Meg Tilly-Bombshells

 Of women, bombshells and a world at war

Meg Tilly was living happily as a wife, mother and novelist on Vancouver Island — until she told her agent she’d like to dabble in acting again.

What she had in mind was the occasional play, she says — such as the role of Martha in “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” that she did at Victoria’s McPherson Playhouse last summer.

The last thing the Oscar-nominated (for Norman Jewison’s “Agnes of

God”) actress had in mind was committing to a series on the other side of the country.

But when she read for “Bomb Girls,” she says, she was hooked almost immediately by the script and by co-producer Adrienne Mitchell’s directing style.

“I had no intention of doing film or TV,” she says. “When I thought of TV I didn’t expect — even in film, lots of times you don’t get directors who have deep, deep insight into the characters.

“By the time we finished, I was so happy I had gone, because I met somebody who I thought was an incredibly talented director, who gave me a deeper understanding of the character.”

The series, debuting Wednesday, Jan. 4, on Global Television Network, tells the story of a group of women working in a munitions plant in Toronto during World War II.

The story opens in 1941, when women were being hired en masse to staff Canadian munitions plants being set up to replace the ones that had been bombed in England.

“If it hadn’t been for our munitions factories, Britain would have fallen,” Mitchell says. “When we start our series, that factory has been in service for only about five months.”

Tilly plays Lorna, a 40-something shop matron who has to ride herd on an assembly line staffed by inexperienced young women.

The large ensemble cast includes Jodi Balfour, Charlotte Hegele, Ali Liebert and Anastasia Phillips as the women on the line; Peter Outerbridge (“ReGenesis,” “John A: Birth of a Country”) as Lorna’s embittered World War I veteran husband; and Antonio Cupo as a factory worker who is banned from joining the armed forces because he was born in Italy.

The series was created by Mitchell and Janis Lundman, best known for co-producing the dark, stylish cable drama “Durham County.”

“It was an incredible time,” Mitchell says. “Women went from extremes.

The transition they made in entering the work force was incredible.

“Suddenly they were thrust into a situation where they had their husbands’ and sons’ lives in their hands. And the responsibilities, the sacrifices they had to make, and the thrill of having this kind of responsibility and freedom that they never had — it’s an incredible world to explore.”

“Bomb Girls” follows the rush to replicate the “Mad Men” formula of stylish nostalgia blended with social commentary, which saw the experiments last fall with “The Playboy Club” (now canceled) and “Pan Am” (at this writing rumored to be on its way out).

However, unlike those series, and like “Mad Men,” this taps into something fresh and real. “Bomb Girls” is a story whose time is long overdue. This may be one of the last great, unexploited dramas of World War II.

Also, like the 1960s, the ’40s were a period of great upheaval and great energy, when many of the social rules were being rewritten, particularly about gender relations.

“It was a real culture shock for both genders,” Mitchell says. “If it hadn’t been for the women’s work force, those munitions factories wouldn’t have been up and running, and those bombs wouldn’t have been made.

“Yet the men couldn’t believe it. They couldn’t believe these women could do the job. It was mind-blowing to them.”

And Tilly’s character, Lorna, is right in the middle of it. She has a husband who is disabled and two sons who are fighting overseas. And she has suddenly been ripped from her home and thrust into a world she finds exciting and frightening at the same time.

“Women came from all over Canada to work in these factories,” she says. “Normal was you were born in a town. You were raised in the town. You were married in the town. And you died in the town.

“It was a challenging time, but it was a wonderful time, and some women have said those were the happiest years of their lives, because they realized what they were capable of, and it busted preconceptions of what a woman could do.”

Tilly admits that her situation isn’t completely removed from Lorna’s.

She’s a successful writer with four novels for young adults published and a screenplay in the works. Yet, like a lot of women with grown children, she’s re-entering the work force — as an actor.

“I guess I’m not primarily anything now,” she says. Then, she adds with a laugh: “You know what? I’m primarily Meg.

