Cynthia was so nice and kind, very personable, in our
interview. I've watched her on TV for years, so it was great
to speak with her! This Lifetime movie was a lot of fun and
she did a fabulous job in it.
Here is the our interview. I hope you
enjoy it!
If the audio is not streaming well, please right-click on
this link and save it to your computer. It should work
better that way!
Here is the transcribed version by
Gisele.
1. How did you get the part in "Killing Daddy"?
Cynthia Stevenson: Pierre David, the executive producer,
had me come in and meet him in town, here in LA, and offered
me the part. I asked him, "Why did you pick me to play this
role?" And he said, "Well, there is a list Lifetime has of
actresses that have dual citizenship, Canadian and
American." So, that had a huge part to do with why they
offered me this role. And I also love Lifetime. I did a
Lifetime Christmas movie that I loved in Toronto a couple of
years ago, and then I did Lifetime's first half-hour comedy
in 1998. I loved doing that show called "Oh, baby." I love
Lifetime. I always feel grateful to them. They do so many
great things. I love their stuff.
2. What attracted you to the role?
Cynthia Stevenson: I really wanted to go and work in
Canada with this group, because Billy Moses, a friend of
mine, had worked with Pierre David before on many, many of
his movies, and he said, "Oh, Cynthia, you've got to go.
This is the nicest group of people you'll ever work with.
It's a total family, and they'll really treat you well, and
it's like going off on vacation. You'll have the best time."
And it's true. It's such a nice group. It was a really,
really nice group of people, and they all have such a
shorthand together, because they've all worked in like 3 or
4 movies a year together, and I really wanted to work with
Billy, because Billy actually was on "Hope and Gloria." He
did a really funny turn on "Hope and Gloria." Billy's so
great, 'cause he's so good at comedy and drama, so I thought
that'd be fun. And then I did not know Elizabeth Gillies,
but I'd heard about her, and she just seemed like she'd be
such an interesting girl. Oh, my God, was she ever? So much
fun to work with, and she, too, is someone to watch. She
reminds me so much of Bette Davis. Oh, my God, she has such
a young Bette Davis quality. I haven't seen the movie, which
is so weird that we're talking about it, 'cause I've not
been able to see it yet, but I was there certainly when we
were filming it, and I was watching her, and I just thought,
"Holy cow, this girl is a dynamo. And my role is such a
weird role. I've never played anything like that before. I
thought, "I've got to go for this." I got to play a Lifetime
housekeeper? Crazy!
3. Was it difficult playing such a saintly character?
Cynthia Stevenson: Yes. It absolutely was. It was very
hard for me to relate to. It's just that I'm a hugely
caretaking person that someone who has made the life choices
she made, there's something really sad about her. I just
thought it'd be an interesting role to kind of inhabit for a
while. It was all great. It was all really, really fun. I'm
so happy I did it. I can't wait to see it. I just thought
the tone was so interesting. And Curtis Crawford, who was
the director, was just so fun and so open, and so game to
try things. There was just a really nice feeling on the set,
and that's always so great.
4. The ending of the movie kind of left things a little
unclear. They kind of hinted at the beginning that Cassie's
dad molested her, but then there was nothing. Was it all in
her head?
Cynthia Stevenson: I think it was absolutely all in her
head, and that's what's cool. We talked about that a lot.
"Should it all be in her head or was any of it justified?"
And Billy talked about it a lot, and I think absolutely all
of it -- I think it was more interesting that it was all in
her head. I mean, she really was crazy. And also, I remember
the scene where her mom is taken out. How horrible, right?
And how can your heart not go out to her. And you see it
from that time on, her genealogy is what it is, but being
that and not being able to interpret anything correctly
after that. We thought the hurt was just too big for her.
5. Did Emma sleep with him or not?
Cynthia Stevenson: Absolutely, I think Emma and he were
having a relationship but not until way later. Certainly not
when she was a little girl.
6. I also wish they had explained about what happened
with the will.
Cynthia Stevenson: Oh, I have to see that. I thought the
lawyer had admitted to changing the will, and that's why he
comes to the house.
7. What is it about Canada that you enjoy?
Cynthia Stevenson: I grew up in Western Canada. This was
shot in Eastern Canada, but I grew up from age 10-20 in
Vancouver, and then my husband and my son and I moved back
when I worked there from 2001 - 2008, and I love Vancouver,
and I love Canada. There's a different feeling in Canada.
There just is. I mean, there's a different feeling in
Northern California than there is in Southern California, so
I just find some things familiar, of course, about Canada.
And I also really wanted to work with -- I love working with
a group of people that have such a shorthand with each
other. You know, as Billy had described to me. There's no
pretension. Everyone's very real and very open. It's just
about the work, and I love that, you know? I really love
that. Some of these movies are not giant budget movies,
which makes it even better, 'cause you're just there to do
the work. You don't have three days to do two pages of
dialogue. It's like a rep company. You're just jumping in
and getting the story told. I really like that 'cause I have
such a TV background where you don't have the luxury of
time. It's much more challenging, and I appreciate that. I
really like it. And the crew was so supportive and great.
They were right there with the story. It was really fun.
They do like four movies a year, but this was my first one.
8. You've done a lot of comedy as well as drama. Do you
have a preference?
Cynthia Stevenson: I actually really love comedy, and I
do prefer it, but there is definitely a challenge in drama.
I got the enormous gift of playing one week in a show called
"Scandal." Oh, my God. It was the most dramatic role I've
ever done. It was a woman who was just beyond desperate. The
episode started for me with a bomb strapped to me, like I'm
going to take myself out if people don't do what I say, and
it was so, so much fun, and it was as far away from comedy
as you can get. So, I really do enjoy the challenge of both.
