Fan Expo Canada is an annual four-day convention held in Toronto host to tons of exciting panels from some of Hollywood’s biggest stars. This year’s convention was held August 30th-September 2nd. Basic Stuff Magazine was lucky enough to attend Saturday’s screening and panel for the Canadian series Bad Blood, which has been renewed for a second season on City TV.
Featuring an all-Canadian cast, Bad Blood is based on the book Business or Blood: Mafia Boss Vito Rizzuto’s Last War by Antonio Nicaso and Peter Edwards and dramatizes the mafia drug trade running out of Montreal. Season 2 will jump five years ahead and will expand the scope of the series by bringing outsiders inside the Canadian borders.
Series star Kim Coates (who plays Declan Gardiner) and newly-minted cast members Melanie Scrofano and Anna Hopkins (playing Valentina and Teresa Langana respectively) were in attendance for a Q&A panel, which took place after an exclusive screening of the premiere of Season 2. The panel was a treasure trove of wisdom from Kim Coates’ musings on his own extensive career to Melanie and Anna’s pearls of wisdom about everything from memorizing lines to what it’s really like to be an Italian-Canadian. Here are some of the highlights.
Kim Coates, Melanie Scrofano, and Anna Hopkins at Fan Expo Canada 2018 (Andrea Dixon)
On where we are when Season 2 begins
Kim filled in the gaps for us concerning the five-year time jump between Season 1 and 2 and what that means for his character. After spending the first season being “a hugely loyal lieutenant” for Vito Rizzuto, all Declan ended up getting was betrayal. “His whole life was just kind of over in a way,” Kim said, “and Declan decided that he was a better gangster, and he wasn’t waiting for anybody anymore.” He defined his character in Season 2 as a “lone wolf” and detailed how this actually works in Declan’s favor as opposed to how Vito ran things: “[Vito] had too many people. He was working with the cops, the judges, the lawyers, the construction company. And he just wanted everyone to get along somehow, which was admirable, but not in this world. So, Declan’s doing it on his own.”
However, Declan’s nephew, Reggie Ross (played by Ryan McDonald) coming in to the mix this season is primed to complicate Declan’s “lone wolf” plan. Kim met with showrunner Michael Konyves in Los Angeles to plan for the new season, which is where the two formed the basis for the nephew character. “It was really me who wanted this nephew to be damaged, like really damaged. And it was Michael who came up with the foster care – wait till you see how that plays out. Ooh, Episode 6, OMG… Anyway, […] Declan has to turn into a bit of a father figure, which he’s never been.” Get ready to see Declan in a whole new light.
On adding the girls to the cast
Kim gushed about the addition of the girls to the show and talked about how important the concept of family is not only to the characters of the series but also within its cast. “You’re gonna see stuff in these eight [episodes],” the actor said, “that family is the core element of this gangster life that I lead, and now Anna, coming from Italy, leads. And poor Melanie’s right in the middle of this blueberry pie, and I’m not gonna tell you what she has to do in this show, but anyway, I’m just so proud, and I think this season’s gonna be an absolute rock, in the right way. It’s just gonna explode, I think.”
What really resonated with Melanie about her role was how it is a realistic portrayal of what it is to be an Italian-Canadian. She would know because she is one, and believe it or not, this is the first and only time she’s ever been cast as one! “I know exactly what it is to be an Italian-Canadian,” she said. “I know what the basements of the houses look like, I know what the pasta tastes like, I know what it sounds like – it’s loud. And so it was so fun to be able to just live in the world that I already know…but, you know, in a mob story.”
Anna stole every scene she was in as the captivatingly beautiful Teresa Langana, but Teresa doesn’t work alone. Johnny Falcone plays her twin brother, Christian, and the two steam up the screen as “sexy siblings” who are disturbingly close. “They’re pretty effed up,” she said. “They lack [humanity] in a certain way. And they were kind of sent away as kids and got educated elsewhere, and at a certain age, [were] able to take over the business. And they just follow orders and it’s pretty scary.”
Kim detailed the thought process behind Anna’s character and how Teresa was always meant to be the powerful one in the sibling dynamic. “I’m such a fan of great women stories, great woman parts,” he said, “and we need them more all the time.”
Anna Hopkins and Kim Coates at Fan Expo Canada 2018 (@AnnaBananaHops)
But both women expressed how safe they felt as newcomers to the show and how Kim has worked to cultivate that atmosphere. Melanie had just finished filming Wynonna Earp (on which she plays the titular character) when she signed on for Bad Blood. “I finished my show called Wynonna Earp on May 8th, and then two days later, I was shooting,” she told us. “I was like, ‘Please don’t mess it up, please don’t…’ I was so tired. I think I said to [Kim] at one point, like, ‘How do you do… I have nothing, I have nothing in me!’ And it was just – thank God, thank God, they were so welcoming and so encouraging, and really, I wouldn’t have gone on to any other show that fast except for the fact that I knew that it was going exactly what [Kim] said, from one family to another, and it just felt very safe, and very creative, and passionate.”
