Paul Rabliauskas is Ready to Get The Pool Party Started With The Splashy Debut of ACTING GOOD

By BILL HARRIS Special to The Lede It won’t take viewers long to discern what the title means in the new comedy series ACTING GOOD, but star, co-creator, and Anishinaabe stand-up comedian Paul Rabliauskas was asked to explain it nonetheless. “It’s definitely something that I heard many times growing up, and it has been used in relation to me,” said Rabliauskas, whose new series – which is loosely inspired by his own life, and set in the fictional fly-in community of Grouse Lake First Nation in Manitoba  – debuts Monday, Oct. 17 at 10:30 p.m. ET/PT on CTV Comedy Channel. “It can mean different things.” For example? “Like, in the first episode, the Paul character comes back home, and he’s lying about how good he did while living in the big city of Winnipeg, and it kind of comes back to haunt him,” Rabliauskas said. “Where I grew up, it’s isolated, so people leave for the city. But if they come back, it could be something as simple as walking around with a new jacket. Everyone’s like, ‘hey, look at so-and-so, he’s acting good,’ you know what I mean?” In other words, acting good can relate to anything from achieving worldwide acclaim, to sporting a slightly different wardrobe. “Yeah – it just stems from, don’t be too big for your britches,” Rabliauskas said. “But it comes from a place of pettiness, too. One thing we wanted to show is that we definitely have this teasing culture back home. It can even apply to someone trying to break a bad habit, and people will be like, ‘oh, look at him, he’s acting good again.’ So there are many, many layers to the phrase.” It should be pointed out that the Paul character in ACTING GOOD – which also stars Pat Thornton, Cheyenna Sapp, Roseanne Supernault, Gabriel Daniels, Tina Keeper, Billy Merasty, and Avery Claudia Sutherland – is not a stand-up comedian. “Where is the truth, and where does the pretend stuff come in? Well, coming back home after things not going so well in the city is true,” Rabliauskas said. “We don’t have a high school where I grew up, so my parents moved me and my brother and sister to the city so we could go to school. My sister and brother moved back as soon as they graduated, but I stayed in the city because of, you know, comedy and girls. But every time I would break up with someone, or when the comedy wasn’t working, I would always end up back home with my tail between my legs. The community would always be there to support and help me, even if they were teasing the hell out of me for it.” One of the funniest elements in the first episode of ACTING GOOD is the scale by which the Paul character’s supposed success in the city is measured: how many swimming pools had he been in? “It has nothing to do with, did you get a nice place to live, or what kind of vehicle were you driving, or what kind of job did you have … it’s like, ‘you say you were in 14 swimming pools? Okay, that’s pretty successful,’ ” Rabliauskas said. “But it’s all lies from Paul, of course. There’s no way he swam in 14 swimming pools that summer. It would have been nice, though.” Wet or dry, Rabliauskas believes ACTING GOOD will appeal to viewers as both an inside look at a specific community, and also a show that will be funny to everyone, about an eccentric group of people living in close quarters. “There are a lot of things that are real, but also a lot of fictional things that we sort of embellished, for comedy’s sake,” Rabliauskas said. “This is such an isolated community, so all the houses are on the river, there’s forest, there are animals, dogs are running around, but we aren’t making a point of showing that – it just happens to be where we live. And sometimes the comedy kind of steers you in a different direction than you were expecting. “ But remember, even if ACTING GOOD is a big success, don’t start acting good, okay? “I think it’s a national thing – like, look at Nickelback,” said Rabliauskas, referring to the internationally successful Canadian rock band that sold more than 50 million albums. “They did absolutely nothing except to just be really good, to the point where they got too good. And then we didn’t like them anymore. That was so silly. They literally did nothing except just keep making music, but we were like, ‘okay, you’ve made millions in the States? Good for you. No. 1? Okay, that’s enough.’ So it’s not just part of my particular culture. I think it’s a Canadian thing, too.” billharristv@gmail.com @billharris_tv