Interview: Graham Abbey

Richard Ouzounian interviews Stratford veteran Graham Abbey (click to get personal and see the timeline):

"Relax, fellow Canadians.

"You can sleep securely as long as Graham Abbey is standing on guard for thee, which he will continue to do as agent Gray Jackson in the popular CBC TV series The Border, which starts its second season Monday at 9 p.m.

"Four years ago at Stratford, I described him as 'boyishly handsome.' Abbey is 37 now and he has a leaner, meaner edge to his appearance. Underneath, he remains the nice guy he's always been.

"It's early on a misty morning and Abbey has been working since 6:30 a.m. at the former Rochester Ferry Terminal, home base for The Border's production.

"'What have I learned about myself on this show?' he asks rhetorically on a break. 'That I can get up at 4:30 a.m. and still function.'

"The scene being shot today is a low-key, largely informational affair, but during the dozen takes, Abbey keeps tightly focused, snapping out his lines with just the right measure of casual tension, then relaxing as lights are reset and cameras adjusted.

"'For me, there's one basic thing that took getting used to,' says the veteran of nine seasons playing leading roles at the Stratford Festival.

"'It's that when you're performing in the theatre, it's dark and everyone disappears. Here on TV, when you're ready to go, suddenly 40 people with booms appear.'

"Throughout his career, Abbey has had a knack for learning where to seek the best counsel. In this case he turned to Colm Feore, who can play Coriolanus at Stratford or appear on the upcoming season of 24 with equal skill.

"'Colm gave me great advice,' recalls Abbey. 'He told me to remember that the actual size of the Festival stage is so intimate that you don't have to change your performance style that much from stage to screen.'

"Watching Abbey breaking hearts and taking prisoners as the complicated Gray Jackson in The Border, it's obvious he's learned his lessons well.

"The series is on one level an exciting drama about the people guarding the Canada-U.S. border, but it also manages to work a fair bit of social and political commentary into its scripts. Abbey enjoys that a lot.

"'This show presents a great forum for Canadians to debate and think about what that border means. Usually we hear the voices from the south, so it's nice to give voice to our point of view as well.'

"During the first season, Abbey mainly dealt with what he calls 'the action stuff,' which gave him enough to worry about.

"'I joked with the guys on the show that I spent 10 years learning how to fight with a sword, and now I have to learn how to carry a gun.'

"Having done a convincing job of that, Abbey has been rewarded by having the scripts delve more deeply into his personal life.

"'Nick Campbell has been brought on to play my dad, which is great. On stage, I learned from Bill Hutt. Here on TV, I'm learning from Nick. You don't get luckier than that.'

"This year he also gets a relationship with Grace Park (Battlestar Galactica).

"Abbey jokes, 'Hey, you even get to see my apartment. You look at the set they've designed for the first time, and you say, Oh, that's what my character is supposed to be like!'

"Besides dealing with the pressures of filming the second season of his first TV series, Abbey has had to deal with some major joys and sorrows in the past few months.

"The joys came in August, when he married his former Stratford colleague Michelle Giroux. 'We were very dear friends who finally fell in love and decided to get married,' says Abbey of the woman he's known for over a decade. 'I don't know what suddenly shifted in my mind, I can't explain it. All I'm sure of is that it was the right thing to do.'

"The story of their proposal is classic Abbey, combining romantic bravado with adolescent insecurity.

"'I thought Ireland would be a nice place to propose and I knew we were planning a trip there. So I bought the ring and carried it with me.

"'We climbed up this high mountain and looked down on this beautiful vista – it's where they shot Braveheart, actually – and all the way up I kept thinking, It's going to be a long walk down if she says no.'

"Fortunately, she didn't, and they tied the knot in August.

"Only a few weeks later, Abbey faced the loss of one of the main influences in his life. Richard Monette, who had been artistic director at Stratford during Abbey's time there, died on Sept. 9 at the age of 64.

"'So many of us have him to thank for our careers,' begins Abbey, his emotions held in check. 'I wouldn't be an actor if it wasn't for him. He brought me up there, he fought for me, he kept me there...'

"Despite his best intentions, his voice thickens and the tears start flooding his eyes. 'Damn it, I thought I'd be better at this,' he says. 'I always meant to thank him, really thank him, but those moments go by in a flash and before you know it, they're gone.'

"A small smile breaks through. 'He used to watch The Border and told me he was proud of me doing it. So I'd like to think this season is for him.'"