“The overwhelming sense I had when I was shooting ‘Bomb Girls’ is, ‘Oh it’s so much more fun this time around.’ ”

Candid Candice Olson

Olson’s makeover show returns with a more candid Candice When the hit design series “Candice Tells All” returns for its second season Thursday, Jan. 5, on W Network, fans will recognize the show’s popular home makeover format but with something new: a more candid look at host Candice Olson.

“We always like to keep things new and fresh, and this year, we’ve really tried to peel back the layers of the onion in all respects, all the trials and tribulations, the ups and downs, the kittens and puppies right down to all the stinky stuff that goes into every makeover,” Olson says.

“We give a little bit more of a look at what makes me tick.

“I don’t want to say ‘reality,’ because it’s not like I’m Snooki or anything. But after several years of looking at these more personal ‘outtake’ moments, the producers just decided, ‘Why don’t we just include these as part of the show?’ ”

The first episode also reflects the merits of sticking with what works while adding fresh new touches, as Olson tries to help a couple of new parents who want to brighten up their relentlessly monochromatic master bedroom.

“They were sort of pattern- and colorphobes, which you get all the time, because a lot of people are afraid that if they make a bold statement it’s something they’ll get tired of,” Olson says. “But you can go with everyday patterns that are familiar and that make you comfortable, which is what keeps you from getting tired of it.

“You can experiment with the color palette or the scale, but as long as the pattern is rooted in something classic, it seems familiar, just reinterpreted in a fresh, new way.”

Doc Martin-Changes in the Wind

WHATS-ON-IN-VANCOUVER

 Doc Martin- Changes in the Wind

Time often seems to stand still in Portwenn, the sleepy Cornish village that serves as a backdrop for “Doc Martin,” but change is in the wind as the fifth season of the hit comedy unfolds.

The biggest change, of course, is that Dr. Martin Ellingham, the curmudgeonly title character played by Martin Clunes, is now fumbling his way through fatherhood following the birth of his son with his on-again, off-again partner, Louisa Glasson (Caroline Catz), which opens up new storylines for the show, currently airing Wednesdays on Vision Television.

“It opens a whole new side we could show that is private, which is what the doc has with his son,” Clunes says. “I don’t want to sound like a typical gushing actor, but Caroline is such a joy to work with, and without a doubt my favorite scenes are the ones we do together as we chart this limping distortion of a relationship that they have.

“That’s definitely the most fun that I have on the show, and to add the child to that dynamic is also great fun.

“We’ve always been so aware that we could just repeat ourselves over and over again, so we’ve been almost subconsciously taking pains to keep that relationship fresh at all costs. It’s also just fun to have a baby on the set – 12 of them, actually, because you can’t work them that hard.”

Longtime fans also will note that Martin’s crippling fear of blood – a running gag that was addressed at length last season, when he eventually managed to get his queasiness under control – is no longer a prominent part of the series. “But who knows what’s going to happen in season six?” Clunes teases.

Among the other big changes are the addition of Eileen Atkins, a new series regular as Martin’s brusque aunt, Ruth Ellingham, who comes to Portwenn for the funeral of her sister, warmhearted Joan (former series regular Stephanie Cole), Martin’s surrogate mother, and the departure of comedy favorite Katherine Parkinson (“The IT Crowd”) as Martin’s kooky receptionist, Pauline.

“Katherine just didn’t want to do it anymore, but with Stephanie we kind of reached the end of the rail with her character,” Clunes explains.

“There just wasn’t much more we could do with it, whereas there was a lot more we could do with Dame Eileen, and having another Ellingham- type character.”

That’s putting it mildly. For any show to land an actress of Atkins’ stature in its fifth season is a major coup, but Clunes says the actress didn’t need a lot of arm-twisting.

“Actually, we just asked, and she said yes,” he says, laughing. “She didn’t know the show, frankly. She’s someone who really likes her job.

