TORONTO STAR (CANADA) Forever Their GirlBy: Rita Zekas February 16, 1996 |
| Deborah
Duchene did such a good job playing vampire Jeanette on Forever Knight
for two years , she's been nominated for a Best Supporting Actress
Gemini. What makes it more remarkable is that she's been off the series for a year but she's forever in the hearts of diehard Jeanette fans. There's even a Save Jeanette Fan Club based in San Jose, Calif., and 48 of those fan club members were due here Wednesday to catch Duchene on opening night of The Winter's Tale, at Saint Stephen-in-the-Fields Anglican Church, 365 College St. "I feel so weird about the fan club," Duchene said, "it's overwhelming. They have a fanzine: 'So What's Deb Doing?' They get on the Internet and they're all over the United States and in Australia. I'm glad they're coming to the performance but I impressed on them that I'm not doing Jeanette, that it's low key. The word 'fringe' (theatre) doesn't mean much to them." Duchene returned to the series for an episode to be telecast tomorrow at 12:05 A.M. on Channel 7. As much as she loved the cast and crews, she says she left the show partly on her own volition, partly not. "USA network bought the show and they had a different mandate. They wanted to appeal to the Baywatch crowd. They wanted younger bods to appeal to guys 18-24. Three of us were not quite hip enough. They said they were not going to be using me that much. They said, 'Could we redo your contract?' That was insulting and I was not able to do other characters." Yet they wrote her back in for a return episode. "Jeanette was away because Nick (Geraint Wyn Davies) had made her doubt her vampireness. She was rescued by a firefighter and fell in love with him - a scenario that was written for me because I go out with a firefighter. Jeanette is shaken so badly she becomes a human being. It was fun to play Jeanette as a mortal, to experience how bewildering it must be after 800 years of being a vampire." Her exit from the series allowed her to return to her roots in theatre. "I felt so revived," she enthused, "I was ready to quit acting. There was a lot about TV acting I wasn't crazy about. I went to an amazing workshop in Lennox, Massachusetts for a month where Keanu Reeves, R.H. Thomson, Jane Siberry studied, and I immersed myself in Shakespearean text. I met Moira Wylie there, who is directing The Winter's Tale. She is Doug Campbell's wife and had gone back to school in her 50s. She inspired me. We decided to do something together." They decided to do Winter's Tale precisely because it wasn't one of Shakespeare's better-known plays. "It's an obscure one, one of his last four plays. It's neither a tragedy nor a comedy, we call it a romance. It was an idiosyncratic wish of mine to do this play. It's magical, we don't have Stratford's budget so it was better to stay away from Macbeth. And it's good in February to talk about the change in seasons." She plays Hermione, one of the leads. "I'm not the star, it's a lovely role. I'm tended to be considered too quirky, I love playing warm and good and resolute but not perfect. It's not the usual vampish roles I get. And we didn't even have to reverse the roles for women." Copyright 1996 Toronto Star Newspapers, Ltd. |