{"id":145439,"date":"2018-01-11T03:08:51","date_gmt":"2018-01-11T08:08:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=145439"},"modified":"2018-01-11T03:08:51","modified_gmt":"2018-01-11T08:08:51","slug":"kristin-kreuk-on-weird-experience-of-making-new-cbc-series-burden-of-truth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2018\/01\/11\/kristin-kreuk-on-weird-experience-of-making-new-cbc-series-burden-of-truth\/","title":{"rendered":"Kristin Kreuk on ‘weird experience’ of making new CBC series ‘Burden of Truth’"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Kristin<\/a>
Kristin Kreuk (Photo by Gage Skidmore – Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0<\/a>)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

CANNES, France \u2014 Viewers have watched former \u201cSmallville\u201d and \u201cBeauty and the Beast\u201d star Kristin Kreuk grow up on television.<\/p>\n

The 35-year-old Vancouver-native has spent half her life in the spotlight. She was still a teenager when \u201cSmallville\u201d launched in 2001, making her an instant Comic-Con crush as Clark Kent’s girlfriend Lana Lang. After a dozen years as a CW ingenue, she finally felt like the grown-up on the set while making CBC’s \u201cBurden of Truth,\u201d which premieres Wednesday.<\/p>\n

Compounding that feeling is working opposite young actresses who were her age when she started out on \u201cSmallville.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cTo be around them, it feels like, ‘Oh God, your entire life I’ve been on a set,\u201d’ says Kreuk during a press tour in Cannes, where the series was being shopped internationally.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat’s a weird experience for me to own.\u201d<\/p>\n

These young actresses didn’t grow up watching \u201cSmallville,\u201d Kreuk points out, \u201cbecause they would have been three!\u201d<\/p>\n

The new hour-long drama is about a big city lawyer who tackles a troubling case that brings her back in touch with her small-town roots. The series was shot in Selkirk, Man., about 70 kilometres outside of Winnipeg.<\/p>\n

In a season-long storyline, Kreuk’s character \u2014 fast-rising corporate lawyer Joanna Hanley \u2014 is dispatched to the prairie town of Millwood to quickly shut down a case against a giant pharmaceutical company. Young girls at the local high school have come down with a mysterious illness causing uncontrollable seizures. Hanley is there, essentially, to buy off the victims and their families.<\/p>\n

The series was created by Brad Simpson, a story editor and writer who previously worked on \u201cRookie Blue\u201d and the short-lived Toronto cop drama \u201cKing.\u201d It was developed at eOne \u201cbut it wasn’t going anywhere,\u201d says seasoned executive producer Ilana Frank (\u201cSaving Hope,\u201d \u201cRookie Blue\u201d).<\/p>\n

Simpson, Frank’s stepson, relinquished the producer role and Adam Pettie (\u201cSaving Hope\u201d) was brought in as showrunner.<\/p>\n

\u201cI thought: this has got to be made,\u201d says Frank. \u201cKristin was already attached so some of the hard work was done already.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kreuk, also an executive producer, huddled with Simpson in the early going to define her character and continues that collaboration with Pettie.<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel like she’s a creation of all of us,\u201d says Kreuk, who sees the young lawyer as \u201ca little socially awkward \u2014 like me.\u201d<\/p>\n

Frank thinks of the series \u201cas a cross between ‘Friday Night Lights’ and a kind of (John) Grisham thing.\u201d The back-to-the-small-town storyline may remind some viewers of the drama \u201cEverwood,\u201d starring Treat Williams.<\/p>\n

\u201cI wanted it to be about the community,\u201d says Frank, \u201cbut I didn’t want people with straw out of their mouths. I wanted real people with real problems.\u201d<\/p>\n

The main problem in the first season is the mysterious illness inflicting the otherwise healthy high school girls. Representing the victims is Hanley’s former high school classmate, Billy Crawford (Peter Mooney from \u201cRookie Blue\u201d). Mooney, in real life, hails from \u201ca slightly bigger small town\u201d just south of Winnipeg.<\/p>\n

The Selkirk locals were \u201cwelcoming and wonderful,\u201d says Mooney. \u201cThey got over having a film crew in town fairly quickly.\u201d<\/p>\n

What viewers will slowly discover is that there was a reason the Hanleys abruptly left town when Joanna was 14; a secret that will take much of the season to become clear.<\/p>\n

\u201cEvery week,\u201d says Kreuk, \u201cyou will get another piece of the puzzle.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2014 Bill Brioux is a freelance TV columnist based in Brampton, Ont. While in Cannes, Brioux was a guest of Telefilm Canada and the Canada Media Fund.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

CANNES, France \u2014 Viewers have watched former \u201cSmallville\u201d and \u201cBeauty and the Beast\u201d star Kristin Kreuk grow up on television. …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":145471,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,106],"tags":[42745],"class_list":["post-145439","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","category-hollywood","tag-kristin-kreuk","mauthors-bill-brioux","mauthors-the-canadian-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145439","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=145439"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145439\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/145471"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=145439"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=145439"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=145439"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}