The YVR Screen Scene Podcast

For months, voice actors on both sides of the border have been sounding the alarm about the ways that artificial intelligence (A.I.) can be manipulated, not only to fool audiences, but to exploit artists. It’s already happening. Like Ursula in The Little Mermaid, A.I. and the companies who wield it are stealing voices and pushing artists out of the equation altogether – something that an astounding number of voice actors in Vancouver have experienced firsthand. In this special episode, voice actors Bill Newton (LEGO Marvel Avengers) and Jesse Inocalla (The Dragon Prince) discuss the impact of A.I. on the entertainment industry in general and voice actors in particular, and why A.I. poses an existential threat to the entire profession. 

Note from Sabrina: “This episode was recorded with two mics instead of the necessary three, and thus, the sound quality is *fiiiiine*, but not perfect. The conversation, though, is phenomenal. We’ve found the wayward mic cord and promise it won’t happen again!”

Episode sponsor: UBCP/ACTRA

Donia Kash is an actor, performer, storyteller, and filmmaker whose growing list of credits includes Motherland: Fort Salem, So Help Me Todd, The 100, Snowpiercer, A Million Little Things, Hearts in the Game, and a couple of impressive “firsts”: The Secrets of Bella Vista, which represented the very first time that a Hallmark Movie featured an openly non-binary actor, and The Holiday Sitter, which marked the very first time Hallmark Channel put a gay couple at the centre of one of their films. In this contemplative episode of the YVR Screen Scene Podcast, Donia talks about the joys and challenges of being a “first,” walking the red carpet at the 2023 GLAAD Media Awards (and basking in the presence of Idina Menzel), their short film Ketchup With Me, navigating the film industry as a Persian actor, and why they’ve always wanted to be a Mighty Morphin Power Ranger. Episode sponsor: UBCP/ACTRA

Aliza Vellani originally joined us in July 2021 to talk about her work in the first season of Netflix’s Sweet Tooth. Sweet Tooth draws its inspiration from Jeff Lemire’s comic book series about a boy who’s half-human and half deer navigating a world that has been devastated by a virus that has killed a lot of people and led to the mysterious emergence of human-animal hybrid babies. Aliza plays Rani Singh. Rani has the virus, but is a rare long-term survivor, thanks to her doctor-husband Aditya’s devotion and mysterious life-saving treatments, which we discover involves slaughtering hybrid children. The series shoots in New Zealand but features two Vancouver actors: Aliza as Rani and Christian Convery as the titular Sweet Tooth himself. Both Aliza and Christian won awards for their Sweet Tooth performances at the 2022 Leo Awards.

Earlier this month, Sweet Tooth and Rani were back for another eight-episode journey that somehow managed to at once thrill, chill, entertain, and devastate audiences. Throughout season two, Rani reckons with karma, and the moral quandary of her predicament. As she says early on, “How many lives for mine? Will we reap what we sow?” But as another character observes in that same episode, Rani is one tough cookie. Rani is so very human: vulnerable, loving, conflicted, a little Lady MacBeth, and still feisty as shit. In this wildly fascinating interview, Sabrina Rani Furminger talks Rani and Sweet Tooth with the inimitable Aliza Vellani, and also gets the 4-1-1 on her latest project: a reunion of sorts with the work of Zarqa Nawaz, the brilliant mind behind Little Mosque on the Prairie, in Zarqa. Episode sponsor: UBCP/ACTRA

