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Source: The Montreal Gazette - Saturday 2 June 2001

TV dreams

Three young Montrealers land big roles in major new TV series

BRENDAN KELLY The Gazette

PETER MARTIN, GAZETTE / Beating the odds: local actors (from left) Jay Baruchel, 19, Elisha Cuthbert, 18, and Andrew Walker, 21, will star in three prime-time TV series on U.S. networks this fall.

It is not supposed to be this easy. In an unprecedented coup for the local acting scene, three young Montrealers - Jay Baruchel, Elisha Cuthbert, and Andrew Walker - have landed important roles in coming U.S. network series. This time last year, Baruchel, Cuthbert and Walker were in the same boat as many other aspiring thespians around these parts. They'd worked on local TV productions, but really hadn't made much of a name for themselves in Toronto and even less so in Los Angeles. Now each is leading what Baruchel, 19, rather aptly calls "the most charmed life."

Hundreds of actors from across the continent descend on Los Angeles every spring for what's known in the business as "pilot season," the period when the studios and networks produce a large number of pilot episodes for potential series. Walker, 21, saved up $10,000 and drove down to L.A. in January in a beat-up 1988 Volkswagen Fox knowing full well that "the odds suck, the odds just aren't very good at all."

There are scores of actors vying for a small number of roles on these pilots and, worse yet, only a small percentage of the pilots will actually get picked up by the network and go to full series.

But Baruchel, Cuthbert and Walker beat the odds. They snared roles in pilots, and all three have been given the green light to become series this fall.

Baruchel has the lead role in Undeclared, a sitcom created by writer-producer Judd Apatow (Freaks and Geeks) and DreamWorks Television. Baruchel plays Steven Karp, a nerdy kid who figures he can reinvent himself as a cool guy now that he's a college freshman. The cast also includes hot young British actor Charlie Hunnam (Queer As Folk, Abandoned) and singer-songwriter (and Rufus Wainwright's father) Loudon Wainwright III, who plays Steven's offbeat dad. Undeclared is set to air on Fox this season on Tuesdays at 8:30 p.m., immediately following the hit That '70s Show.

Cuthbert, 18, landed a part in another Fox Network show, 24, an innovative thriller set in real time. The season's 24 episodes cover exactly 24 hours, with the time often shown ticking away at the bottom of the screen. Kiefer Sutherland plays a CIA agent trying to stop a plot to assassinate a presidential candidate and locate his missing teenage daughter, who is played by Cuthbert.

Walker is in Maybe I'm Adopted, a WB Network sitcom about an oddball family starring Julia Sweeney and Fred Willard. Walker plays the oldest sibling in this dysfunctional clan.

Montrealers, like Boston Public star Jessalyn Gilsig, have garnered roles on big-time U.S. shows before. But no one in the biz here can remember three up-and-comers winning significant Hollywood gigs in the same season.

Willie Mercer has never seen anything like it. Mercer has worked at the Just for Laughs festival for more than a decade and has helmed the Beverly Hills office of Rozon Mercer Management since 1996. Mercer sees this as a major breakthrough for Montreal. It is also an impressive hat trick for his company, which manages the three actors.

"I'm hearing from American casting directors and network and studio executives that they're really interested in the Canadian talent pool," Mercer said. "They think that it's a relatively untapped resource and that there are some really special actors in Canada. They feel that in the U.S., they've seen just about everything that's out there. They're more open to seeing Canadian talent and it just happened to be the year that we had three very strong young actors commit to being out in Los Angeles for pilot season. Everything came together at the right time. It was also the year that the networks were developing younger product."

The other plus for these young Montrealers is that they have a fair bit of experience for their age. The local English-language production scene has been booming for the past decade and Baruchel, Cuthbert and Walker are part of the first generation of actors who've had plenty of opportunity to hone their acting chops on quality local series.

