The YVR Screen Scene Podcast

Beverley Elliott played Granny on ABC’s beloved fantasy series, Once Upon A Time – and while she’s still closely associated with Granny years after the series took its final bow, Beverley is so much more than that one role. Over the course of her three decades in showbiz, Beverley has appeared in more than 100 film and television productions, from 21 Jump Street , Danger Bay , and The Beachcombers...

Content warning : This episode contains discussion about sexual violence and rape. Listener discretion is advised. If you are a victim of sexual assault or know someone who needs help, please check the episode notes for resources. You are not alone. April Telek is an accomplished actress whose filmography includes comedy, science fiction, fantasy, and drama. She shone as Constance Fogg on CBC’s wo...

Last month, Vancouver's Rio Theatre updated its marquee with a bold declaration: “Screw the Arts: We’re a sports bar now.” The Rio had been closed since November 2020, when the Provincial Health Officer banned all events (while still allowing bars, malls, and restaurants to operate) – but on January 23, 2021, the Rio opened its doors for sports fans to watch hockey and whatever qualifies as sports...

What impact is the pandemic having on Vancouver’s indie film scene, and specifically on the ability for our fearless filmmakers to share their stories? What have we lost, and what, if anything, have we gained? What does the future hold for the indie scene? In this special episode of the YVR Screen Scene Podcast, Sabrina brings these big questions to indie filmmaker Kashif Pasta. Kashif is an award...

Why is Vancouver actor John Emmet Tracy regularly called upon to portray duplicitous, sinister, and evil characters? His lengthy filmography includes poisonous characters like August Cartwright on Batwoman and Enzo Lambert on iZombie , and cunning characters like lawyer Ellis Steele on Yellowstone and Pallas on Olympus . Perhaps he’s so often cast as the villain because he inevitably infuses these...

Vancouver actress Teryl Rothery brings deep-seated humanity to every role she takes on, whether she’s playing a kind and capable military doctor ( Stargate SG-1 ) or the sexy actress in a Northern California town who sets her sights on the town doctor ( Virgin River ). Teryl’s lengthy filmography includes memorable roles in dramas (including Chesapeake Shores and The Good Doctor ), Christmas movie...

Sarah Dugdale plays Lizzie on Virgin River , Netflix’s wildly popular dramatic serial based on the books by Robyn Carr. Virgin River follows Mel, a Los Angeles ER nurse who heads to the picturesque North California town of Virgin River after experiencing massive trauma in her life. There, almost despite her best efforts, she finds connection, comfort, and all manner of L-O-V-E with its residents....

Rekha Sharma played Tory Foster on Battlestar Galactica and Commander Landry on Star Trek: Discovery – both phenomenal roles for a Fijian Indian Canadian woman who grew up watching Lieutenant Uhura on Star Trek and dreaming of a career in showbiz, despite the fact that there weren’t a lot of people who looked like her working in the film and television industry. But Rekha made it happen, and in th...

Millions of viewers around the world know Lorne Cardinal as Sergeant Davis Quinton on Corner Gas, the iconic television series turned record-breaking movie turned cartoon – and while Corner Gas is the stuff of legend and Davis is an essential part of it all, Davis doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface in revealing who Lorne is as an artist and human being. Lorne is an actor, a writer, a direct...

Millions of viewers around the world know Lorne Cardinal as Sergeant Davis Quinton on Corner Gas, the iconic television series turned record-breaking movie turned cartoon – and while Corner Gas is the stuff of legend and Davis is an essential part of it all, Davis doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface in revealing who Lorne is as an artist and human being. Lorne is an actor, a writer, a direct...

Andy Hodgson is a cinematographer-producer who made his directorial debut in 2020 with El Color Negro , a short film that explores the concept of the colour black. Is it a colour? An idea? What does Blackness mean in this historic moment? Andy drew inspiration for El Color Negro from his experiences as a Black man in a country that was built on a foundation of white supremacy, as well as the exper...

When Agam Darshi visited the YVR Screen Scene Podcast in 2019, she was preparing to embark on the adventure of a lifetime: to Sri Lanka, to film a pivotal role in famed director Deepa Mehta’s Funny Bo y. Funny Boy is an adaptation of Shyam Selvadurai’s 1994 novel about Arjun, a young Tamil boy from a wealthy family navigating hate against two key aspects of his identity: his sexuality and his ethn...