It’s been three years since we last had the phenomenally talented Marci T. House in the YVR Screen Scene Podcast hot seat. Back then, we spoke about her then-upcoming role in Julie and The Phantoms, #covidlife, stage acting vs. screen acting vs. architecture, the many ways CBC’s Strange Empire was ahead of its time, and why she stays in Vancouver. Since then, Marci has been busy in an array of projects. She lit up the stage in Harlem Duet, a performance that critics called “stellar” and “superb.” And in the critically acclaimed and absolutely thrilling eight-part series The Devil in Ohio, she played Adele Thornton, Suzanne's coworker who'd heard a few things about the darkness hiding in Amon County. She had a fantastic role in Tribal as Victoria Mann, a task force leader who spars with Brian Markinson’s Buke, and another as Charlotte, Bean’s mama, in Ivy and Bean. More recently, she’s been helming Monster High as Headmistress Bloodgood, and she had a powerful role in Rukiya Bernard’s poignant short film, Meditation 4 Black Women, which was created as part of the internationally renowned Crazy8s filmmaking competition. Marci also got a puppy named BiBi, a smol French bulldog with his own Instagram account, @bibilefrenchbouledogue. In this riveting and fun interview – which includes plenty of input from BiBi – Marci talks Monster High, Meditation 4 Black Women, her newfound passion for onesies, what actors lose when they can’t audition in a room, how far the industry has really come since the summer of “hashtag activism,” and the BiBi of it all. Episode sponsor: UBCP/ACTRA

lori lozinski is an acclaimed producer who works closely with some of our industry’s leading directors to bring evocative stories to the screen (among them: Elle-Maija Tailfeathers and Kathleen Hepburn). lori is also the director of A Motorcycle Saved My Life, a documentary short that ruminates on mental health, the often complicated relationship between parent and child, and how to negotiate a relationship with grief. In A Motorcycle Saved My Life, we learn how lori hit the road on the back of a motorcycle to reconcile past and present, and ultimately find the inner peace required in order to move forward. As she says in the documentary, “If you’re not present on a motorcycle, you’re going to die.” It’s a powerful film, rich with nuance and emotional resonance, that gives voice to taboo subjects – grief and mental health – while also serving as a kind of love letter to bike life. A Motorcycle Saved My Life rode the film festival circuit and, on May 15, it became available for streaming on the National Film Board of Canada’s site. In this thoughtful interview, lori lozinski reflects on her journey with grief and mental health on the back of a motorcycle. Episode Sponsors: Biz Books + The Drama Class

Dhirendra is an accomplished actor whose career spans all manner of characters and genres and continents. To contemporary audiences, Dhirendra might be best known as Imran, Sabi’s father on the groundbreaking and big-hearted CBC and HBO Max comedy Sort Of. Sort Of is one of the few series in the history of television with a gender fluid protagonist: Sabi Mehboob, played with courage and conviction by series creator Bilal Baig. Imran arrives from Dubai at the beginning of the second season to quote-unquote fix Sabi. It’s a role that could have easily been thankless and one-note: a villain with no empathy and nowhere to grow. But between the writing and Dhirendra’s nuanced performance, Imran is an avatar for many parents who love their kids even when they don’t understand them at all. Dhirendra’s lengthy list of credits includes The Bill, Casualty, Deadly Class, Da Vinci’s Inquest, Lego Jurassic World: The Legend of Isla Nublar, and the title character in the groundbreaking Jinnah: On Crime series about a brilliant crime reporter at a Vancouver newspaper. Dhirendra is also a foodie, a world traveller, a family man, a union man, and lover of stories. Join Dhirendra and Sabrina as they journey ’round the world and delve into Dhirendra’s wildly fascinating filmography, philosophy, and life. Episode Sponsor: UBCP/ACTRA

Actor Markian Tarasiuk has been busy: making rom-coms and thrillers; fielding acting nominations from leading industry organizations; working with Ukrainian Canadian organizations to preserve and promote Ukrainian culture during this war. In recent years, Markian has made a name for himself as a romantic lead in holiday rom-coms like Welcome to Valentine, A Homecoming for the Holidays, Wedding Cake Dreams, Christmas at the Golden Dragon, Our Italian Christmas Memories, the delightfully named Why Can’t My Life Be A Rom-Com?, and The Christmas Jars (for which he was nominated for a 2021 Canadian Screen Award for Best Lead Performance in a TV Movie). Late last year, he was nominated for Best Supporting Actor at the 2022 UBCP/ACTRA Awards for the thriller There’s Someone Inside Your House; the award ultimately went to Hollywood icon Eric McCormack of Will & Grace fame. In this fun and freewheeling conversation with Sabrina Rani Furminger, Markian talks rom-coms (and his fans, the Hallmarkians), nominations, activism, and navigating the industry as a Ukrainian Canadian during this devastating time. Says Markian: “I will not let Russia take away our Ukrainian joy.” Episode Sponsors: UBCP/ACTRA

