CARDINAL Castmates Billy Campbell and Shawn Doyle Interview Each Other on Leading Roles, and Bad Guys Versus Good Guys

The fourth and final season CARDINAL, airing now on CTV, presents the most challenging case Detectives John Cardinal (Billy Campbell) and Lise Delorme (Karine Vanasse) have tackled. Viewers know what the detectives don’t – that local man Scott Riley (Shawn Doyle) has returned to his hometown to seek revenge from a tragic incident in his past that took place more than 20 years ago. Real life friends and castmates Billy Campbell and Shawn Doyle shared a candid conversation about their experiences working together in a virtual chat ahead of tonight’s game-changing episode of CARDINAL, airing at 10 p.m. ET/8 p.m. MT on CTV. Billy Campbell: Alright, I have to start this by admitting I completely forgot to tweet last [week’s] show! Sorry about that, Allie. Been plowing, and harrowing and seeding these last days, so my mind was elsewhere… spring on the farm! Plus, kids. Allie Page (CTV Communications): Shawn live-tweeted for us last [week], he was awesome. BC: Thanks for that, Shawn. And way to rub it in, Allie. Shawn Doyle: Jeeze man, take it easy with all the seeding and harrowing! Save some of the seeds for Christmas! Also, what is harrowing? BC: About any other scene in CARDINAL is harrowing. Also, it’s what you do to a field after ploughing and before sowing. Speaking of harrowing – bad guys. Do you have more fun playing them, or good guys, and why? And how does your CARDINAL bad guy stack up? SD: I guess it depends on the quality of the writing. There’s a lot of boring good guy AND bad guy roles out there…stereotypes. There’s nothing worse than having to come up with a gag or behaviour trait just to find a way to be interested in playing the same old clichés. But bad guys seem to offer more opportunities to have fun and take bigger chances, make bolder acting choices. BC: I feel much the same way. Your average bad guy simply has more options for behaviour, can come across as good, bad, anything in between, but a good guy is who he is. I’ll say this, if the writing is sub-par, I prefer the bad guy role but really, I prefer a well-written character, good or bad. It’s a silly distinction anyway. And a silly question. Sorry. SD: Don’t you think the best characters are just kind of…grey… with contradictory qualities and conflicting needs? Like real humans? BC: Absolutely. SD: As an example, what drew you to CARDINAL? I know you’re a voracious reader, so did you find the novels first? Was it the character or the premise that lit you up first? BC: I was entirely unaware of Giles Blunt’s books. It was the pilot script by Aubrey Nealon that hooked me. Don’t know about you, but I have an inner casting director who, more often than you’d guess, says ‘I wouldn’t cast me in this’. In which case I have trouble going on the audition or even taking an offered job. But with CARDINAL, I could see myself in the role as soon as I started reading, which has happened only a handful of times in my whole career. How about you, with this part in CARDINAL? SD: Scott is a treasure trove of a role because there’s a real motivation for why he is doing what he’s doing. And it was clear to me right away that my job was to find the sense of loss that drives him, NOT to try and act scary or something. Which meant trying to be vulnerable and honest. The biggest challenges we have. I loved it. And our director, Nathan Morlando kept encouraging me to find all that stuff. When you did Enough with JLO, you had to go to some dark places. Did you decide to keep a distance from her off-screen to help the onscreen chemistry? Or did you guys have a good connection so that you both felt safer to act all that violence? BC: JLO is a busy gal. Even while shooting a movie she’s running an empire, so keeping a distance kind of came naturally. I will say I think she comes off wonderfully, and I have to admit I faked my way through most of that picture. Except the violence. I was excruciatingly self-conscious much of the rest of the time, though. Apropos of that, Michael Caine, in his book on film-acting, says he often thinks of something entirely irrelevant during close-ups, like what he ate for lunch. Can you share any similar acting tips/tricks? Things the average audience member might find interesting or surprising…? (And you don’t mind my stealing) SD: A lot of my acting comes from this desperate place of “oh god, I don’t know if I can do this”. I’m talkin’ intense