Award-winning actress and friend-of-the-podcast Camille Sullivan discusses her jaw-dropping performance in Shawn Linden’s chilling feature film, Hunter Hunter – including how a thriller about fear and predation speaks to this historic moment, acting opposite Devon Sawa, and her experience filming that much-talked-about ending. Also: navigating COVID-19; Gabrielle Rose; a revealing round of Favouri...

From July 21, 2020: “ Pop the champagne! The YVR Screen Scene Podcast is officially 100 episodes old – and for this epic podcasting milestone, we assembled an epic group of epic past guests for one epically epic episode (deserving of ALL of the “epics” in the preceding sentence): Amanda Tapping , Michael Eklund , Nicole Oliver , and Sharon Taylor . Over mid-morning, midweek mimosas, this remarkabl...

Brendan Taylor is a lot of things: a busy actor whose filmography includes Fargo , Supernatural (Officer Doug Stover!), The Magicians , and Firefly Lane (AKA one of the most highly anticipated series of 2021), as well as more than 110 commercials; an art department veteran who dressed sets on Battlestar Galactica and served as production designer on the critically acclaimed independent feature, Da...

The wait is over: NarcoLeap is finally back for season two. Here’s how Sabrina described NarcoLeap when it dropped its first season in 2018: “NarcoLeap is fun. It’s suspenseful. It’s action-packed. It’s female-driven. It’s empowering. In other words, it’s the kind of sci-fi journey that this topsy-turvy world needs right now: pure… escapism with a big, beating heart. Created by Kate Green, the hig...

Laura Mennell is a mystery. Sure, the Vancouver actress shines bright in all manner of roles, but who is she, really? Is she more like Nina Theroux, the character she played on Alphas who could override willpower in others and push people into doing whatever she asked of them? Is she more like Thelma Harris in The Man in the High Castle , a Nazi American journalist who was arrested for her affair...

Veteran director Carl Bessai collaborated with 17 remarkable women in Los Angeles, New York, and Toronto to create In Her City . The feature film presents 17 vignettes that are drawn from the collaborators’ lives as 20-something urban-dwellers. Every person’s experience of their city is wholly unique, and how each story is told is different – and yet the fact that these women are all striving to l...

An Introvert’s Guide to High School is a lot of things: a dark comedy; a study in teen culture and the pressures that parents and society place on teens as they near the end of high school; a manifesto for introverts; and a lot of fun. Woven into this feature film about a group of high school students in an SAT prep class and all of the internal and external pressures they face are puppets, street...

Ali Liebert won a Canadian Screen Award for her nuanced portrayal of queer icon Betty McRae on Bomb Girls – but Betty is only part of Ali’s story. As a teen, Ali pursued musical theatre dreams and sang “Papa, Can You Hear Me?” at the Pacific National Exhibition. In the years since Betty, Ali has appeared in all manner of indie, big budget, and network projects, from BH90210 to Mech X4 to Ten Days...

Women are vastly underrepresented in the visual effects part of the film and television industry, especially in key creative positions. In 2019, women only accounted for six per cent of visual effects supervisors ­– which is truly egregious when you consider that women make up nearly half of all film school graduates. The talent is there. Women just need the opportunity to get their foot in the st...

YVR Screen Scene presents the Screen Scene Society Podcast. Each episode, co-hosts Christian Sloan ( The Black Tapes , See ) and Sabrina Furminger ( The YVR Screen Scene Podcast ) watch a new-ish film or television project with special guests from the film industry, and then podcast all about it. In Episode Three, Christian and Sabrina invite actor Ben Cotton into their time-traveling phone booth...

Jessie Anthony is the filmmaking force behind Brother, I Cry. The feature film follows Jon, a young First Nations man, as he struggles to overcome addiction and avoid the multiple warrants out on him. Brother, I Cry – which won the Audience Choice award at imagineNATIVE and earned Jessie the award for Best BC Emerging Filmmaker at the 2020 Vancouver International Film Festival – is a story about f...

This episode contains not one but two fascinating interviews with fearless multidisciplinary creators. In the first act, filmmaker Mayumi Yoshida and singer-songwriter Amanda Sum talk about their music video for GROUPTHINK . The video – which was directed by Mayumi and filmed in summer 2020 – is in actuality a thought-provoking, evocative, and fanciful short film that explores ideas around identit...

Suanne Braun portrayed the goddess Hathor on Stargate SG-1 . Hathor was a Villain with a capital V who used everything at her disposal – including über-powerful pheromones – to get what she wanted, be it civilizations to fall at her feet or men as big-brained as Jack O’Neill to obey her every command. Hathor, according to character Dr. Daniel Jackson, was the Egyptian goddess of fertility, inebrie...