"You take an 18-year-old from anywhere in the U.S. other than New York, Chicago or Los Angeles, what experience do they have?" Mercer asked. "Probably a bunch of high-school plays, maybe some commercials. If they're lucky, they'll have had a small role in something that was shot there one summer. You look at someone like Elisha or Jay, they graduate from high school and they have substantial feature and television credits."

Cuthbert, who hails from South Shore Greenfield Park, first came to local prominence as host of Popular Mechanics for Kids, which she did for three years during high school. Last year, she played the lead role as a gambling addict in the Alliance Atlantis-produced CTV movie Lucky Girl. Folks from Hollywood first noticed Cuthbert last summer at the Just for Laughs fest when she met with casting agents from a number of networks and studios. By the end of the festival, she had signed a deal with Fox, which led to the audition this spring for 24.

Cuthbert went to L.A. in January and was up for roles in several Fox shows. The determined Cuthbert insists she was always confident things would work out for her in Tinseltown. "I'm a very impatient person," Cuthbert said. "I really wanted it to happen fast. I was working really hard in L.A. to get something this pilot season. I had my chance with the Fox deal, it was getting me that much more in the door, and I said to myself: 'This is basically up to me.' If I want it, I have to work for it. It was very stressful, but it was fun at the same time. Auditioning is always hard. It's an art. You have to be strong to go into these auditions. You have to come out there feeling confident."

Baruchel didn't even have to knock on any studio doors to nab Undeclared. They called him. The casting people at Dreamworks had seen Baruchel in last year's Oscar-winning flick Almost Famous, in which he has a small-but-memorable role as an obsessive Led Zeppelin fan. The Dreamworks folks thought he looked perfect for the nerdy college kid in Undeclared. So he went to L.A. to audition and, soon enough, he was in rehearsals improvising the character with series creator Apatow. Like his character in Almost Famous, there is more than a little of the real Baruchel in the Undeclared role. "He's a thinly veiled version of me," Baruchel said. The actor from N.D.G. is still coming to grips with the notion that less than a year ago, he was a fairly miserable creative-arts student at Dawson College and is now starring in a Hollywood sitcom. "I have the best job in the world," Baruchel said. "I've had the most charmed life for the past year-and-a-half. My life has irrevocably changed because of these things and in a good way. I'm shocked. But I'm just so happy. God was smiling down on me."

Walker is, if anything, even more shocked than Baruchel by his good fortune. Last November, Walker, who lives with his family in Beaconsfield, surprised his parents one night at dinner when he announced that he was going to California to try his luck at pilot season. With his pal, Ryan Wilner, who co-starred alongside Walker on the Montreal-shot sitcom Radio Active, they headed across the U.S. in the dilapidated Volkswagen and, along the way, saved on hotels by crashing at the apartments of various friends of Walker's from his days as a college football player. The Fox's alternator died in Colorado, but a little car trouble didn't deter the two young Montrealers and they finally wound up in Los Angeles. Walker was flown to New York to test for the soap As the World Turns, but he didn't get the gig. Soon after, he auditioned for and nabbed the role in Maybe I'm Adopted. "When I found out I got the role, it was like something I never felt before," Walker said. "It was so much relief, like 100,000 pounds off my shoulders. I'm in this room and I'm like the 150th guy writing my name down on the list. They probably auditioned 200 guys for my role, just in L.A., and they cast another 200 guys in New York. So the odds aren't very good at all."

Karen Benzakein, who is the agent for the three actors, said they will continue to face some big challenges in the coming months, but she's confident they'll pull through thanks to their grounded personalities. "They all have great attitudes," Benzakein said. "I don't think that (the job) is what defines them. They have other sides to their lives and that helps." Baruchel has already filmed 13 episodes of Undeclared, while Cuthbert and Walker are set to begin work on 24 and Maybe I'm Adopted, respectively, sometime in July. Now the big question is how the shows will fare with viewers. "I don't know if I should think of it like making it to Major League Baseball or getting into the NFL, I'm going to take it as it comes, one day at a time," said Walker, echoing similar sentiments expressed by Cuthbert and Baruchel. "I'm just happy to be where I am right now. I'll never get this opportunity again."