Start Spreading The News: Jeff Perry is Making All The Tough Calls as Hilary Swank’s Editor in ALASKA DAILY

By BILL HARRIS Special to The Lede   Jeff Perry hasn’t screamed “stop the presses” yet. But it’s still early in the first season of ALASKA DAILY, so it might still be coming! Airing Thursdays at 10 p.m. ET on CTV, CTV.ca, and the CTV app, ALASKA DAILY stars two-time OSCAR® winner Hilary Swank as hard-nosed journalist Eileen Fitzgerald. Eileen’s boss at The Daily Alaskan – and the man who convinced her to come to Anchorage – is managing editor Stanley Kornik, played by Perry. “About 11 or 12 months ago, when we began this pilot, I had not, or I had barely ever, played a journalist, in decades of roles,” said Perry, a veteran actor with a lengthy resume, including his roles on GREY’S ANATOMY, SCANDAL, NASH BRIDGES, and MY SO-CALLED LIFE. “I had never even been in a newsroom.” So Perry did some research, including visiting The Anchorage Daily News, which is one of the real-life inspirations for the series. A reporter at that newspaper named Kyle Hopkins, In conjunction with ProPublica, wrote a Pulitzer Prize-winning series of articles, titled Lawless, that took a hard look at the alarming number of missing and murdered Indigenous women across the state. “I started to get a hit on how, for example, in Stanley’s job, you’re talking to the photo editor, then you’re talking to the guys who clean up the newsroom, then you’re talking to this person, and you’re talking to that person, you’re checking in on three ongoing stories, you’re looking at the layout of the print version, and you’re scrolling through the constant updates in the digital version online,” Perry said. “In a macro sense, someone like Stanley has overseen going from all print, to predominantly digital and online. Many newspapers have come very near extinction.” And therein lies the rub for Stanley. He is a very supportive boss for his journalists. He cares about telling the important stories, and doing the necessary investigative work. But he also is in charge of the pursestrings at the paper, and he has to answer to the publisher, so he simply can’t say “yes” to everything. “Sometimes newspapers are bought by big news conglomerates, and sometimes they’re acquired by a private family in what I’m sure is a time-honoured tradition of, ‘I really like newspapers, and I want your newsroom to be independent’ – but you’ve got to make $1 more than you spend,” Perry said. So Stanley has to be the bearer of bad news sometimes. At one point in ALASKA DAILY, a reporter’s phone rings, and when they look at the call display, they roll their eyes and say, “it’s Stanley – this can’t be good.” “Here’s the thing: some of your audience might also have been fans of SCANDAL, and after I played Cyrus Beene for seven years, Stanley is a relative Saint Francis of Assisi compared to Cyrus,” Perry said. “So whenever anybody is cross with him, or is disparaging of him, Stanley probably deserves it. It rolls off his back like water off a duck. Besides, I don’t take any of that personally.” The Stanley and Eileen characters in ALASKA DAILY previously worked together many years ago in Cleveland, but he didn’t back her up when the pressure mounted over a big story, and they had a falling out. Stanley is now determined not to let that happen again – especially with such an important and heretofore under-investigated story – and in many ways the give-and-take of Stanley and Eileen’s professional relationship is the foundation of the show. “I have been a mesmerized fan since Hilary’s first filmwork, and then to finally get to work with her has just been a big affirmation of that,” Perry said of Swank. “She just brings this reality to whatever moments she’s portraying. She has a lightning-fast brain and a ridiculous amount of skill and craft. And do you know what the challenge is? Sometimes I find myself just sort of sitting back, like a fan. It’s like you’re watching Michael Jordan, or Serena Williams. And then suddenly you go, ‘oh, I’m supposed to be in this game!’ But it really is joyful to watch her work.”   billharristv@gmail.com @billharris_tv