Kim added to this with an anecdote about Melanie’s first days on set: “One of her first days happens in Episode 3, and I won’t tell you what it is, but she was in it. And Melanie barely said ‘hello’ to me, and I was cool with that because she just was in her head [with] what she was about to do, but I was happy she was there. I was happy she was safe. She had bags under her eyes on purpose for this scene that she was about to do, and I just feel like a little bit of a daddy in this show, man.”
Anna agreed and expressed how Kim’s being a producer on the show fosters an environment that encourages creativity since they can collaborate, and rewrites can be streamlined.
Kim had another anecdote to share, this time about working with Anna: “Remember that scene – [the audience] saw it actually; it’s in this first episode – where Anna’s smoking the cigarette in the wilderness; she comes to see me with her brother. Well, we were in the middle of her take – do you [Anna] remember an ash fell on your…” Anna did remember the cigarette ash falling on her shoulder, and Kim breaking character to rescue her. “Once we start, I’m for sure Declan 100% of the time,” Kim said, “other than keeping my eyes open for an ash that might be falling on Anna’s lapel. Because I certainly want her to give the best work she can, and I don’t wanna waste the camera on that ash.”
On production changes
Now that the show has a higher budget, according to Kim, the production has now been afforded the luxury of two cameras at all times. “By using two cameras through the whole show, we didn’t have to worry about continuity at all,” he said. “So, that’s like doing a play. […] You can actually do whatever the fuck you want, and the editors will match it because it works, even on master shots.” Melanie agreed, adding that the new way of filming gave her the freedom to remain in an emotional scene when worrying about continuity would normally take her out of it.
The actors also had a bone to pick with the weather (the crew films in Sudbury and Hamilton in Ontario). Luckily enough, someone from the weather network was in the audience and he was willing to listen to their complaints! “We got so boned so early on this show weather-wise,” Kim said. “We filmed this whole eight episodes in 53 days, which is pretty amazing – you’re gonna love it – but I gotta say that we had to start on our feet, and I realized that we should probably shoot the Mexican portion first.” This required that Kim be flown in early since he was co-producing. Anna, for one, was grateful for the change brought on by the weather: “I was so happy it snowed in Sudbury ‘cause I had a week to prepare!”
Bad Blood Season 2 Poster (@BadBloodSeries)
Kim Coates on why his time is now
Kim talked at length about his career and concluded that TV is where he belongs. With films like Last Boy Scouts, The Client, and Waterworld under his belt, the actor said that he often gets asked why Kim Coates isn’t a bigger star. His reply? “You know what? It wasn’t my time. My time’s right now.” He elaborated, saying that he wasn’t much of a “Hollywood guy” and red carpets weren’t really his thing.
After his turn on the successful show Sons of Anarchy and now heading up Bad Blood, Kim has settled comfortably into his shoes as a star of the small screen. “I said ‘no’ to TV my whole life,” he said. “I did arcs. I did an arc on Entourage, and Prison Break, or CSI: Miami […] But I never wanted to be a regular on a show and it was really a lucky happenstance moment with that show, Sons of Anarchy, where Kurt Sutter [series creator] just convinced me to play this guy, and I had no idea about the power of television.”
Acting tips from Anna Hopkins
Anna proved herself to be quite knowledgeable when it comes to tips and tricks of the acting craft. Having acted on her fair share of television series, she has a lot of experience with coming in to pre-established territory and stirring things up (she recently played the sympathetic villain, Lilith, on Shadowhunters). When asked about memorizing lines, Anna advised breaking dialogue down into smaller portions and going over them multiple times until it feels right.
Anna owes the messaging app WhatsApp for helping her create chemistry with her new onscreen brother. “We live in different cities, but we started to text, like WhatsApp, all the time, and so, by the time we met, it was like we knew each other.” Aside from that, Anna says it was a lot about asking questions and observing the other’s behavior.
Melanie interjected, saying she felt lucky that she already knew the man playing her husband. But she also reiterated that chemistry has a lot to do with feeling safe around the other person and how important it is to set the tone for collaboration rather than competition.
Towards the end of the panel, we got to pose a question to Anna about her process when it comes to the fascinating accent she uses in her new role. She gave us some background about the twins to answer this one: “The twins, they’re kind of a hybrid of a few different places, so they were born in Calabria. But what’s really interesting about the ‘Ndrangheta in Calabria and in Italy is that it’s so illegal now that the mob bosses there basically hide in caves.” She continued, saying that the kids were educated elsewhere in boarding schools throughout Europe. She worked with a dialect coach over seven days on an accent that combined Italian, French, and English.
For any international fans who are curious about the show, Kim Coates recently announced on Twitter that the series will be airing outside of Canada before the end of 2018.
Stay tuned for more of our coverage from Fan Expo Canada 2018 coming soon!
Bad Blood Season 2 premieres Thursday, October 11th 8/7c on City TV.
