June 29 – July 5: Crave Weekly Streaming Overview
Darla Contois and Lisa Edelstein Reflect on LITTLE BIRD as it Wraps Up Alongside the Debut of Companion Doc COMING HOME
By BILL HARRIS
Special to The Lede
The big impact of LITTLE BIRD continues on Friday, June 30, with the debut of the climactic sixth and final episode of the Crave Original drama.
That coincides with the premiere of COMING HOME (WANNA ICIPUS KUPI), a 90-minute companion documentary, providing historical context about the tragic policy now known as the Sixties Scoop, through which Indigenous children were removed from their families.
Two of the stars of LITTLE BIRD – Darla Contois, who plays Bezhig Little Bird, and Lisa Edelstein, whose character Golda Rosenblum adopted Bezhig and changed her name to Esther – took part in an interview where they discussed the series, the importance of telling this story, and their relationship, both on-screen and off-screen.
Q: LITTLE BIRD addresses a very serious subject matter, and we’ll get to that momentarily. But let’s start off with something much lighter, in terms of the actual making of the show. What was it like playing characters who are living in 1985, with the clothes, and the hair, and all the smoking?
CONTOIS: “I think for me, one of the most irritating parts was that most of the clothes were very itchy. But the fun part of it was feeling like I was traveling back in time when I was on set.”
EDELSTEIN: “My least favorite part of remembering the ’80s were the nylons. Because they’re not healthy. They’re just not a healthy thing to wear. But I also smoked a lot of fake cigarettes. I was coughing a lot. But it was fun because there are so many gestures that come along with it that really don’t belong anywhere else in life. It’s not just the hands, it’s the way you stand, you sort of slump a little bit. And it’s very private – you create a smoke screen. There are a lot of social dynamics that come along with smoking that you have to get rid of when you quit smoking.”
Q: On to more serious things, what was your personal knowledge of this subject heading into LITTLE BIRD?
EDELSTEIN: “For me, I had never heard of the Sixties Scoop. Growing up in the States, we don’t have a phrase like that, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen there. I think a lot of very similar things happened in the States. But it was a very quick learning curve for me, and very shocking. It really set me on a different course, where it’s not that I feel like now I know, I feel like now I know how little I know. So it was an important experience for me, very profound.”
CONTOIS: “It’s personal to my family’s history, in that my dad is a Sixties Scoop survivor. But coming on to the set, admittedly, I didn’t really know that much, because I went to the same schools as every other Canadian went to, so I didn’t learn about that stuff. They didn’t teach it, so everything I knew was just the little tidbits I got from my family. So I really learned a lot about the specific details of what happened.”
Q: It has been interesting to watch the dynamic between your two characters. Yes, they have reached a crucial crossroads, but we also have to believe they’ve been together, one raising the other, for 20 years.
EDELSTEIN: “And loved each other. I think, you know, like any acting job, you have to be willing to love the person you’re working with – you absolutely have to find that. And it was easy for us. We actually met on Zoom, because I was in the States. So we didn’t really get to know each other beforehand, and the first time we worked together was the huge party scene (in Episode 1). So we had to sprint. But we fell into a really easy rhythm.”
CONTOIS: “It was really easy to admire Lisa. In her work, she’s incredible. She’s so brilliant. And I think that being a mother myself, and also having a really close relationship with my own mother, I understood that’s the way you have to look at your mother, like she’s the most incredible person in the entire world. That’s how Esther initially looks at Golda. And Lisa, thankfully, is one of the kindest, most wonderful people I’ve ever gotten to know. So she made it easy to be close to her, and get to know her, and feel her as my mother on screen.”
EDELSTEIN: “And my day is done (laughs).”
Q: Finally, what do you hope people take away from LITTLE BIRD?
CONTOIS: “I think for me, the thing that I want people to understand is the gravity of each individual story that happened here. And to this day, families are still recovering, and healing, and trying to put their families back together. It’s a part of our collective work as Canadians to support and be there, because we are all a part of this history.”
EDELSTEIN: “I feel like you can’t create a different future without acknowledging the past. And I think the whole purpose of storytelling, and being a storyteller, is doing things like this. It’s so deeply fulfilling when you know that you’re serving more than just entertainment. And I just hope it can create a cultural shift.”
billharristv@gmail.com
@billharris_tv
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