A Smattering of Reviews

Othello: The Tragedy of the Moor airs Sunday at 9pm on CBC. Check out what the critics are saying:

"The classic story of Othello is followed to a tee and traditionalists will not be disappointed. Yet the scenes are sharp and fast-moving — enough to enchant the unfamiliar. And even though the lines follow an old-school delivery, it isn’t hard to follow along once you decipher the 'thous' and 'thines.'

"Delivering a brilliant performance as the title character, Rota also executive-produced the project, which is his first-ever experience with Shakespeare.

"'I thought it was just such a huge bloody mountain to climb. I was going to leave it to people who knew better about it,'” he muses. 'Look at me — I’m in my late 40s and I’ve just done some Shakespeare.'

"Six months ago, Rota would have written Shakespeare off as 'mental.' Now, when asked if he would ever consider doing the real thing — act in a Shakespearian play — he says he would jump at the chance.

"It is hard to imagine the scheming-yet-lovable Yasir on Little Mosque or the elusive Morris O’Brian on 24 taking up the ominous role of Othello. But Rota’s deep, soothing voice and heart-wrenching scenes will leave you sympathetic and angry, not to mention mesmerized.

"Even more brilliant is Deslippe’s performance as the power-driven Iago, who will stop at nothing to wreak revenge on the unsuspecting Cassio for his recent promotion by the Moor. The perfect villain, Deslippe plays with the viewer’s emotions; he delivers soliloquies to the camera that invoke sympathy and then toys with the others’ fates with such chilling detachment that before you’re aware, you have a boiling bubble of hate in the pit of your stomach.

"Topping off the stellar trio is Horne and her performance as the love-driven Desdemona. Horne plays the part with interlaced innocence and charm, but the real enchantment is the conviction in her eyes — something a restricted theatrical version would never let the viewer experience.

"'We’ve made what I hope people view as a very healthy hybrid of stage and TV,' Rota explains. 'It’s a return for the CBC to a mandate that they haven’t really pursued in the last little while. I’m hoping that we’ll get a strong audience because it’s the perfect thing for this network.'"

-- Amber Dowling, TV Guide

"Rota usually projects a humorous self-awareness that should be all wrong for Othello, but turns out to be all right. He establishes authority without effort ('put up your bright swords') and seems very sure both of himself and of his love.

"Iago has to work very hard to crack that shell; some clever adaptation (by Matthew Edison and director Zaib Shaikh) makes it seem a longer, more varied and gradual process than it is in the theatre. The temptation takes place over a buffet-lunch; when the dam is burst, Othello finds an outlet in hacking away at a joint of meat.

"A terrible logic, unfounded but unstoppable, takes over the two scenes in which he abuses his wife as a whore. His last speech is left intact; in fact we hear it twice, at beginning and end. (The play is a flashback.) And with it we reach greatness. Rota lays out the facts of the case calmly, sanely, tormentedly; it seems he'll go quietly. And when he whips out his knife and kills himself, it's total shock. It's a long time since I've seen an Othello, on stage or screen, as good as this."

"The cast includes a posse of Stratford Festival veterans -- Graham Abbey, Peter Donaldson, Jonathan Goad-- who can colour and personalize the verse at any volume; Abbey is the best Cassio I have ever seen."

-- Robert Cushman, National Post

"'I wanted a challenge, and man, did I get one,' says Rota, who is best known for roles in the TV series La Femme Nikita, the superspy drama 24, and Little Mosque.

"'I plunged myself into Othello with great abandon,' he continues. 'The first day on set, I was going on about how the text was so wonderful, how it holds your emotions . . . and Peter Donaldson [a Stratford Shakespeare Festival veteran who plays Brabantio] was looking at me like, 'welcome to the party, pal - we've been here for years.'

"'I was nervous, to tell you the truth,' Rota adds, who got into acting relatively late in life, at age 30. "As an actor, you have an imposter syndrome at the best of times.'"

"Aurora, Ont.-born Christine Horne (The Stone Angel) plays Desdemona. Several Stratford Festival alumni are cast, including Deslippe (who plays Iago), Donaldson, Graham Abbey (Cassio) and Nazneen Contractor (Bianca).

"The writers also did not contemporize the language, remaining true to Shakespeare's words. Rota says he learned to speak Shakespearean English by listening to CDs in his car on a five-day road trip to Toronto from his home in Los Angeles.

"'We started rehearsals in the middle of January and when I started to mouth the words I thought I was doing a god-awful job,' Rota says. 'But with the help of fabulous actors like Contractor, I learned to make the words mine. That took a bit of doing since I have no formal training in it. But in the end, I took my own course.'"