or emotional scenes. So I’ll pretty much always make a bit of a fool of myself by making strange sounds or shaking it all out in very unattractive ways or berating myself out loud (like, “Cmon Shawn, get your shit together!”) If I’m really nervous, I try to look closely at things on the set before action is called. It takes me out of my head. In close/ups that aren’t necessarily emotional, I like the challenge of trying to think what the character would actually be thinking. That doesn’t always work, I’m sure you’d agree. Then I try doing simple math problems in my mind. You ever try that? BC: I might if I could actually DO addition. I had to take a kind of remedial class in school called ‘Math Anxiety’. Which I dropped out of. SD: One of the great abilities YOU have is to be able to hold a close-up forever in a compelling way. You seem to have so much going on in your head, even if you’re not showing it. Your thoughts are so clear, even when they seem at odds with what’s coming out of your mouth. Are you aware of that process? Does it come from the writing or from what’s happening with your interplay with the other actor? Or is it all the above? BC: Not infrequently it’s just the empty eyes of a drowning man, as the underwater part of me furiously struggles to hide my panic from the camera. Not on stage, though. Theatre’s completely different for me. It’s all that rehearsal. Then you shove off with your shipmates, opening night, the energy of the audience in your sails, and… freedom! Is it the same for you? What’s your preference between film, theatre, and television, and why? Fave gig ever (aside from CARDINAL)? SD: I love theatre cause you spend a month REALLY exploring the play and the character and you try everything and make a total ass of yourself until something clicks (sometimes it never clicks) and then you get to go out night after night and try to find a better way to do it and the audience LETS YOU KNOW if you soared or crashed. It’s merciless! BC: Merciless, yes, but there’s a safety too. You get to try stuff, without the fear that the stupid choice you’re about to make will be stuck in amber. SD: Also, for real, CARDINAL is among my fave gigs of recent years. Great writing, great creativity, wonderful people. Next question: Do you find your handsomeness ever gets in the way of mundane life chores, like…eating breakfast or harrowing all those seeds? I’d be so distracted. BC: Oh f$%k off. And look who’s talking, anyway. SD: Ok, ok, the real question is: did you ever find you had to fight to be seen in a different way by casting directors when you were younger? Did they want to pigeonhole you? BC: OMG, yes. Nobody let me play a grown-up until I was, like, 40. I had kind of a baby-face, so I was always ‘the Nice Boyfriend’ or ‘the Good Guy’. It was actually the JLO movie cracked that for me, I think. Folks could see me as a ‘Man’ after that. And at a certain point I started leveraging a beard, which helped. My main acting skill is facial hair. It’s on my CV. What was the funniest thing you experienced on CARDINAL? Or the most touching? Or infuriating? Who was the most impressive lead male actor on the show? SD: Tom Rooney’s reaction to me showing him a video of his son dying in the cold was very real and I wanted to cuddle him instead of torture him. BC: He was so good! SD: … and I’m pretty sure I was the lead male actor of CARDINAL, so… BC: Hah! Well, you DID walk around town like you owned the place. What did you think of North Bay, btw? Did you eat at North Star Diner? What was your fave dish? Jeeze I love that joint. And as a native Newfoundlander, how do you find Northern Ontario? (And don’t say GPS) SD: I LOVED spending time in the woods and on the lakes in North Bay. That reminded me of where I grew up in Labrador. Very similar terrain and weather. It made me fantasize about a cabin in the middle of nowhere. I didn’t eat at that North Star Diner. Next time. Also, you CANNOT STOP talking about that place. You should buy a stake in it. BC: Buy a stake in it? I want to LIVE there, on a futon. Help out cleaning dishes. With my tongue. SD: Final question: What are we going to do together next? BC: Anything, pal. Anything at all. The sooner the better. <3 The penultimate episode of CARDINAL airs tonight on CTV at 10 p.m. ET/8 p.m. MT, in which Detectives John Cardinal (Billy Campbell) and Lise Delorme (Karine Vanasse) discover a secret from the past as they close in on the killer’s (Shawn Doyle) motives – and his identity.