For all the years of service she has put in, she still has a curiosity and an appetite for the work, which is probably why she is so good and interesting. She also really likes Cornwall, and all her friends told her, ‘Oh, it’s great; you really want to do that.’ So she watched, I think, the first two seasons back to back and loved what she saw.

“She came down, and she could not have been more fun. She said, ‘Find me a nice cottage, and I’ll come down for the whole time.’ A lot of the actors come up and down from London as and when they’re needed.

Eileen really mucked in, and she loved the crew.”

Martinez Dancing Champ

 

‘Dancing’ champ Martinez reigns over 123rd Rose Parade On Monday, Jan. 2, the 123rd Tournament of Roses Parade airs from Pasadena, Calif., on several networks, including NBC, starting at 11 a.m. ET. This year’s theme of the event — which features marching bands, equestrian teams and 43 lavish fl oats, covered only in flowers and other organic materials — is “Just Imagine … .”

Each year, the parade also features the Rose Queen and her court, along with special guests and a grand marshal, who for 2012 is the most recent “Dancing With the Stars” champion, Iraq War Army combat veteran J.R. Martinez. The 28-year-old — also featured as one of the Men of the Year in People magazine’s 2011 Sexiest Man Alive issue — suffered severe burns over more than 40 percent of his body in 2003 from a land mine in Karbala, Iraq. He spent more than two years in the hospital and underwent more than 30 surgeries before beginning a new career as a motivational speaker and as an actor on ABC’s “All My Children.”

Last fall, Martinez joined the cast of ABC’s “Dancing With the Stars”

with professional partner Karina Smirnoff and went on to beat out talk show host Ricki Lake and reality star Rob Kardashian for the mirror-ball trophy.

“It’s been amazing,” says Martinez, calling in just after doing an interview with CNN anchor Anderson Cooper. “It was great to get the trophy and to have that with me, but at the same time, I think the biggest trophy that I get out of this whole experience is the feedback that I get from people, saying, ‘Man, thank you so much, how you made me look at life. You made me want to be a better person. You made me want to really go after the things I want to go after.’ ”

As to what he thinks his victory meant for others like him who have suffered disfiguring injuries, Martinez says, “I think, for people who have some sort of disfigurement, whether minor or major, it’s shown them you are still beautiful, you still can be beautiful. Part of that is accepting yourself.

“Once you get over that obstacle, and you’re able to say, ‘This is me; I’m not going to worry too much about trying to be the old me or go back to the old me; I’m just going to accept me for me now and find ways to make it worth it with what I’ve been given.’

“The fact that I’m able to show people that I’m comfortable in my own skin, I’m happy in my own skin, I’m confident in who I am, I’m still attractive — I think it gives people out there a source of inspiration. Quite honestly, the truth is, it’s not just people that have scars on the outside; it’s people that have scars on the inside that we, every day, don’t see.

“Unfortunately, for them, they feel that they’re not beautiful.”

Martinez heard he was chosen as the Tournament of Roses Parade grand marshal through emails from his publicist, Cynthia Snyder, and a “Dancing” producer.

“Initially,” he says, “being a football fan, my first reaction was, ‘Oh, my God, this is so cool, I get to go to the Rose Bowl.’ My priorities were straight! That’s what I was excited about. But then when I started to hear about the parade … I’d seen the parade a couple of times growing up as a kid, so I knew what it was. It’s probably the only parade my mother is familiar with, because it actually shows in other countries.

“Talking to Cynthia, I would say, ‘Is it really something big?’ And Cynthia would say, ‘Absolutely, this thing is huge.’ The fact that they chose me is a tremendous honor, but I fit. The theme of this is ‘Just Imagine …’

“And 8 1/2 years ago, all I could do is just imagine. Then you can go back even 25 years ago, all I could do is just imagine. Twenty years ago, 10 years ago, eight years ago, even four months ago, before I joined ‘Dancing With the Stars,’ all I could do is just imagine.

“But if you imagine great things, and you visualize it, and you see it in your head, and you work at it, just imagine the possibilities.”

But Martinez emphasizes that thinking isn’t enough.

