Sunny Side Up
April, 1998
By Robert Collison, Homemakers Magazine
When I enter Fritz, a trendy pizza and pasta joint in Toronto's Yorkville district, I am expecting to encounter the dark brooding presence of Katherine Hubbard, the long-suffering heroine of the CBC's Black Harbour series. Week in and week out for the last two television seasons, Katherine has stoically endured one mishap after another: her marriage to hapless Hollywood hack collapses; her relationship with her old high-school flame rekindles, burns out and rekindles again; her mother dies; her daughter loses her virginity to a hopelessly inappropriate young tough; her brother just misses a long stay at the crowbar motel. All these domestic disasters are set against the backdrop of one of Canada's mini-paradises: the South Shore of Nova Scotia, a stretch of rugged coastline south of Halifax that encompasses one picture-postcard setting after another. Over this East Coast Eden, Katherine Hubbard reigns like a maritime Mother Courage. Everyone keeps giving her their best shot. And she endures - bloodied but unbowed. Virtue, thy name may be Katherine Hubbard. But, I'm thinking, as an afternoon luncheon date in the chi-chi confines of midtown Toronto, full-bore martyrdom is best taken with an Advil.
So what happens? I meet a Sun Goddess. Whenever friends and colleagues talk about Rebecca Jenkins, the thirty something Toronto actor who plays Katherine Hubbard, words like "luminous" trip effortlessly from their tongues. "When Bec's on the set, you don't need lighting," say her costar Geraint Wyn Davies, who plays her husband, Nick Haskell. And guess what, they're right. Whether it's the smile - megawatt - or the hair - burnished blond - or the disposition - sunny and direct - Rebecca Jenkins exudes a sense of worldly wholesomeness. Not that she just arrived in town yesterday from some sleepy Down East fishing village. She is, after all, a former habitue of the Queen Street music scene of the 1980s; a woman who sang backup for both the ethereal Jane Siberry and the earthy Lorraine Segato of Parachute Club. And after acting with everyone from Tim Robbins to Kevin Spacey to Treat Williams, she's not the least bit naive about the Business (a.k.a. the entertainment industry) either. But she remains somehow what she was in the beginning: the Golden Girl Next Door. Says her friend actor/producer Ingrid Veninger: "A buddy who went to North Toronto Collegiate with her tells me that Bec was the girl every boy admired and every girl wanted to be like. She'd walk the halls with her guitar strung over her back and was just so young and groovy. And, my friend says, the great thing about Rebecca was that she didn't even realize it."
While she as still in her early 20s, Rebecca Jenkins got the classic big break: the starring role in a relatively high-budget Canadian feature film called Bye Bye Blues directed by Anne Wheeler. Although she had already toured with Siberry and Parachute Club as a backup singer, Jenkins' acting resume was scanty at the time: a few theatre pieces after she'd dropped out of drama school in Vancouver and a couple of gigs in some low-budget films and made-for-televison movies. One of them was Cowboys Don't Cry, also directed by Anne Wheeler, whose next project - Bye Bye Blues - was an immortaliztion of her mothers life: the story of a Second World War bride who was evacuated from romantic India to rural Alberta, where she supported herself and her young family by singing in one of the Big "swing" Bands that toured the province.
"Boy, did I have to fight for that role, oh my God," recalls Jenkins today. "Anne didn't think I could play Daisy, she kept saying, 'I think you're too Queen Street;'" But Wheeler - and her investors - were also concerned about whether she had the experience to "carry" the film. "The actor who played the lead was in almost every scene," says Wheeler. "It was a big responsibility." but Wheeler kept calling Jenkins back for yet one more audition - there were five in all - until she finally phoned her the offer: "Will you be my Daisy?"
