Various Shattered articles/interviews
RENNIE GETS ‘SHATTERED’
September 3, 2010 by whatsoninvancouver
In “Shattered,” Callum Keith Rennie is four of the most interesting people you’d ever want to meet. That, he says, is what lured him into taking on the job of heroic lead after a career spent enjoying the artistic freedom and security of character roles. The series, which recently debuted its Wednesday time slot on Global, revolves around a detective with a grim secret: He has dissociative identity disorder. In other words, his head houses at least four distinct personalities. Some of these personalities are unaware of the others, and some are hostile to the others. At least one, the main character of Ben Sullivan, is trying hard to be a good cop while he keeps the others under control - particularly Sam, a bad cop with a taste for pot, booze and breaking the rules. “It was a lot of fun, in the sense of not getting locked into one role all the time,” Rennie says. “There were these breaks: Oh, now you’re a hammerhead who’s smoking and doing all sorts of mayhem. Here, you’re a guy who’s so aggressive that he’s completely different from Ben Sullivan. And here’s this other element who’s a lot younger and doesn’t deal with the world in any of those ways. But how do you create a show where the lead character has the least personality?”
The answer, Rennie says, was to create a “tortured individual, but not to the point of being a victim. I tried to make him into a cop, and then this other stuff happens. He’s a good man, and this other stuff happens. He’s a good husband, but this other stuff happens.”
“This other stuff,” is the emergence of long-submerged personalities that have surfaced in the wake of the kidnapping of his son - a season-long story arc that is constantly percolating in the background. The only one aware of Ben’s condition is his wife (Molly Parker); colleagues - including his partner (Camille Sullivan), his ex-partner and best friend (Martin Cummins), and an ambitious young co-worker (Cle Bennett) mostly write off his personality shifts as stress, mood swings or a tortured, brilliant mind. Meanwhile, Ben has to referee four alternate personalities, who “each serve a specific role in his mind, and how he works out in the world.”
They range from a rambunctious teenager to the aforementioned Sam, a menacing character who surfaces in times of tension on the job - leaving Ben’s partner not sure whether she’s working with a hero or a lunatic. Part of the research Rennie did for the role involved hanging out at websites for people with DID. The effects of the condition, he discovered, range from the kind of extreme transformations we see in “United States of Tara” to conditions that are much more subtle, where no one but the person with the disorder is aware of what is going on. At one point, Rennie says, he even began to wonder if he might not have the condition. “You go, ‘That’s [text lost in original] read about it, I began to totally relate to it. You totally relate to moments where you just trip out. One of the best descriptions I read was that it’s like when you’re driving, and all of a sudden, 15 miles have gone by, and you went somewhere. You just checked out, and you don’t know exactly where that was.”
Rennie is mainly known as a character actor - a self-described sidekick - who plays outsiders, characters who are little bit off-kilter and scene-stealing bad guys such as Zero in “Tin Man.”
He also has played his share of good guys, such as the slovenly Chicago cop opposite Paul Gross’ clean-cut Mountie on “Due South” and the guitar god Billy Tallent (for whom the rock band was named) in “Hard Core Logo.”
He describes that career trajectory as a safe one, and one that offered a steady diet of variety. “For an actor who has been playing supporting roles, and playing the weirdos and the bad people, to make that transition was challenging for Callum,” says “Shattered” executive producer Hugh Beard. “I know he had some apprehension about being the lead, and about the responsibility - because being a lead actor in a series, you really do set the standard for everybody. You set the tone. And his work has been fantastic.”
Rennie says he was drawn to the role of series lead - and the job of producer for the first time - by the fact that Ben contains this range of characters. “It allows a lot of freedom, where I wouldn’t play the same thing all the time. It meant trying to find the world of this person within the framework of a procedural cop show, and do that stuff. And then there’s this very heavy, weird, background of this character’s life. I thought that it would give it a lot more color and a lot more range. I thought it would be a very full world.”
From here: http://www.whatsoninvancouver.ca/rennie-gets-%E2%80%98shattered%E2%80%99/
After years of supporting roles, Callum Keith Rennie takes centre stage
August 31, 2010
Michael Oliveira, The Canadian Press
The Canadian Press, 2010
TORONTO - Canadian actor Callum Keith Rennie has played a drinking buddy to David Duchovny's Hank Moody on "Californication," a foil to Kiefer Sutherland's Jack Bauer on "24," and chased confused amnesiac Leonard Shelby (Guy Pearce) during a memorable scene in the movie "Memento."