“You have to get up,” he says. “You have to get out of your chair. You have to find a way to make it happen and have the greatest attitude when you’re doing it, believe and just work at it. If you do those things, the imagination is a powerful thing, but then it becomes a reality. “Set goals — minor or major — don’t be discouraged just because it doesn’t happen traditionally. Stick to what you want; stick to what you believe, work at it, go after it and achieve it.”

CATUCCI TELLS VIEWERS WHERE THEY ‘GOTTA EAT’

As an actor and comic, John Catucci spends a fair share of his life on the road, and he’s always on the lookout for that special eatery the locals tell him he really needs to try out.

That’s why he’s a natural as host of “You Gotta Eat Here,” a new Food Network series that traverses the country in search of some of the best comfort food you’ll find anywhere. The channel offers two back-to-back episodes in a special sneak preview on Monday, Dec. 26, before the show makes its official debut on Jan. 6. Each episode of the series spotlights three restaurants in different cities, Catucci says. “In the first segment I might be in Vancouver and in the next one in Calgary and in the last one, maybe on the east coast, so it’s not a city per episode,” he explains. “But it’s me going in and meeting the owners and clientele and going back into the kitchen to cook with the chefs. I’m not a chef, though, I’m a comic, so the main objective there is to have fun. I’ll just be figuring out how a dish is made and why, and why these ingredients specifi cally.”

Among his favorites so far, Catucci names That Little Place by the Lights in Huntsville, Ont., a mom-and-pop Italian restaurant.

“Immediately they make you feel right at home,” he says. “The chef, Annie, instantly was ripping into me for not doing things fast enough and doing things wrong and making a mess. It felt like home, and the food was incredible. The homemade lasagna just destroyed me. Although I’m Italian, my parents never made pasta from scratch before.”

ANNUAL WINTER PUCK OFF

For some people, it’s a midwinter holiday. For others, it’s a cure for too much turkey, holiday decorations that have suddenly become old and tacky, and the onset of January Dread.

For everyone, it’s a chance to overdose on hockey and get a glimpse of the future. That would be the IIHF World Junior Hockey Championship, the “World Juniors,” which is being held in Calgary and Edmonton this year.

The tournament begins Monday, Dec. 26, with every game airing live from Calgary’s Saddledome and Edmonton’s Rexall Place on TSN or TSN2.

The puck drops Boxing Day with Canada vs. Finland on TSN and ends with the gold medal game on Jan 5.

Canada’s other preliminary round contests are with the Czech Republic on Wednesday, Dec. 28, and Denmark the next day, followed by a New Year’s Eve classic: Canada vs. Team USA.

“It literally brings people together from coast to coast,” says TSN hockey analyst Bob McKenzie. “It’s the only real annual best-on-best international hockey tournament that exists. The World Championships in April and May aren’t as much beston- best because most of the best players are playing in the Stanley Cup playoffs.”

Canada has been the most successful nation by a huge margin in the 30-year history of the competition.

Since 1977, Team Canada has racked up 27 medals at the World Juniors,

15 gold, eight silver and four bronze.

The last time Canada finished out of the medals was 1998.

That was followed by a silver in 1999, two years of bronze, three more of silver and then five straight years of gold – which matched a previous record, a five-year run of gold from 1993 to ’97.

As McKenzie says, Team Canada seems to swing from “this incredible dynasty to years when nothing seems to go right.”

Yet any time Canada puts a junior team on the ice, the expectations are high for gold. But the pressure may be just a bit higher this year.

“But there always is,” McKenzie says. “If you’ve won five in a row and you’re going for six, there’s huge pressure not to be the team that drops the ball.

“The flip side of that is, when you lose back to back, I don’t know that it’s pressure so much as that it makes you more motivated and hungry.”

The last two years, Team Canada has had to settle for silver. Being beaten by the U.S. in overtime on home ice in Saskatoon hurt. But blowing a 3-0 lead to lose 5-3 to Russia last year was downright unnerving.