"There were other actors who had more experience and cachet," recalls Wheeler, "but none of them shone like she did so she won out in the end: she just cooked," She also delivered a performance that won her a Genie Award for Best Actress in 1989. According to Ingrid Veninger, the secret to Jenkins' success is just amazing karma. "Rebecca always tells me, 'If you really want something, just ask for it.' It always works for her. She wanted a feature film, she got Bye Bye Blues. She wanted a TV series, she got Black Harbour. But she also always warns me to be sure I really want what I ask for. 'You may get it.'"
After the success of the Wheeler film, Rebecca Jenkins wasn't sure whether she really wanted to go for the brass ring, Hollywood-style. Not that Los Angeles didn't come courting. And she got some good parts with up-and-coming young actors. Some of them are big stars today. On the basis of Bye Bye Blues, she was cast - no audition necessary - opposite Kevin Spacey (Seven: L.A. Confidential) in an American made-for-television movie called Darrow. Jenkins played Ruby Darrow, journalist wife of the famous 1920s U.S. trial lawyer Clarence Darrow. "It was just before Kevin won the Tony on Broadway (in 1991 for Lost in Yonkers) and became famous. He's such a fabulous actor." Then came parts opposite Treat William's in Till Death Do Us Part and Tim Robbins in Bob Roberts, the political thriller which was also the young American actor's directorial debut. "I remember I was on the set once and someone came up and called me Susan. I thought, 'Right, I've been cast because I remind Tim of his partner (the actor Susan Sarandon).'"
But throughout this whole period Rebecca Jenkins was in serious turmoil about what she really wanted to do. Throughout her career Jenkins has been torn between music and acting. As her friend singer Lorraine Segato notes, "Rebecca's voice is so underrated because her acting talent is so immense. Her singing is so effortless you can almost hear the angels coming through. "Indeed, while she was working on Bye Bye Blues she was composing music she intended to turn into an album. That didn't happen. And as Anne Wheeler recalls, "For a couple of years, at least, Rebecca was in a state of limbo. She was offered acting roles and was working with musicians she'd worked with for a long time. She was a torn individual."
But what Rebecca didn't want wad clear: the Los Angeles fast track, the glam machine that transforms pretty young women into celluloid commodities. "The things they were saying about me just freaked me out. I realized in a certain sense that I wasn't strong enough to handle it. I was too young. I would have trusted anybody, been too easily manipulated. I was very naive." Years later, Jenkins claims she's no longer naive. Is she cynical? "No, I'm just realistic." And able to face the music: she still performs occasionally, and has finally recorded a CD of her own compositions which is due out soon.
According to her best friend Lisa Cochrane, a Halifax-based filmmaker whom Jenkins met while attending Dalhousie University, "Rebecca has really grown over the last five years. She's become a quite different person. Much more grounded and mature." When you ask her friends and colleagues how Rebecca is different from her Black Harbour character Katherine Hubbard, people invariably say, "Fun." "Rebecca likes to have fun," says Ingrid Veninger. "She's a party girl; she can get down to it."
"When we met in first year," Cochrane recalls, "we where both pretty outrageous. Quite feisty and high-spirited." Those qualities endure in Jenkins, but she's become much saner, more settled, more sure of herself. "The thing about Rebecca is that she's done a lot of personal emotional work," says Lorraine Segato. "She's a deep person, an old soul a person who understands - and is not afraid of - her own and other people's imperfections. She understands the complexity of being an artist and a performer."
During the filming of Black Harbour last year, Jenkins offered Segato a live-in job looking after her two-year-old daugher Sadie. "I need a break from Toronto," explains Segato. "The timing was right. Rebecca needed someone she could trust with her daughter and, after all, I've known Rebecca for over 10 years. It was a fabulous experience." And quite the menagerie: Sadie, Segato, Jenkins and Sadie's dad/Jenkins' husband, Markus Wade, a film technician and writer/filmmaker.