But in "Shattered," premiering Wednesday night on Global, the actor mostly known for his supporting roles plays the lead, Det. Ben Sullivan, a troubled homicide investigator with multiple personality disorder.
"What attracted me (to the show) was it was a procedural that would never follow a straight line," Rennie said during a recent interview in Toronto.
"I'd never played a leading man cop before and I thought that would be interesting. I thought the dimensions of trying to figure out how to play somebody suffering from multiple personality disorder in an authentic way would be a challenge, and it was."
Rennie, a longtime veteran of the big and small screen, is more in demand than ever coming off his slew of high-profile roles, also including parts in "Battlestar Galactica," "FlashForward" and "Gunless."
He won a lot of fans playing a carousing, out-of-control record producer on "Californication," a role he got while hanging out with Duchovny on the set of "The X Files: I Want to Believe" in Vancouver.
"There was an announcement about a Golden Globe nomination for 'Californication' and I congratulated him but said I hadn't seen the show," Rennie recalled. Duchovny sent him some DVDs, which Rennie flew through in one night.
"I thought it was one of the best things I'd ever seen and told him so. To which he said, 'Do you want to do it? Like maybe do a three-episode thing?'
"'Uh, yeah, OK!,'" Rennie responded.
"That turned into five (episodes), which turned into eight, which turned into the whole season. It was phenomenal, the writers on that show are phenomenal. The way it's set up, David's spirit on the show and how it works, it was an unbelievable experience."
With "Shattered," Rennie sought out a producer credit, which gave him a greater degree of control over how the show was developed.
"It was just nice to have a say," he said. "Hopefully at least you get to put in your two cents worth, maybe they listen to one cent of it, who knows, but you do get a voice and get to guide it along a path you see fit."
One of the key decisions for Rennie was how he would portray his character's struggle with multiple personality disorder. He spoke to experts, read books, watched videos and worked with an acting coach to find the right nuanced approach.
"It was trying to find a responsible way to play it and have it portrayed so it wasn't like a hook," he said.
Over the course of the first season, Rennie's character experiences four different "alters." The audience may have trouble recognizing the slip into another personality, but Rennie says that reflects the real-life experience of those who suffer from the disorder.
"If you were working with Ben you may or may not get it, so as the audience you may or may not get what's going on with him. Is that just him acting up? That's what he does, that's his thing?
"There's a subtlety to it in that a lot of cases are undiagnosed and people go through their lives going, 'That's just the way he is sometimes,' to the other extreme of completely different voices, multiple personalities and blackouts."
"Shattered" airs Wednesdays at 10 p.m. ET/PT.
From here: http://news.therecord.com/article/770956
A head-case cop show with issues
Like its main character, Shattered’s good bits and bad bits are all over the place
John Doyle
From Wednesday's Globe and Mail
In the beginning there were cops. Just cops. Tough guys (in the beginning, always guys) walking or driving the mean streets, nabbing bad guys and going home for their supper. Then came cops with problems. Depression, drugs, pining for an ex. Next came cops with special powers - they could talk to the dead, read people’s thoughts or fly through the air with the greatest of ease.
Shattered (Global, 10 p.m.) presents a cop who has a special problem. Ben Sullivan (Callum Keith Rennie) has multiple personalities, what is classified as Dissociative Identity Disorder. No, he doesn’t go off like the Incredible Hulk, changing size and colour and stuff. And no, he doesn’t go wacky like Sally Field in Sybil, all melodramatic weirdness. This detective subtly shifts gears and even the person sitting beside him is unaware that a traumatic change in personality has occurred.
The series, made in Vancouver and making good use of the city, is not easy to review. It has good bits and rather poor bits. It is, like its central character, splintered. This is to be expected, perhaps, from the opening episode of a series that promises rich psychological drama over the long run. Mind you, segments of Shattered are just a tad too rough for some people’s patience.
Exactly what happened to Ben Sullivan is unclear. There are hints of a traumatic incident involving a child, presumably Ben’s young son. What is clear is that the character who appears to be Ben’s wife Ella (Molly Parker) stays at home and frets. My God, she looks woebegone. With all due respect to everyone involved, Parker is wasted in this role. It’s always a pleasure to see her work and all, but you know, this depressed-missus thing is a bit limiting. That’s a bad bit.