After this competition, the World Juniors head across the Atlantic for two years in Europe. And you’ve got to think that the players would love to start another run of gold on home ice.

But then, Team USA – which is evolving into Canada’s No. 1 nemesis – is in a similar position, having had to settle for bronze last year in front of a home crowd in Buffalo, N.Y.

The World Juniors are like Canada’s answer to the U.S. college football bowl games – a feast of top level competition from young players who will almost certainly include the next generation of professional stars.

Yet, it is only in the past 20 years or so that the tournament has grown from an event that was strictly for hard-core fans to one of the biggest events on the hockey calendar.

“The turning point for this tournament was 1991 in Saskatoon,”

McKenzie says. “It was the turning point for TSN as a network and the turning point for the tournament in terms of becoming larger than life, especially when it’s in Canada. There had never been a tournament as well received as that one in Saskatoon. And the TV ratings were off the charts. I think it was the first time TSN cracked

1 million viewers. It made everyone realize that this can be a major, major, major event in Canada.”

(It will be interesting to see who wins the ratings battle New Year’s Eve, when the Canada-USA game goes head to head with Hockey Night in Canada on CBUT) Part of the reason the tournament has become so popular is the fact that hockey has developed greatly in Europe and the U.S. making the games more competitive.

“We saw it in the Olympics, how difficult it was for Canada to beat even Slovakia,” McKenzie says. “When you’re just skimming the top 20 players off any country, even if the base of the pyramid’s not overly large, you can still produce 20 pretty outstanding hockey players.

It’s really important to Canadians that we think we’re the best in hockey, but that gets challenged on a regular basis, by the Czechs, the Russians, whoever. And that’s what makes international hockey as good as it is. It’s not a case where you can just show up, put on the maple leaf and win.”

‘DOCTOR WHO’ XMAS SPECIAL A TREAT FOR FANS

Author Clement C. Moore was referring to St. Nicholas when he wrote of “a right jolly old elf” in his famous poem. But he just as easily could have been referencing a certain peripatetic, centuries-old Time Lord who zips freely through time and space yet holds a special place in his heart(s) for Earth humans, especially children.

That probably explains, at least in part, why “Doctor Who” and Christmas have become synonymous in the show’s U.K. home base. And now, for the second consecutive year, Space: The Imagination Station carries this year’s Christmas episode

Series star Matt Smith, who currently plays the 11th incarnation of the Doctor, couldn’t be happier about it.

“I think there is a sort of magic and scale to the Christmas episode,”

says Smith, (who also starred in the BBC’s “Party Animals” on Knowledge Network) who at 29 is the youngest actor yet to take on the role. “The Doctor and Christmas go hand in hand. In many ways, he treats every day like it is Christmas, so when it really is ‘that day,’ he’s like, ‘Whoa! Here we go!’ Also, it was just great fun to have snow in September.”

The actor is talking about the fall production in Wales necessitated by the special’s holiday premiere date, with crews transforming a real forest into a winter wonderland for exterior scenes. Smith says that put him into a holiday mood faster than almost anything else.

“It was completely exciting,” Smith says. “Ever since I saw Jim Carrey filming ‘The Grinch’ in September or whenever it was, I thought, ‘Wow, that must be so much fun!’ And it is. What was amazing was the snow in all the pine trees, because we were in that real pine forest, and that brings back all those sense memories, because it’s not really Christmas, is it, without that scent?”

“Doctor Who” fans watching at home will have to furnish their own scent-sations to the experience, but there’s plenty of traditional holiday sentiment in the story, which opens on Christmas Eve 1938, as Madge Arwell (guest star Claire Skinner) rescues an injured “Spaceman Angel” who promises to repay her kindness anytime she decides to make a wish. Three years later, a distraught Madge and her two children, Lily and Cyril (Holly Earl, Maurice Cole), flee war-torn London for a ramshackle house on the coast, where her efforts to give the kids their best Christmas ever get a boost from a madcap caretaker (guess

Who?) whose mysterious Christmas gift leads them into a magical wintry world.

