Jinkies!

The Secret believers would have me think that I brought this on myself, maybe I did…

Before we began principle shooting, the cast got together for a read-through in Vancouver a couple of weeks ago and then rehearsed some scenes. Fabulous idea. A great opportunity for us get to know each other and work out some of the technicalities of blocking (which will potentially save some time on set). We made some great discoveries, one of the biggest being the parallels of the Beast story to that of one of our greatest television series of our generation: Scooby-Doo.

Cool. Except I don’t wanna be Velma!!

Today on set, these Scooby-ish parallels began to show. We started off our day shooting the arrival of the team in Kelowna. The Juanabees van (‘The Mystery Machine’) rolls up to the resort, stops and the team piles out. Great, nice easy shot. Stewart (‘Shaggy’, played by Kennedy Goodkey) drives the van, hits the mark perfectly, we get out of the van and hit our actor marks. The van doesn’t understand that once it hits its mark, it is to stay in position. No. It wants to be the center of attention and pull focus from the actors so it starts rolling backwards. David Nykl [below, wearing hat] stays in character as Paul (or is that Fred?) and simply points out the rolling van to Stewart, who saves it from rolling into the hotel guests’ parked cars. Umm, no need to try to recreate this golden comedic moment for our other takes – it happened every time. The Juanabees van just didn’t ‘juana’ stay put.

Then we moved inside the lobby of the Manteo Resort (soooo beautiful!) for our next shot of the day. Paul runs into some problems with the team’s room reservations and pisses off the wrong hotel clerk (played masterfully by Rebecca Coleman). The scene starts with Paul, in line to check in and the rest of the team enters part way through the scene. So Stewart, Sondra (‘Daphne’ played by Leanne Jijian Hume), Neville (‘Scooby-Doo’, no acting required by Roger Haskett), Ernie (sharing the role of ‘Scrappy’, played by Fabrice Grover) and Leslie (moi) enter into the scene just when Paul is losing our room reservations. While waiting for action, Fabrice and Leanne were chatting with one of the employees of the Manteo. I stepped in to join the conversation only to have this resort employee turn to me look me up & down and say, “You must be the ‘Velma’ character.” Jinkies!

Lesson learned. Spend less time wishing I wasn’t cast in a role reminiscent of the unattractive, closeted lesbian character from a ’70s cartoon, spend more time manifesting a fabulous experience in B.C.’s stunning Okanagan with an unbelievably fantastic assembly of crew, cast, and countless volunteers. No need. It’s already manifested!

— Bronwen

P.S.: Check out my cat Hornhine on www.cutewithchris.com, he's a guest star on episode #115 and his name is mentioned on this week’s episode #120!