Instead we are asked to focus on Ben’s new cop-partner, Amy (Camille Sullivan). No problem with that, as I see it. Sullivan has been in a lot of TV and movie things, but to some she will forever be the difficult, dangerous Francine Reardon on Intelligence. Here, she’s the sad-eyed cop with a mysterious personal life, who is obliged to work with a guy who seems to disappear into moods and commit inexplicable acts while simultaneously being a regular tough-guy-with-a-heart-of-gold. Sullivan is up for it, but there are times when she does little but stand around holding a gun while mildly crazy Ben dominates the cop-action proceedings. There is, however, an obligatory scene in which Amy is presented to us as a looker, which she is. That’s a good bit.
Moody as all get-out, Shattered begins with some guy getting shot and then a frantic investigation into gruesome murders of young people committed by an especially vicious nutbar. There’s weakness in the action sequences, which unfold with less assuredness than the scenes of intimacy and muttered conversations. The rinky-dink music and a longish chase scene are irritating. Those are bad bits.
The really good bits are in the writing. Written by Frank Borg (he was executive story editor on Da Vinci’s Inquest, and it shows) and Rick Drew, the script sometimes sparkles with cutting wit and sometimes with poignancy. Put together, then, Shattered is middling-good crime drama, still finding its feet.
From here: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/arts/television/john-doyle/a-head-case-cop-show-with-issues/article1691740/
He’s complicated
By Greg David
2010-09-01
Callum Keith Rennie shines in psychotic 'Shattered’
“Don’t you know the crime rate is going up, up, up, up, up
To live in this town you must be tough, tough, tough, tough, tough!
You got rats on the west side
Bed bugs uptown
What a mess, this town’s in tatters I’ve been shattered
My brain’s been battered, splattered all over Manhattan”
- “Shattered,” The Rolling Stones
Television is full of tortured, conflicted characters. There’s House, the brilliant, drug-addicted doctor who’s impossible to work with yet saves lives every day. You’ve got Don Draper, a superstar ad man whom everyone wants to be but counts booze room and women as his vices. Patrick Jane can read a person's body language to determine whether they’re guilty of crimes, and is tormented by the murder of his wife and son.
Add Shattered's Detective Ben Sullivan to that list. Played to perfection by veteran actor Callum Keith Rennie, Ben is a brilliant homicide detective with a secret: he suffers from Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID), a.k.a. Multiple Personality Disorder. No one at his Vancouver precinct knows Ben has four alternates swirling around in his psyche, though they do wonder about the fugue states he enters from time to time, and the subtly different guy that emerges from them. When “normal,” Ben is quietly confident in his job and has a dry sense of humour.
It’s an interesting twist to a typical cop procedural that starts off with a bang in Episode 1, debuting tonight on Global. In “The Sins of the Fathers,” new partner Amy Lynch (Camille Sullivan, Normal and Intelligence) is paired with Ben; they are immediately called in to pursue a serial killer, and it’s when they have the guy cornered that one of Ben’s alternate personalities comes forward. This one is vengeful and aggressive - Rennie pulls his lips back to expose shark-like teeth - and always looking to solve things with violence. He barks at Amy to shoot the suspect, and she does, killing him. Amy shot sight unseen, not realizing that the baddie has no weapon. In a blink, the violent side to Ben is gone, replaced by the normal one, who quickly covers their tracks to appear as though the perp did in fact had a gun, and Amy shot in self-defence.
If the Vancouver-shot 13-episode series sounds a little far-fetched, it’s not. Remember Sybil? That was the pseudonym for Shirley Ardell Mason, an American woman who had 16 different and distinct female and male personalities. Shattered’s producers - which includes Rennie - did extensive research into the disorder, not only realizing that a cop could balance a job and life like Ben does, but that it all could go unchecked by co-workers, family or the person themselves.
“I found this documentary on YouTube of a guy who was cop who had DID,” the softspoken 49-year-old says during a press day at Toronto’s Soho Metropolitan hotel. “He was accepted by his department. His co-alters would cooperate with each other and he was at the firing range. One alter would shoot one way, and another would shoot another way. That cop would flip though a photo album and he was talking about family stories in the album. His voice would change and he would flip off of his chair and start to talk like an eight-year-old and he wouldn’t know who was in the book when he was that alter.”
