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  Where You've Seen Tanja: Recently, this blonde, blue-eyed, Vancouver-native burned-up the
silver screen with the Wayan Brothers in Scary Movie and Freddie Prinze, Jr. in Head Over
Heels. She also garnered roles on the television series Relic Hunter, Don't Look Behind You,
Perfect Little Angel, Sweet Deception, The Immortal, the KISS horror-spoof Millennium
and First Wave. What's Next For Tanja: A supporting role in the indie film Sanctimony
with Casper Van Dien and two lead roles opposite Judge Reinhold in The Meeksville Ghost,
shot in location in South Africa. Words To Live By: "I'm a high stakes kind of woman.
It's all or nothing for me."
Coffee With ... By Don Fiorvento 09-27-01
When Tanja Reichert landed a recurring role on the TV series
Relic Hunter and moved to Toronto, I feared the worst.
While Starbucks is gaining in popularity in Canada’s biggest city, true Torontonians
remain loyal to Tim Horton’s. Friends in the city had already immersed me in the Horton’s
culture, so when Reichert said that she’d like to meet at Starbucks in Yorkville, home
to the Toronto International Film Festival, I breathed a sigh of relief. Reichert had
not forgotten her West Coast roots.
As we sit on a patio near a water fountain, Starbucks cups in hand,
Reichert admits it has been somewhat difficult adjusting to Toronto. She
finds it more difficult to meet people than back home in West Vancouver.
And although she has appeared in films such as Head Over Heels and Scary Movie, and
TV shows Beggars & Choosers, Poltergeist and Millennium,
she is obviously, based on the reaction of people passing by, not yet a recognizable
face to most. In fact, more people are paying attention to
those wearing tags as they scurry in and out of meetings or screenings
relating to the film festival, which had just opened a day earlier.
But that should all change in the upcoming months now that Reichert has
landed a recurring role in Relic Hunter, which airs on the Space Channel in Vancouver.
Her character, Karen Petrusky, is a new student secretary and assistant to history
professor Sydney Fox (played by Tia Carrere).
Petrusky keeps Fox’s character up to date on happenings at the university,
as the adventuresome professor heads off on trips to find the world’s
most intriguing and eclectic icons and artifacts. Reichert describes the
show as Indiana Jones meets Xena, Princess Warrior.
The 24-year-old landed the role and a three-year contract in May
after auditioning in Los Angeles, and quickly moved to Toronto as
shooting of the show’s 22 annual episodes started in May and runs
through February. “It’s honestly the first opportunity I’ve had to
develop a character over a long period of time since Meeksville Ghost,”
a movie shot in South Africa in summer 2000.
Reichert admits the schedule and love have made it a little more difficult
to meet people in Toronto. She works, exercises, reads and flies back
to Los Angeles as often as possible to be with her boyfriend, a record
producer she won’t name and will only reveal that he has produced a
Meatloaf record and a lot of R&B.
She met him through a mutual friend in February, after returning to LA
from West Van to audition for more roles. In fact, she won the role of a
young bride in Hostage Rescue Team, a show cast in LA but shot in Vancouver.
Unfortunately the series, based on a division of the FBI, didn’t make it
past the pilot.
There is a twinkle in Reichert’s eye when she talks about her boyfriend.
She was 23 and he 34 when they met.
A bit of a workaholic, her boyfriend is arriving in Toronto tonight, she
notes, with work in tow. They’ve jokingly discussed life for her after Relic Hunter.
“My boyfriend has this idea to do a cooking show in a bikini
and I’d have assistant monkeys getting me things. I’d be cooking healthy
snacks and providing fit tips in between. “I’d be like this fitness icon,”
Reichert adds with a devilish grin. “There really isn’t a cooking show for young people.”
She notes it would be a “wholesome bikini look,” and her goal is to do the show in Vancouver.
“I like Toronto but I’m a West Coast person.”
The former aerobics instructor and self-confessed fitness nut says
that she likes to cook everything from salmon to Chilean Sea Bass, to
spinach salad and smoothie shakes with Spirotein.
But Reichert also wants to have children when her Relic Hunter
contract is up. “I think it’s a biological thing. I want to have
children before I’m 30,” she says matter of factly.
She also wants balance in her life.
With a young family, the cooking show may not be realistic, but Reichert says a small
recurring role on a show such as West Wing would keep her happy.
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