As fans may notice, the story doesn’t accommodate an appearance by the Doctor’s current companions, Amy Pond (Karen Gillan) and her husband, Rory Williams (Arthur Darvill). Smith admits that he misses the pair on a personal level, just because they’ve become friends with whom he enjoys spending time, but the new characters in this Christmas episode offer rewards of their own.

“We’ve got new characters in this one: Lily and Cyril, the children, who are just brilliant, and Madge Arwell, the mom, and all these other wonderful characters, which makes it easier to bear, I suppose,” he says. “That’s one of the great things about this job: We keep getting all these wonderful guest actors: the Michael Gambons and David Walliamses and James Cordens. It’s like a wonderful master class for me.”

 

 

— set in World War II England — on Sunday, Dec. 25, the same date it airs in both the United Kingdom and the United States.

I THOUGHT THEY GOT THE WRONG NEIL DIAMOND’

If 2011 doesn’t rank as the best time of Neil Diamond’s 50-year career, it surely must be close.  Just consider the major awards the enduring, Grammy-winning singer-songwriter behind “Sweet Caroline,” “Cracklin’ Rosie,” “I Am … I Said,” “Song Sung Blue” and “America” among many, many other hits.

In March, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame; in May, he was named a Billboard Icon at the annual Billboard Music Awards; and now, he is a recipient of arguably the highest American accolade given to any performer, the Kennedy Center Honours. Taped at the start of the month, the 34th annual ceremony will be a traditional year-ending special for CBS on Tuesday, Dec. 27.

Saluted as well during this year’s event staged in Washington, D.C. are two-time Oscar winner Meryl Streep, cellist Yo-Yo Ma, saxophonist Sonny Rollins and Tony Award-winning Broadway star Barbara Cook (”The Music Man”). It’s noteworthy that Diamond claims Caroline Kennedy, the host of the Honors in recent years, as the inspiration for the most “Sweet” of his hits. Prior to going to the nation’s capital to join his fellow Kennedy Center honorees, as well as President and Mrs. Obama, he spoke for this article about receiving the medal previously bestowed on other singular talents from Fred Astaire and Henry Fonda in the late 1970s to Sir Paul McCartney and Oprah Winfrey last year.

Q: What’s your general feeling about receiving the Honors?

A: You know, it’s a huge honor, but I don’t want to let it go to my head. I’m going to have to work twice as hard to put on the kind of show my audience expects when I go out on tour next summer. I know who my boss is. I can win all the medals in the world, but I still have to come up with the goods onstage.

Q: How did you first find out about your being recognized?

A: My management got a letter, and at first I thought I was going to be asked to perform for somebody else being honored. Then I thought they got the wrong Neil Diamond. It became pretty clear, though, that they wanted to give me some kind of a medal for rock and roll. And I thought that was pretty amazing.

Q: What do you think about being one of very few honorees, including Bruce Springsteen and Roger Daltrey, to represent rock music?

A: Rock has played an important part in the culture of this country for the last 50 or 60 years, and I think it’s a good thing that it’s being recognized.

Q: Had you ever met any of your fellow honorees before?

A: No, I never had. I’m just very pleased about the whole thing. This has been one of those years that you read about in fairy tales, and it’s exciting, but it really puts a lot of pressure on me when I go out and perform again … or when I do anything.

And I like that. I work well under pressure.

Q: What do you think watching bios of yourself, such as the one that opens your segment?

A: I look forward to seeing what my life has been like! I’m too busy living it, to look at it close-up. I’ve been going at the speed of rock and roll, and you don’t get too much time to sit and take in the view. I’ll tell you, it’s gone by quickly. This is one of the few times when I have a chance to look at the work I’ve done and what I’ve been able to achieve and, even more importantly, to think about what I have to do in the future to earn this honor.

Q: Your recent induction had to be special. How was that event for you?

A: That night was a lot of fun. I saw many people I knew and had worked with over the years, so it was like a reunion. I was completely jet-lagged because I had just flown in from Melbourne, so I’m not sure a lot of it registered. And it went late.