Trauma - usually occurring in childhood - is often the trigger to DID manifesting itself. We don’t know if Ben suffered something harrowing when he was younger, but it is revealed that he’s got something current stressing him out - the kidnapping of his young son. It’s something that weighs on he and wife Ella (Molly Parker, Deadwood) constantly, pushing Ben’s personalities to the forefront.
Thus, though Shattered is an ensemble piece (The Line’s Clé Bennett, Defying Gravity’s Karen LeBlanc and Brian Markinson of Mayerthorpe all turn in fine roles), it’s very much a character study, one that changed very much from its original incarnation. Executive producer Hugh Beard (The Beachcombers, Human Cargo) revealed that the first pilot of Shattered had four actors playing each of Ben’s personalities (Robson Arms’ John Cassini portrayed one), but that idea was scrapped.
This re-shot pilot works wonderfully, largely due to the former 24 and Harper’s Island actor’s chameleon ability to switch from character to character (a total of four emerge in Season 1) smoothly. With just a subtle raised eyebrow or change in speech pattern, you know a different personality has taken over, making it that much more believable.
“This is a police drama that never stays on track, it’s always going off into character stuff and you can do many character things,” Rennie explains. “The hero part of the story isn’t so much the crime-solving, but him trying to hold onto his life with this disorder that he’s trying to keep secret. He’s a very tortured soul.”
And, like House, Don and Patrick, one that’s immensely watchable.
From here: http://tvguide.ca/Interviews/Features/Articles/100901_shattered_GD.htm
Shattered star a man of Rennie parts
Published On Fri Aug 27 2010
Canadian actor Callum Keith Rennie plays a police officer who struggles with mental illness in Shattered.
By Rob Salem Television Critic
Television Columnist
His is perhaps the quintessential career of the successful Canadian journeyman actor, from stellar support work in home-brewed independent films to quirky character roles on American episodic TV.
As Sandra Oh’s forbidden crush in Mina Shum’s Double Happiness. Indelibly teamed with Hugh Dillon as the reunited rockers of Bruce McDonald’s Hard Core Logo. On the prowl as the pre-apocalyptic horn-dog of Don McKellar’s Last Night.
And the series...there is barely space enough here to list even the major multi-episode arcs, notably two seasons of Due South, and another, more recently, on Californication, and a vicious, villainous turn as a Russian mob boss on the final season of 24, preceded, of course, by a popular recurring role as a psychotic Cylon on Battlestar Galactica...
Callum Keith Rennie has been all these things, and more. Indeed, one has to wonder what could possibly have possessed him to tie himself down to take on the lead in a single series.
For one thing, Shattered, the new Vancouver-shot cop drama debuting Wednesday night on Global, has only a 13-episode season, leaving lots of elbow room for other work.
But mostly it is the role itself, which offers an actor as much variety as any one character possibly could, with the possible exception of Sally Field in Sybil, or Toni Collette in United States of Tara (and, okay, if we absolutely must, Eddie Murphy as The Klumps).
Ben Sullivan, Rennie’s Shattered cop character, is literally defined by the show’s title. An initially only vaguely identified personal trauma has fractured his psyche into splinters, commonly known as multiple personalities, but technically classified as Dissociative Identity Disorder.
Either way, after an apparent interim period of mental health, Ben’s divergent personalities have once again started to manifest themselves, without his conscious awareness, and often while on the job. Not the sort of thing one wants to see in a man who carries a gun.
But in Rennie’s capable hands, the character is at once sympathetic and shocking, amusing and appalling, and, as is often the case whenever Rennie is onscreen, absolutely riveting.
The character, the actor says, is still very much a work in progress.
“It’s just the first year of the show, so everyone is still going, ‘Can we get away with this? Is this too much or too little?’ It’s so broad that it’s scary sometimes...that’s the thing of trying to find the limitations and constraints.
“I mean, it’s fun and hard...we live in a bit of doubt all the time, going, ‘Are we are on the right path here?’ And then you’re still trying to figure out how the transitions work cinematically. And how they work organically. Do they read the same way? How does this happen in the real world? How do (these) people function in the real world? How much fear, pain, struggle are you in as a person knowing that you’re a bit of a time bomb...
