CANADIAN BORN ACTRESS ANDREA DREPAUL

AD: Okay, so, the three most fun things. Wow, only three? I have so many. (Laughs)

SS: You can give me the top three, and then whatever just comes to mind.

AD: All right, so the three most fun things I’ve done. Um, I’ve—I starred in Beauty and the Beast, working with Kristin Kreuk primarily, and it was a great experience. I had so much fun working with her and working with a few other key cast members. I didn’t quite work with Jay Ryan, but I worked more with say, Rachel Skarsten. It was fantastic. It was an ensemble cast, and um, this particular show was based around Kristin’s character, Catherine, um, her father getting remarried, so I play a very type-A bridesmaid who is very highly suspect that Kristin doesn’t have a date for her father’s wedding, so of course there’s like six girls, six of us trying to shoot, you know, these scenes, and obviously the producers and the director, they have an idea of what they want, and they’re trying to get it in one long shot. So it literally took us nine hours to do one scene, which is kind of unheard of in television, right? Because in television, things are a lot—things move more quickly, but because of so many characters, and so many things happening in this one scene, it actually took us nine hours to shoot, but we had a great time doing it. It was a lot of fun, um, the show itself is a hit show on CW, which has got its fourth season renewal just recently, so it’s a wonderful show, and I loved so much to be a part of it, and there was talk about me coming back on, so we’ll see what happens with that!

Um, one of the coolest experiences I had was working with Sendhil Ramamurthy, who did play Dr. Suresh on Heroes, a very lovely young man, and I worked with him in Covert Affairs when I did a guest-starring role on Covert Affairs a couple years back, and it was a great experience. Um, that was my first time ever actually giving any type of romantic scenes on set as an actor, so I was very nervous about it, but he was completely professional, and he guided me. He came across like a big brother. Such a nice, nice guy. Really great conversations with him, like off set, he was lovely—lovely to work with. And that’s a show that shoots, you know, in Toronto, and it’s a very big production where it’s literally three million dollars an episode to shoot Covert Affairs, so it was a great experience working on that type of set, where it—that’s like a machine, where they’re really pumping them in and pumping them out, so it was a lovely experience.

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But I must say, one of the biggest successes that I had early on in my career—it’s a great casting story, actually, I had gone in to audition for a role on Being Erica, which was on Soap net, and on CBC, and BBC Worldwide, and um, I had auditioned for this role and, and Stephanie, who was casting the show—the producers didn’t quite think that I was right for the role. What ended up happening was, they actually offered me another role, which turned into a recurring character on Being Erica, which is very memorable—Marie—and it was a fantastic experience, because that’s never happened to me as an actor, where you audition for something, and that—you know, you’re not successful in getting that, but since they like you so much, they were like hey, this role is actually more fitting to you. And that’s actually happened to me—it happened to me again in a television show called The Border, which is not on air anymore. It was on BBC. I had done the same thing, after—after of course, I did Being Erica, I ended up doing a role on The Border because I had auditioned for something else, and um, I wasn’t quite right for that role, either, but the producers and the um, the—the director really liked me so much, they actually wrote a role for me that I went in and did, so it was fantastic. I’ve had some great opportunities in television, and that’s just, you know, from—from working hard and being there, and maybe at the right time, you know, right time, right place, who knows? But yeah, I’ve had a great run.

SS: Could you tell me about your experience on Warehouse 13 working with the people and all, so your character, and so forth?

AD: Yes, I can. So um, Warehouse 13, for people who don’t know, is a sci-fi show, and um, I worked on that show as a very interesting waitress at—in a diner, so I got to work directly with Eddie McClintock, who is fantastic, and that’s another big production that was shooting in Toronto, so they pump them in, pump them out, like I said earlier. But the experiences working with these lead—leading actors, and having that opportunity to be around them is incredible. Watching how people perform and work is amazing and getting the opportunity to work with great, American directors is definitely something I appreciate because they have a different point of view to how they see television and how they work. And you get to know very quickly that these are professionals, they’re very serious, like they know the ins and the outs and they know how quickly to get a shot, so they know exactly what to tell you if you’re not on point or if you’re going in the wrong direction that’s just—their direction is so, this is what it is, you know?

So it can be a little bit stressful, you know, but it was definitely a great experience, and um, that particular show was very cool because we were working in sort of a diner on King St. but they were CGI-ing this effect onto the diner where it was like a big crash, like a big UFO crash, basically, so it was kind of neat, but it wasn’t actually happening, but you know, of course as artists we have to pretend that it is happening. We have to live that experience. So, that was my first time working, like, in that kind of capacity, where they’re creating essentially the shot that they want, but it’s not actually there. So—which is happening a lot more, actually, in television. They’re picking their location and they’re CGI-ing in what they want, which is kind of neat and it’s kind of cool, and that’s the way television is going. It’s turning into more a type of feature film style approach, which is incredible. I had a great time, I—I loved the cast.

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I’ve been very blessed and fortunate to work with some amazing, incredible actors who I’ve really felt have helped me grow as an artist, and um, and work begets work, so once you start doing these things, the word gets out, and then it becomes easier to start working on other American television shows. Um, I had the opportunity to do a recurring on The Firm, when The Firm was shooting in Toronto, and I got to work with Callum Keith Rennie, and that was probably my—the most, it’s so funny, because I don’t get star struck, but the most um, when I really, with an actor I’m working with, I have a tendency to get a little bit nervous, a little bit nervous, but fantastic. Like, you’re working with a character actor such as Callum Keith Rennie, who—you could not ask for anything more. So I sort of attribute my success to being like a sponge and sort of taking in everything that I can get.