If there are two primary reasons for the new stability in Rebecca Jenkins' life, it's Markus and Sadie. Jenkins met Wade on Destiny Ridge, a now defunt TV series in which she starred as Linda Hazelton and he was the boom operator. By all accounts - Jenkins' and everyone else's - Markus and drop-dead gorgeous. ("He was the 'hunk' of the Black Harbour set, not any of the actors," notes Geraint Wyn Davies. "It kind of took the heat off us.") "I was attracted to him," recalls Jenkins, "but I was there to work. I didn't want to get into emotional turmoil."
Says Veninger: "Markus is just so easy to star at that you first instinct is to resist the temptation. I'm sure Rebecca told herself that she was going to be the one person who gave him no attention." Her strategy obviously backfired because they've been together for over three years. "Because Bec is so open to people she's never really had a type of guy." adds Veninger. "She's gone out with many different types - lawyers, business guys, musicians. But I remember her telling me from the very beginning that Markus was one of the most amazing people she'd ever met and that she could see herself spending a long time with him."
But what has changed her life even more has been her baby, Sadie. Jenkins has four sisters and one brother, and she's the first one of the Jenkins girls to have a child. (Her brother, a doctor like their father, has four children and practices in Lunenburg, N.S.) " I guess my family might have been a little surprised because I was the most footloose," she says. "But I always knew I wanted to be a mother."
Still, there are no plans for a sequel. " I think one is great. But with the stage our careers are at, a large family wouldn't work for Markus and me. I have no regrets, however. Sadie is a big gift; she has taught us so much about ourselves and what is important in life."
"Sexy Sadie" ("Markus named her after the song on the Beatles' White Album," says Jenkins) is also in part responsible for propelling Jenkins back to work and into Black Harbour. After six months home alone with a young child, Jenkins was, she feely admits, "going out of my mind." At the time, they were living in Edmonton, where Markus was working on a TV series Jake and the Kid, "and it was like, 'Oh my God, I've got to get out of here and get working.'"
Jenkins' good karma struck again. her agent called from Toronto asking whether she'd be interested in reading for a part in a new series being developed by Barbara Samuels and Wayne Grigsby, the producers of the highly acclaimed TV series North of 60. "oh, yes!" she responded. And again fate interceded on her behalf. Instead of sending her the "sides" - show-bix parlance for scrip pages - for the role of Vicky, the secondary character they had in mind, they mistakenly sent a scene featuring Katherine Hubbard, the lead.
By the time producer Barbara Samuels arrived in the Calgary audition, Jenkins was already, in her mind at least, Katherine. "I agreed to read Vicky, cold, if they'd consider me for the lead." They did, and she got the part. "Vicky was where I was five years ago, more emoitionally volatile. But Katherine I got immediately. She's strong, emotionally complex, speaks her mind." Says Samuels, "The reason why Rebecca works so well as Katherine is because she is such an accessible human being. She's kind of hypnotic to watch, and that is very rare in an actor."
This fall, the magic continues: Black Harbour has been renewed for a third season, having built to a healthy 700,000-plus viewing audience by the end of last year. Despite criticisms that the show is overly bleak, it has rabid devotees, both here and in the 20 markets around the world where it has been sold. In the U.S., where it's not even broadcast, bootlegged copies of the show circulate and a Black Harbour Web site and chat room have been created.
Unlike U.S. - style evening soaps like Melrose Place - where all the emotions are over the op and everyone looks like they just stepped off the covers of Vogue or GQ - the people of Black Harbour seem eerily real and down to earth. And maybe not pretty enough. One reviewer complained, "with all due respect to Rebecca Jenkins and her fine form," Black Harbour was the only evening drama where the men were more attractive than the women. "my mother wrote that review," quips Geraint Wyn Davies.
For her part, Jenkins has enjoyed every minute of her time as the matriarch of Black Harbour. With one caveat. "At the end of the first season, I must admit I couldn't wait to stop being Katherine Hubbard. Life was just so hard and difficult. When we do come back, I just hope Katherine can have a bit more fun."