“He’s having a recurrence of this thing that he knows that he has, and yet he’s not dealing with it professionally. I mean, we all go, ‘Well, you know what, I think it will go away. I think it will be fine.’ We’ve all done that. It’s very human to sort of look at the stuff that’s wrong with us and hope to just brush it over.
“There are parts of us we all disassociate to a degree. How do you take responsibility for illness? How do you take care of your family under extreme duress? How can you be wanting to be the hero against your own mind, and fight that battle, that internal struggle that you never asked for.”
The show already seems to have found that elusive mix, a low-key style and storytelling that match and enhance Rennie’s characteristically subtle approach. The tone also is suited to co-star Molly Parker, who plays Ben’s understandably apprehensive wife.
Indeed, of perhaps any Canadian actor, Parker’s career mostly closely parallels Rennie’s, encompassing prestige American series like Deadwood and Swingtown, and praised Canadian features like Kissed, The Five Senses, Men with Brooms and the very same Hard Core Logo.
“She’s been a close friend for the last 20 years,” Rennie says. “We both live in Vancouver, and we’ve worked together a lot. It’s great to work with someone you can have that kind of short-hand with.
“I love working in Canada,” he adds. “I get to work with people that I know and adore, and it’s nice to be at home.”
rsalem@thestar.ca
From here: http://www.thestar.com/article/852290--salem-shattered-star-a-man-of-rennie-parts
Rennie ‘Shattered’ role complicated
By BILL HARRIS, QMI Agency
It comes down to vanity versus responsibility.
After watching the first episode of Shattered, the new Canadian series that debuts Wednesday, Sept. 1 on Global, we're not sure if we like Detective Ben Sullivan.
Then again, actor Callum Keith Rennie admits it's an open question, even for him, as to whether his character Ben -- a cop with dissociative identity disorder -- is an admirable dude or not.
"Those are things we debated," Rennie acknowledged. "How does this work? How can he do that? Is this along the right moral lines?"
Exactly. If you're Ben, and you're a cop, and even subtle symptoms of your multiple personalities begin to re-occur, what's the right thing to do? Take yourself off the street and get the gun out of your hand, right? Doing otherwise simply puts everyone around you at risk.
But dismissing Ben as a selfish jerk might be holding him up to a higher standard than we would set for ourselves.
As Rennie suggested, when anyone is faced with the worrisome but inconclusive notion that something may be going very wrong, often our first reaction is to hope for the best and pray the issue goes away.
"People hide problems, but if it subsequently plays out for us in a positive way, then we go, 'Well, I knew that was the way it was,'" Rennie said. "That's sort of what Ben is doing here."
In the first episode of Shattered, Ben gets a new partner, Detective Amy Lynch, played by Camille Sullivan. We have to say this: Thank goodness this isn't the typical grumpy-veteran/green-newbie cop story, which we all have seen a gazillion times.
Anyway, when Ben and Amy find themselves in a serious situation while pursuing a suspect, Ben begins to behave oddly, or at least not like himself. Amy doesn't know Ben well enough to draw any conclusions, but what occurs unites the pair in a manner with which neither partner is completely comfortable.
"Ben is hoping that even as an alter, he's doing the right thing, or trying to do the right thing," Rennie said.
The Alberta-raised Rennie has an extensive acting resume both in film and television. But in recent years he has become more recognizable for his TV work, on shows such as Californication, 24, Battlestar Galactica, FlashForward and Tin Man.
"They aren't making as many feature films these days, and not as many independent features get to have a life in the world," said Rennie, 49. "In TV, with things like Californication, Weeds, Entourage, Mad Men, it's a really great time.
"I love doing films. I love doing Canadian films. It seems that in the past five years, there has been not much going on in regard to having me involved. But your look for the kind of work you want to do, film or TV. When you look at your resume, you always want to go, 'Oh, there's something I'm proud of.'"
When Detective Ben Sullivan looks at his own resume, is it pride he feels?
"Is Ben amoral? How deep is this problem? Is it a benefit or a hazard?" Rennie asked.
"Like in The Shield with Vic Mackey (played by Michael Chiklis), you follow him because there's enough good to go with the bad. It's a very complicated piece of work, to organize it and make it run forward and have it all play. It's a delicate balance."
bill.harris@sunmedia.ca
From here: http://www.torontosun.com/entertainment/tv/2010/08/26/15146936.html
Actor makes dysfunctional detective compelling
By: Brad Oswald
Posted: 26/08/2010
For a detective investigating a crime, it's always useful to have another set of eyes examine the evidence.