-- Gayle MacDonald, The Globe and Mail

Othello on CBC Radio Tonight

Zaib Shaik's Othello: The Tragedy of the Moor will be broadcast on CBC Radio One tonight at 7:30pm.

The made-for-television adaptation stars Stratford Shakespeare Festival veterans Graham Abbey, Emma Campbell, Nazneen Contractor, Jonathan Goad, and Peter Donaldson.

It will premiere on CBC Television at 9pm Sunday.

Stratford Stars in Othello Sunday

Othello: The Tragedy of the Moor premieres on CBC Television this Sunday, June 15, at 9pm. It will also be broadcast on CBC Radio One this Friday, June 13, at 7:30pm.

Director Zaib Shaik co-wrote the script with Matthew Edison.

The cast includes:

GRAHAM ABBEY -- Cassio
EMMA CAMPBELL -- Emilia
NAZNEEN CONTRACTOR -- Bianca
MATTHEW DESLIPPE -- Iago
PETER DONALDSON -- Brabantio
JOHN GILBERT -- Duke
JONATHAN GOAD -- Montano
RYAN HOLLYMAN -- Roderigo
CHRISTINE HORNE -- Desdemona
CARLO ROTA -- Othello

It will, of course, be difficult to stand Jonathan Goad playing a third-string character after seeing his Iago last season, but we'll watch it nonetheless. And then go see The Music Man.

In the News: Graham Abbey

Queen’s University graduate Graham Abbey was snagged for an interview with the Kingston Whig-Standard in light of his recent air time in The Border (2007), which also features fellow former Stratford actor Nazneen Contractor.

But this is about the Kingston connection.

"Abbey, who graduated from Queen's in 1994, plays Det.-Sgt. Gray Jackson, whom the show's bio notes is a 'womanizer, gambler and all-round cowboy, with an athlete's body and an easy, amiable smile.'

"'I'm the Action Jackson character,' chuckles Abbey, referring to the '80s film character who was big on acting macho and fistfights.

"In the most recent episode ['Bodies on the Ground', which you can watch online], Jackson was shot at and nearly blown up by terrorists on the lam in northern Quebec. The week before, he was nearly taken out by some Albanian mobsters while going undercover as a gambler at a casino on a native reserve.

"'My mother asked me if there was going to be a week when I wasn't covered in blood,' he said.

"It may seem a far cry from Stratford, where Abbey spent [ten] years playing almost all the good parts there are for young men. He also played Macbeth, a role normally reserved for older actors. He left after the 200[6] season, looking for new acting mountains to climb, specifically, the world of TV and film. However, he hasn't given up Shakespeare altogether. He is currently rehearsing Othello for a CBC-TV production.

"Abbey is nonplussed about the move to TV.

"'Acting is acting. It all has to do with listening,' he said."

In his last season at Stratford, in Coriolanus (2006), Abbey had time to discuss the change with his co-star Colm Feore, who has found success both on the stage and on the screen. Feore told him that "theatre prepares an actor for film and television".

"'Stratford is such an intimate world. You're acting on a stage with the audience almost 360 degrees around you. The greatest acting on Stratford stages, people like John Hutt and Martha Henry, made it extremely intimate. I'd heard that stage actors have to turn it down for film and TV but I haven't found it a big leap,' he said.

"'Doing Shakespeare is like a three-hour marathon because you don't stop. In TV, it's sprints because you shoot the same scene seven or eight times from different angles.'

"At least he doesn't have as many lines to memorize. Even though he had a major role in the last episode, Abbey probably didn't have much more than a page of dialogue to memorize. You don't talk much when you're dodging bullets.

"'The TV world is so quick,' he said.

"'They make changes so you're getting your lines the morning of the shoot. You have to learn that stuff instantly and on the fly.'

"And there are some things that Stratford couldn't teach him - like guns and explosions.

"'The guns were a little daunting,' he said. 'They are real and loud. Usually, you wear flesh-coloured earplugs but I'm still pretty much a novice at it and when we shot the gunfight scene I forgot to wear mine. I was in pain because I couldn't hear.

"'And in a scene where a car gets blown up, I was only 20 feet (six metres) from the explosion. I was pretty worried about that one.'

"One thing that makes The Border unique is that its characters have all been given detailed back stories.

"Abbey's character, besides being a Young Turk, was also given up for adoption when he was young and has issues with his father.

"'You don't see this a lot in TV,' he said. 'They've given us nice deep stories and backgrounds. Coming from my Shakespeare background, if there weren't deep stories that would be a lot harder for me.'"

That's it for the Stratford connection. Continue reading if you're interested in other claims Kingston has made on the successful show.