Back to articles
April, 1998
By Robert Collison, Homemakers Magazine
When I enter Fritz, a trendy pizza and pasta joint in Toronto's Yorkville district, I am expecting to encounter the dark brooding presence of Katherine Hubbard, the long-suffering heroine of the CBC's Black Harbour series. Week in and week out for the last two television seasons, Katherine has stoically endured one mishap after another: her marriage to hapless Hollywood hack collapses; her relationship with her old high-school flame rekindles, burns out and rekindles again; her mother dies; her daughter loses her virginity to a hopelessly inappropriate young tough; her brother just misses a long stay at the crowbar motel. All these domestic disasters are set against the backdrop of one of Canada's mini-paradises: the South Shore of Nova Scotia, a stretch of rugged coastline south of Halifax that encompasses one picture-postcard setting after another. Over this East Coast Eden, Katherine Hubbard reigns like a maritime Mother Courage. Everyone keeps giving her their best shot. And she endures - bloodied but unbowed. Virtue, thy name may be Katherine Hubbard. But, I'm thinking, as an afternoon luncheon date in the chi-chi confines of midtown Toronto, full-bore martyrdom is best taken with an Advil.
So what happens? I meet a Sun Goddess. Whenever friends and colleagues talk about Rebecca Jenkins, the thirty something Toronto actor who plays Katherine Hubbard, words like "luminous" trip effortlessly from their tongues. "When Bec's on the set, you don't need lighting," say her costar Geraint Wyn Davies, who plays her husband, Nick Haskell. And guess what, they're right. Whether it's the smile - megawatt - or the hair - burnished blond - or the disposition - sunny and direct - Rebecca Jenkins exudes a sense of worldly wholesomeness. Not that she just arrived in town yesterday from some sleepy Down East fishing village. She is, after all, a former habitue of the Queen Street music scene of the 1980s; a woman who sang backup for both the ethereal Jane Siberry and the earthy Lorraine Segato of Parachute Club. And after acting with everyone from Tim Robbins to Kevin Spacey to Treat Williams, she's not the least bit naive about the Business (a.k.a. the entertainment industry) either. But she remains somehow what she was in the beginning: the Golden Girl Next Door. Says her friend actor/producer Ingrid Veninger: "A buddy who went to North Toronto Collegiate with her tells me that Bec was the girl every boy admired and every girl wanted to be like. She'd walk the halls with her guitar strung over her back and was just so young and groovy. And, my friend says, the great thing about Rebecca was that she didn't even realize it."
While she as still in her early 20s, Rebecca Jenkins got the classic big break: the starring role in a relatively high-budget Canadian feature film called Bye Bye Blues directed by Anne Wheeler. Although she had already toured with Siberry and Parachute Club as a backup singer, Jenkins' acting resume was scanty at the time: a few theatre pieces after she'd dropped out of drama school in Vancouver and a couple of gigs in some low-budget films and made-for-televison movies. One of them was Cowboys Don't Cry, also directed by Anne Wheeler, whose next project - Bye Bye Blues - was an immortaliztion of her mothers life: the story of a Second World War bride who was evacuated from romantic India to rural Alberta, where she supported herself and her young family by singing in one of the Big "swing" Bands that toured the province.
"Boy, did I have to fight for that role, oh my God," recalls Jenkins today. "Anne didn't think I could play Daisy, she kept saying, 'I think you're too Queen Street;'" But Wheeler - and her investors - were also concerned about whether she had the experience to "carry" the film. "The actor who played the lead was in almost every scene," says Wheeler. "It was a big responsibility." but Wheeler kept calling Jenkins back for yet one more audition - there were five in all - until she finally phoned her the offer: "Will you be my Daisy?"