Except, perhaps, when those eyes are located in the same head but are being directed by a different, darker part of the same brain.
Such is the delicate dysfunction afflicting Det. Ben Sullivan (Callum Keith Rennie) the confused cop at the centre of the new Canadian-made cop drama Shattered, which premières Wednesday at 9 p.m. on Global.
Sullivan is a tough, smart, experienced crime solver who does things mostly by the book but occasionally lapses into aggressive and borderline-dangerous behaviours that could just as easily ruin a case as solve one.
And the problem, as quickly becomes clear in the series première, is that when Ben does that crazily out-of-character stuff, it isn't really Ben doing it. It's a long dormant but recently resurfaced alternate personality called Sam, who has picked a stressful time in his host's life to start reasserting himself and taking over ever-larger chunks of Ben's consciousness.
Sunday's opener begins with the arrival of Ben's new partner, Det. Amy Lynch (Camille Sullivan), in the homicide unit. Before she has time to unload her personal belongings, the phone rings and Sullivan asks if she's ready to tackle her first case.
In minutes, the freshly united pair is careening across town to an old warehouse where it's believed a serial killer may be hiding. As they work their way through the dark, abandoned building (a staple location in cop-show pilot episodes, it seems), they encounter the body of the killer's latest victim.
Before they can finish examining the corpse for the telltale markings that will confirm the killer's identity, a figure bolts out of the darkness and attacks Sullivan. As the scuffle escalates, he shouts for his new partner to use her firearm -- and she does, with lethal effect.
But it soon becomes apparent that the suspect didn't have a gun, as Sullivan claimed, and Lynch doesn't understand why he can't recall ordering her to shoot. As the forensics team starts sorting out the details, the investigation starts getting complicated and messy.
While he continues to conceal his issues from his co-workers, Ben confides in his wife (Molly Parker) that Sam has, indeed, returned. Their relationship is already on shaky ground in the wake of their young son's abduction two years earlier, and she isn't sure she'll be able to cope with another descent into multiple-personality hell.
Shattered is an attention-grabber for a couple of reasons -- first, it's well written and employs a cop-show concept that hasn't been seen a thousand times before (unlike Global's other unexpectedly popular summer-launched drama, Rookie Blue), and second, its star delivers a compelling and consistently interesting performance.
Rennie has always been watchable, from his early work in the locally produced 1996 TV movie For Those Who Hunt the Wounded Down through his memorable runs in such prime-time titles as DaVinci's Inquest, Californication and 24. And in this starring role, he uses the full weight of his experience and age to create a character filled with contradictions and simmering rage.
The supporting cast, led by Parker, Clé Bennett (The Line) and Martin Cummins (Dark Angel), is solid, but the appeal of Shattered springs directly from Rennie's stellar work. His efforts, and this series' strong start, deserve to be rewarded by a longer-term lease on a prime-time slot.
brad.oswald@freepress.mb.ca
From here: http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/entertainment/TV/actor-makes-dysfunctional-detective-compelling-101543378.html
Monday, August 30, 2010
First New Series Of The TV Season
By James Bawden
The first new series of the 2010-11 TV season revs up Wednesday night at 10 on Global TV.
And --surprise --it's a Canadian police drama and it's a hit.
Surprised?
Me, too. But after watching the preview of the first episode of Shattered I should have been expecting quality all along.
The executive producer is Jeff F. King who I first met (as producer) on Night Heat and later on ENG and Due South, all home grown series of distinction.
Then there's the star Callum Keith Rennie.
I first noticed him as a 35-year-old newcomer in the odd little Canadian feature Curtis's Charm (1995) and later he won a supporting Gemini award in the 1995 series My Life As A Dog.
But peversley he refused to leave his hotel room to go downstairs and collect his award --because he was in competition with Lamb Chops and Sheri Lewis.
And I thought he was unforgettable in the 1996 TV movie For Those Who Hunt The Wounded Down --he begged to differ in an hour long TV conversation I could not get him to bend.
Since then he's excelled in Canadian projects (Due South, Twitch City) as well as U.S. series (Californication, 24).
Now 50 he's grey haired and his face heavily lined. But the intensity is still there.
