman who fought, loved, dreamt, and, ultimately, succumbed to despair. As Nicte Batan in the third and final season of Motherland: Fort Salem , she wrestled with her character’s past as a terrorist while forging unexpected alliances. As Sam in Neill Blomkamp’s wildly entertaining horror film Demonic ...
Sep 22, 2022•1 hr 23 min•Season 8Ep. 2
Fakes is the story of two best friends – played by Emilija Baranac and Jennifer Tong – who accidentally build one of the largest fake ID empires in North America. Friend-of-the-podcast Richard Harmon is Tryst, who might or might not be something of a dirtbag. There’s a lot to love about this comedy-drama, the 10 episodes of which hit CBC Gem (in Canada) and Netflix (outside of Canada) earlier this month. It was filmed and set in Vancouver, and it’s rich with Metro Vancouver talent. It’s funny an...
Sep 19, 2022•46 min•Season 8Ep. 1
Thomas Elms stars in SkyMed , the action-packed CBC dramatic series about the up-and-coming pilots and nurses who work at an air ambulance service; the show premiered in July on CBC Television, CBC Gem, and Paramount Plus, and immediately got people buzzing on all the socials. Thomas is Captain Milosz Nowak, a calm, collected, and fiercely loyal pilot who broke with his immigrant parents to make his sky-high dreams come true. Thomas previously starred as Hamish Duke (the sardonic, cocktail-swill...
Aug 03, 2022•1 hr 17 min•Season 7Ep. 32
Actor Praneet Akilla ( Nancy Drew , Motherland: Fort Salem ) returns to the YVR Screen Scene Podcast to talk about his leading role in CBC's SkyMed . The sexy, action-packed dramatic television series was inspired by the real-life experiences of SkyMed showrunner Julie Puckrin’s sister and brother-in-law who met flying air ambulances in the North. In this contemplative and at times raucous interview, Praneet talks about Chopper, SkyMed , what it means to him that Telugu cinema is having a moment...
Jul 27, 2022•58 min•Season 7Ep. 31