"There were other actors who had more experience and cachet," recalls Wheeler, "but none of them shone like she did so she won out in the end: she just cooked," She also delivered a performance that won her a Genie Award for Best Actress in 1989. According to Ingrid Veninger, the secret to Jenkins' success is just amazing karma. "Rebecca always tells me, 'If you really want something, just ask for it.' It always works for her. She wanted a feature film, she got Bye Bye Blues. She wanted a TV series, she got Black Harbour. But she also always warns me to be sure I really want what I ask for. 'You may get it.'"
After the success of the Wheeler film, Rebecca Jenkins wasn't sure whether she really wanted to go for the brass ring, Hollywood-style. Not that Los Angeles didn't come courting. And she got some good parts with up-and-coming young actors. Some of them are big stars today. On the basis of Bye Bye Blues, she was cast - no audition necessary - opposite Kevin Spacey (Seven: L.A. Confidential) in an American made-for-television movie called Darrow. Jenkins played Ruby Darrow, journalist wife of the famous 1920s U.S. trial lawyer Clarence Darrow. "It was just before Kevin won the Tony on Broadway (in 1991 for Lost in Yonkers) and became famous. He's such a fabulous actor." Then came parts opposite Treat William's in Till Death Do Us Part and Tim Robbins in Bob Roberts, the political thriller which was also the young American actor's directorial debut. "I remember I was on the set once and someone came up and called me Susan. I thought, 'Right, I've been cast because I remind Tim of his partner (the actor Susan Sarandon).'"
But throughout this whole period Rebecca Jenkins was in serious turmoil about what she really wanted to do. Throughout her career Jenkins has been torn between music and acting. As her friend singer Lorraine Segato notes, "Rebecca's voice is so underrated because her acting talent is so immense. Her singing is so effortless you can almost hear the angels coming through. "Indeed, while she was working on Bye Bye Blues she was composing music she intended to turn into an album. That didn't happen. And as Anne Wheeler recalls, "For a couple of years, at least, Rebecca was in a state of limbo. She was offered acting roles and was working with musicians she'd worked with for a long time. She was a torn individual."
But what Rebecca didn't want wad clear: the Los Angeles fast track, the glam machine that transforms pretty young women into celluloid commodities. "The things they were saying about me just freaked me out. I realized in a certain sense that I wasn't strong enough to handle it. I was too young. I would have trusted anybody, been too easily manipulated. I was very naive." Years later, Jenkins claims she's no longer naive. Is she cynical? "No, I'm just realistic." And able to face the music: she still performs occasionally, and has finally recorded a CD of her own compositions which is due out soon.
According to her best friend Lisa Cochrane, a Halifax-based filmmaker whom Jenkins met while attending Dalhousie University, "Rebecca has really grown over the last five years. She's become a quite different person. Much more grounded and mature." When you ask her friends and colleagues how Rebecca is different from her Black Harbour character Katherine Hubbard, people invariably say, "Fun." "Rebecca likes to have fun," says Ingrid Veninger. "She's a party girl; she can get down to it."
"When we met in first year," Cochrane recalls, "we where both pretty outrageous. Quite feisty and high-spirited." Those qualities endure in Jenkins, but she's become much saner, more settled, more sure of herself. "The thing about Rebecca is that she's done a lot of personal emotional work," says Lorraine Segato. "She's a deep person, an old soul a person who understands - and is not afraid of - her own and other people's imperfections. She understands the complexity of being an artist and a performer."
During the filming of Black Harbour last year, Jenkins offered Segato a live-in job looking after her two-year-old daugher Sadie. "I need a break from Toronto," explains Segato. "The timing was right. Rebecca needed someone she could trust with her daughter and, after all, I've known Rebecca for over 10 years. It was a fabulous experience." And quite the menagerie: Sadie, Segato, Jenkins and Sadie's dad/Jenkins' husband, Markus Wade, a film technician and writer/filmmaker.