I consider his latest, Shattered, as aging detective Ben Sullivan whose life is spiraling out of control to be among his best work.
Yes, this is another Canadian cop series. But it's not a generic entity like Rookie Blue.
Here it's the back story that has the bite --Ben and partner Ellas (Molly Parker of Deadwood) had an eight-year old son who was abducted several years ago --his fate remains unknown.
Ben's compulsive disorder syndrome is now out of control. In the opening episode he yells at his new detective partner to shoot a pedophile suspect and she does although it turns out the man was not armed.
Looking on is the next police detective team headed by Det. Terry Rhodes (Martin Cummins of Dice) who has been married three times and has four children and Det. John Holland (Cle Bennett.
Stories focus on how the detectives bend the system to apprehend their suspects and what this ongoing tension does to their personalities.
You could call this an example of "cop noir" --King has worked in that genre before with the series EZ Streets.
In the opener Kari Skogland who directed Rennie in the 1997 feature Men with Guns shoots this one like a movie --bursts of terrifying violence, angry scenes of confrontation, cops going to the edge mentally --this is something not normally seen in TV police shows.
Partnered with Rennie on the force is younger Amy Lynch (Camille Sullivan, so powerful in the CBC series Intelligence). And Molly Parker as his long suffering partner at home is intense in a quiet, lingering way.
Shattered is so tough and different it seems like a cable show rather than a mainstream network offering.
But Global TV is giving it a big push prior to the official opening of the U.A. TV season.
Watching Shattered will leave viewers shattered.
SHATTERED PREMIERS WED. SEPT. 1 AT 10 P.M.
MY RATING: ***1/2.
From here: http://jamesbawden.blogspot.com/
Edgy Shattered Breaks Drama Conventions
If actors relish memorable roles playing conflicted heroes or legendary villains, then Callum Keith Rennie must be one happy guy. Rennie is the star of Shattered, a Vancouver-shot, Force Four Films/E1 Entertainment production premiering on both Showcase and Global in September. It’s Rennie’s first lead role, although the A-list Canadian actor has 100 television and film credits to his name, including Californication, Battlestar Galactica, and the film Memento.
“It is amazing that’s he’s never had his own show; he’s always been supporting, often playing offbeat, bad characters,” says executive producer Hugh Beard of Force Four. “When you look at this show, people will ask, ‘Why didn’t this happen before?’ He’s just riveting on screen.”
Rennie, who broke out on both sides of the border, partnered with Paul Gross as Det. Stanley Raymond Kowalski on Due South. This time his Homicide Det. Ben Sullivan suffers from Dissociative Identity Disorder, also known as Multiple Personality Disorder. Beard says they researched the topic thoroughly, and brought in medical experts to the story editing process. “The obvious question is how could a cop function with DID on an actual police force, but we found two examples of police officers in the States that had DID and were dealing with it.”
“It was great to play this role that had so many dimensions to it that was ever evolving,” Rennie told Interactivity in an exclusive interview. “There was a consultant who I referred to quite often, and I picked up as much literature and video on the subject I could find.” The series itself has gone through some unconventional evolutions since creator Rick Drew brought the concept to Beard. “The whole creation of Shattered has been a little bit of a jigsaw puzzle,” he says. That’s included a re-work of the pilot that saw only Rennie return for the series, now joined by the star power of Molly Parker, as his wife, and Camille Sullivan, as his partner.
“All the women on the show were outstanding, and it was great that Molly came to work on the show,” says Rennie, who appeared alongside Parker in the feature film Suspicious River. “She brings with her such depth and understanding and, having known her and worked with her before, we had a history and a shorthand which filled the onscreen relationship.”
That electric casting helped drive the sale of foreign pay TV distribution rights of Shattered to NBC Universal's Universal Networks International (UNI), which will air the series on Universal Channel and 13th Street Universal later in the fall. Showcase and Global plan to air ten episodes of the series with a back-to-back season ender. It’s another unusual playout for Shattered, which was produced with an unusual total of five showrunners. Says Beard, “It was just circumstances and [it was] very unconventional working that way, but the reality is that with each change, the show’s gotten better and better. Through the pain was a lot of gain.”
From here: http://www.cmf-fmc.ca/index.php?page_mode=newsletterdetails&id=567
Many thanks to scriggle and thursdaynext_27 for linking to some of these!