Q: Your latest CD, “The Very Best of Neil Diamond

A: It’s like meeting and greeting old friends again when I listen to it, and I love it. It’s special to have all of this material together on the same disc. Each song sparks its own recollections, and I wrote in the album notes what I recall of the recording process for each and how it all came about. It was a trip down memory lane for me, very nostalgic, and I hope the people who hear it get that same feeling.

Q: You’re planning another concert tour for June through September next year. How is that prospect for you?

A: It’s always exciting, because it’s always a little bit scary. You know you have to put something out there that’s special and memorable, and now that I’ve been receiving all these honors for my work, I have to go out there and prove it. When you start getting older, you start to realize that time is limited, and the time to do this tour is now.

It’s going to be my biggest show ever, wall-to-wall hits and then some, and it’s just going to be the whole enchilada. We’re doing it for the audience, and we want them to have a great time. That’s the whole point.

 

— has accrued over the past 12 months.— The Original Studio Recordings,” is the first to compile your hits from all the labels you’ve recorded for. How significant is that for you?

ETALK: TEN YEARS IN THE FAME GAME

The stars have been aligning for Ben Mulroney and Tanya Kim for almost a decade now. As co-hosts of “etalk,” weekdays on CTV, they have endured an apparently endless round of films, music, celebrity interviews and red carpets.
Now, heading toward its 10th anniversary, the show is celebrating its celebration of celebrity with an hourlong special, “etalk: 10 Years of Stars, Scandals and Life on the Red Carpet,” airing Monday, Dec. 19.
The show is a look back to when the show was a little, ambitious project with aspirations, to now, as the most-viewed entertainment show in Canada.
“We’re looking at what makes the show the show,” Mulroney says.
That will include past interviews, highlights of the show and the entertainment scene over the past decade — and a look at how the hosts have evolved with “etalk.”
Looking back, Mulroney says, he sees an awkward guy in a suit that was too big. “I didn’t know what to do with my hands,” he recalls. “I couldn’t memorize scripts the way I can now. I get very uncomfortable watching myself from years past. Everyone tries to explain to me that it’s funny, but I just get very uncomfortable.”
Co-hosts Mulroney and Kim have been with the show from its beginnings. Mulroney joined right out of law school, he says, admitting that his name got him in the door and into an on-the-job learning experience that has paid off handsomely. His first gig was as one of the hosts of the little-watched “The Chatroom,” which ran on the old talktv specialty channel, which has since become MTV Canada.
“I got really lucky,” he says. “I came into television at the dawn of digital cable, when we went from 30 channels to 300 overnight, and there just wasn’t enough content to fill those channels. So for the first time ever, not having any TV experience was entirely acceptable. There just weren’t enough people for the jobs.”
The way it worked out, he says, he was able to gain just enough experience to be ready each time “etalk” moved to a new level. “I got called in because I wasn’t afraid of the camera. And I was able to start on a show very few people watched, and get on-the-job training.”
Like her co-host, Kim started with “The Chatroom” in 2000, and stayed with “etalk” when it was spun off that show as a weekly. “I’d come on ‘The Chatroom’ Tuesdays and talk to Ben about the new releases that were coming out that day,” she says. “So that’s how I started, just talking about music.”
In September 2002, “etalk” went daily as a daytime show, and it moved to its present evening slot in the summer of 2003. It was that same year that Kim moved into the co-host job, when Mulroney’s previous co-host, Thea Andrews, left.
And over that time, Kim has gone from being “punk rock” to “a little more classic,” and something of a Canadian fashion icon.
“There’s a big difference — or at least I hope there’s a big difference,” she says, laughing. “Back then, I was more crazy. I had red streaks in my hair. I was a fan of Manic Panic, and the wardrobe was a little out there. I think that’s one of the things I really appreciated about CTV. They let me be who I was at the time.”
Both Mulroney and Kim say the biggest change they’ve noticed over the past decade has been the growth of the Canadian star system. When the show first went on the air, Mulroney says, the producers and correspondents approached the 30 percent Canadian content quota with a bit of trepidation. But they soon learned that there were all kinds of Canadians out there doing interesting things. It’s just that no one was calling them stars.
“If you don’t know how to tell a good story, you’re going to think, ‘Oh gosh, we’re going to have to talk about Anne Murray and Wayne Gretzky every day.’ But there are a lot of people doing great TV, movies, film, art, fashion, cooking. You name it, there are great Canadians doing that work.”
Contrary to the popular belief in much of the Canadian media that no one in this country cares about homegrown stars, Kim says the Canadian items play as well with the audience as the Hollywood ones do.
“I love that ‘etalk’ supports, fosters and encourages the talent we have in our backyard, as opposed to letting them slip through our fingers, go someplace else to get noticed — and then we do stories about them. We’re Canadiana, and we appreciate that Canadian stories are often more relevant than what happens in Hollywood. I like that we showcase that.”