What is Chinatown? That question and the myriad of emotions it invites sit at the heart of Big Fight in Little Chinatown, the stirring documentary film from Montreal-based filmmaker Karen Cho. The film explores the battles for survival currently being waged in four Chinatowns: in Montreal, Toronto, New York, and Vancouver. We meet the stewards of these Chinatowns, consider the role that Chinatown plays in building and sustaining community, and bear witness to the destructive power of urban development and its relationship to anti-Asian racism. As one of Karen’s interview subjects says in the film, “Are these neighborhoods that should be put under glass, or are these neighborhoods that should be able to grow and thrive and change?” Big Fight in Little Chinatown opens the DOXA Documentary Film Festival on May 4, where it will screen a mere stone’s throw away from Vancouver’s Chinatown, and will also enjoy a series of community screenings across the country. In this contemplative interview, filmmaker Karen Cho discusses her deeply personal journey with Big Fight in Little Chinatown, and why Chinatowns everywhere are worth the fight. Episode Sponsors: Biz Books + The Drama Class

Bring It On was a pop culture juggernaut from the moment it somersaulted into multiplexes back in 2000. Audiences loved the saucy, sarcastic, scheming, and stuntin’ squads battling for cheer supremacy at regionals, all leading up to that shining moment when the It of the title has been Brought and the cheer squads do their thing. More than two decades after that first film, the Bring It On ’verse continues with Bring It On: Cheer Or Die – and its director is none other than Vancouver filmmaker Karen Lam (Evangeline, The Curse of Willow Song). Bring It On: Cheer Or Die premiered on SyFy last October and is now available for free on Crave in Canada. The comedy slasher film takes some of the best qualities of the previous Bring It On Films – the quips, the flips, the regionals! – but this time, the Big Bad isn’t another squad trying to steal their routines but a masked assailant who wants to end their lives in increasingly creative ways. In this boisterous and contemplative conversation, Karen Lam talks gateway horror, cheer camp, traveling with cats, and the joys and challenges of making a slasher pic in the Bring It On ’verse. Episode Sponsors: Biz Books + The Drama Class

Few cultural phenomena of the 1980s were as as destructive or widespread as the Satanic Panic. The Satanic Panic led to arrests, ruined reputations, and more than 12,000 unsubstantiated reports of Satanic ritual abuse that were reportedly “recovered” via the now discredited practice of “recovery memory therapy.” While the Satanic Panic is now largely discussed with derision, there was a period in time when fear of devil worshippers was earnestly reported about on the nightly news – and Patient Zero for the Satanic Panic was a Vancouver Island woman named Michelle Smith. Michelle and her psychiatrist Dr. Lawrence Pazder collaborated together on a bestseller titled Michelle Remembers, which documented their unorthodox sessions in which Dr. Pazder used recovery-memory therapy to bring forth memories of Satanic ritual abuse. The wild story behind the book is detailed in Satan Wants You, the eye-opening documentary feature from Vancouver directors Steve J. Adams and Sean Horlor. Satan Wants You explores the story of our homegrown doctor and patient, the global moral panic they created and fed, and the ways in which their story is playing out once again. The film premiered to sold-out crowds at SXSW, and has its hometown premiere at the 2023 DOXA Documentary Film Festival. In this fascinating interview, Steve and Sean talk about Michelle, Dr. Pazder, the impact they had on the 1980s, and the disturbing similarities behind then and now.

Episode Sponsors: Biz Books + The Drama Class