If there are two primary reasons for the new stability in Rebecca Jenkins' life, it's Markus and Sadie. Jenkins met Wade on Destiny Ridge, a now defunt TV series in which she starred as Linda Hazelton and he was the boom operator. By all accounts - Jenkins' and everyone else's - Markus and drop-dead gorgeous. ("He was the 'hunk' of the Black Harbour set, not any of the actors," notes Geraint Wyn Davies. "It kind of took the heat off us.") "I was attracted to him," recalls Jenkins, "but I was there to work. I didn't want to get into emotional turmoil."
Says Veninger: "Markus is just so easy to star at that you first instinct is to resist the temptation. I'm sure Rebecca told herself that she was going to be the one person who gave him no attention." Her strategy obviously backfired because they've been together for over three years. "Because Bec is so open to people she's never really had a type of guy." adds Veninger. "She's gone out with many different types - lawyers, business guys, musicians. But I remember her telling me from the very beginning that Markus was one of the most amazing people she'd ever met and that she could see herself spending a long time with him."
But what has changed her life even more has been her baby, Sadie. Jenkins has four sisters and one brother, and she's the first one of the Jenkins girls to have a child. (Her brother, a doctor like their father, has four children and practices in Lunenburg, N.S.) " I guess my family might have been a little surprised because I was the most footloose," she says. "But I always knew I wanted to be a mother."
Still, there are no plans for a sequel. " I think one is great. But with the stage our careers are at, a large family wouldn't work for Markus and me. I have no regrets, however. Sadie is a big gift; she has taught us so much about ourselves and what is important in life."
"Sexy Sadie" ("Markus named her after the song on the Beatles' White Album," says Jenkins) is also in part responsible for propelling Jenkins back to work and into Black Harbour. After six months home alone with a young child, Jenkins was, she feely admits, "going out of my mind." At the time, they were living in Edmonton, where Markus was working on a TV series Jake and the Kid, "and it was like, 'Oh my God, I've got to get out of here and get working.'"
Jenkins' good karma struck again. her agent called from Toronto asking whether she'd be interested in reading for a part in a new series being developed by Barbara Samuels and Wayne Grigsby, the producers of the highly acclaimed TV series North of 60. "oh, yes!" she responded. And again fate interceded on her behalf. Instead of sending her the "sides" - show-bix parlance for scrip pages - for the role of Vicky, the secondary character they had in mind, they mistakenly sent a scene featuring Katherine Hubbard, the lead.
By the time producer Barbara Samuels arrived in the Calgary audition, Jenkins was already, in her mind at least, Katherine. "I agreed to read Vicky, cold, if they'd consider me for the lead." They did, and she got the part. "Vicky was where I was five years ago, more emoitionally volatile. But Katherine I got immediately. She's strong, emotionally complex, speaks her mind." Says Samuels, "The reason why Rebecca works so well as Katherine is because she is such an accessible human being. She's kind of hypnotic to watch, and that is very rare in an actor."
This fall, the magic continues: Black Harbour has been renewed for a third season, having built to a healthy 700,000-plus viewing audience by the end of last year. Despite criticisms that the show is overly bleak, it has rabid devotees, both here and in the 20 markets around the world where it has been sold. In the U.S., where it's not even broadcast, bootlegged copies of the show circulate and a Black Harbour Web site and chat room have been created.
Unlike U.S. - style evening soaps like Melrose Place - where all the emotions are over the op and everyone looks like they just stepped off the covers of Vogue or GQ - the people of Black Harbour seem eerily real and down to earth. And maybe not pretty enough. One reviewer complained, "with all due respect to Rebecca Jenkins and her fine form," Black Harbour was the only evening drama where the men were more attractive than the women. "my mother wrote that review," quips Geraint Wyn Davies.
For her part, Jenkins has enjoyed every minute of her time as the matriarch of Black Harbour. With one caveat. "At the end of the first season, I must admit I couldn't wait to stop being Katherine Hubbard. Life was just so hard and difficult. When we do come back, I just hope Katherine can have a bit more fun."
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