ADOPTION-LINKED STARS SUPPORT ‘HOME FOR THE HOLIDAYS’

When celebrities are asked to participate each year in “A Home for the Holidays,” it isn’t random.
By and large, each has a connection to adoption, the theme of the annual CBS special. That’s been the case for Faith Hill, Jamie Foxx, Melissa Etheridge and Kristin Chenoweth, all of whom have participated in the show in previous years … and it’s true again for the 13th annual edition that country-music staple Martina McBride hosts Wednesday, Dec. 21.
Justin Bieber, Mary J. Blige, Gavin DeGraw and OneRepublic are among the other artists who perform during the hour – a joint initiative of the Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption, named for the Wendy’s founder, and Children’s Action Network – and adoptive-parent actress Katherine Heigl and her adopted sister, Meg Heigl-Beltran, present a story of another family united through adoption.
Also on hand: singer-songwriter Christina Perri, who has “A Thousand Years” on the soundtrack of the movie “The Twilight Saga – Breaking Dawn, Part 1,” and whose half-brother is an adoptee; and actress and reality-show personality Denise Richards, who adopted a baby girl earlier this year to join the two daughters she has with ex-husband Charlie Sheen.
“They’d approached me because of ‘A Thousand Years,’ ” Perri reports of her “A Home for the Holidays” involvement, “but my dad was married before he married my mom, and he had two daughters and adopted a son. Then my dad married my mom and had my brother and me, but we’re one huge family.”
Also known for last year’s hit “Jar of Hearts,” Perri was familiar with “A Home for the Holidays.”
“I absolutely remember watching the show,” Perri says, “and so do my parents, so it’s awesome to be a part of it. It just felt so magical at the taping.
“I think the best part of the experience for me,” she adds, “is knowing that the children in my segment are all going to get adopted from this. I had goosebumps the whole time. You don’t really think about it in the way it’s presented in this show. Half a million children are in foster care, and that’s just crazy.”
One more child has a home this holiday season thanks to Richards, who finds “A Home for the Holidays” to be “a very moving, emotional special. I was so honored to be a part of it. I got to introduce the story of this wonderful woman (Janet Kerin of Castle Rock, Colo.) who adopted three siblings. I don’t think people are aware how many foster children there are who are families. It’s a wonderful thing she did, because many times in such situations, siblings are separated.”
Richards adopted the infant she named Eloise Joni – whose middle name is that of Richards’ late mother – as summer began.
“I started the adoption process two years before she was born,” Richards says. “There were many times I felt discouraged and things didn’t go the way I thought they would, but I always had faith that the right baby would find us, and I just didn’t give up. A lot of people think that if you’re a celebrity, you get a baby right away, and that just isn’t the case.”
Initially, Richards wasn’t sure whether to let daughters Sam and Lola in on her plans, “but it was actually a good opportunity for me to explain adoption and have them involved in the whole process. They knew it was something I wanted to keep private until the baby was born, and they were great about it.”

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