Comedy is just so much fun. You know, it sounds so corny,
but if you take that energy and you run it through your
body, the energy that you feel in comedy is different as a
vibration than what you feel when you're doing a drama. I
find that I enjoy in my body the feeling of comedy more than
I do drama, but drama is an enormous challenge, and it's the
challenge of really going to always such a truthful place,
which is such a hard thing to do, but you try to do it as
often as you can so the audience gets to go with you,
because when I don't go there, then the audience can't go
there. You know, like when you watch someone's performance
and you think, "Mmm, oh, darn it. I'm aware of that person's
performance a little bit and not really in the story. To me,
the biggest compliment I can give is to someone like Tom
Hanks who always, literally always, is inside the story. I'm
not aware of him. He makes me so comfortable. I love
watching him, because he's just offering me the story,
because he's so deeply comfortable in everything he's doing.
You know what I mean? So that's the challenge as an actor,
and I'm not always successful in doing it, but that's the
challenge that I try to set all the time to try to really go
there. So, this was a weird role in that this was a woman
that on some level, I can't relate to at all. I mean, she's
just had no life. She's sort of a parasite in this family.
She's literally taken care of this family her whole entire
life, which was so sad to me, so unrequited. She wasn't
alive all the way. She'd never really given herself her own
life. I feel really, really lucky that I have been able to
do both comedy and drama. Sometimes it's easy to get
pigeonholed in one, certainly if you start doing comedy,
people will say, "She can do comedy; she can't do drama." I
feel so grateful to people who have let me do both. It's a
really lucky position to be in. I've always thought of
myself as a character actor. That's always how I see myself.
So, yeah! I like that. I do.
9. Anything else you'd like to tell fans about the movie?
Cynthia Stevenson: Just that I hope they love it, and
they just get onboard with that Callie Ross (Elizabeth
Gillies). She's such a cool girl. She's such an interesting,
interesting person in real life, and I know we're going to
see lots of things from her in the future. I think it was a
great story. And you know, it's funny, not having seen the
movie, I don't know if I'm going to feel this after I watch
it, but to me, but what you saw with those girls, mental
health is so misunderstood and so misaligned. People are
ashamed of it, embarrassed to talk about it where nobody's
embarrassed to say, "I have lupus" or "I have cancer," or "I
have diabetes," but you're so embarrassed to say, "I'm
schizophrenic" or "I'm bipolar" or "I'm really mentally
ill." There's just a horrible, horrible stigma, and when you
hear the statistics, like "One out of four people have some
walking around mental illness." You say, "My God! Why aren't
we understanding this more?" So, in a way, I thought it was
actually quite a cool movie for that. I actually have a
really good friend who I completely lost touch with because
I couldn't handle it anymore, but she was really, really
severely mentally ill, and she didn't have medical coverage.
This girl, I mean, it would be a movie that nobody could
watch, it's too bad, it's just too bad. And we don't have
the structure yet to help people. Now I have to get on my
soapbox to talk about all the horrible things that are
happening, but mental illness is something we have to get a
better handle on. People don't know how to figure it out.
Even in the movie, when you see her at the home. I mean,
that place is horrible, like "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's
Nest," and you think if you're rich enough or you have
fantastic medical coverage, you'd be in a better place, but
most of us would not be. We'd be in some crap hole like that
just rocking back and forth fully medicated. That's not such
a great answer. I just like that the movie was dealing with
it all, because, you know, nobody likes to look at it. Like
in the story when you saw the flashback of when she was
little, clearly there was something wrong with her. They
probably didn't want to tell anyone that she was in that
place. It's true. We're so embarrassed by it. Isn't that a
funny thing?
10. What other projects do you have coming up?
Cynthia Stevenson: I don't have anything immediately. I
just did an episode of a pretty cool show called "Navy
Street" (now called "Kingdom" for DirecTV) for a man that I
really like, that I worked with before, Gary Fleder. He
produced the show that I did in Vancouver called "Life
Unexpected" -- a series on the CW for a couple of years.
He's doing a show called "Navy Street," so I just did an
episode of that. It's a really cool show, cool and gritty.
I'm really eagerly looking forward to being a regular on a
sitcom again. It would be my dream come true with Bob
Newhart. [Laughs] He is so tremendous.
11. You're on Twitter and Facebook, but you don't post
much. Too busy?
Cynthia Stevenson: Oh, my gosh. It's because I'm such a
Luddite. Someone else helped me do my Twitter thing, and
they just kept telling me how to do it, and, I swear to God,
it would go in my left ear and pour out my right ear and hit
the ground. I can't. This is not happening. Actually, Liz
Gillies who is a major social media marvel. She just loves
it. She has so much fun making fun of me the entire time we
were shooting. She thought it was so funny that I really
don't know how to do it. I don't know what it is. I have a
huge block. I have Facebook and Twitter, but I barely do
anything with it. Life's kicked me in the butt right now.
I've just been not paying attention to anything. I've got to
jump back in it. I'm just in my own little world here.
Cynthia Stevenson Biography
Cynthia was born in Piedmont, California. She moved north with
her mother and brother, Gregory, to Bellevue, Washington and
then to Vancouver, British Columbia, where she spent most of
her childhood.
Cynthia took her first step toward an acting career in the
University of Victoria's Phoenix Theatre Program. Cynthia
returned to California to complete her training, attending
the renowned American Conservatory Theatre (ACT) in San
Francisco, and the Drama Studio London at Berkeley.
After arriving in Los Angeles Cynthia found roles with an improv
group and in two local theatre productions, one of which was
a long-running hit, The Ladies Room, written and directed by
Robin Schiff and produced by Aaron Spelling, which brought
Cynthia critical acclaim for her comedic skills. Because of
this work, she landed an immediate job on a TV sketch
comedy, Off the Wall, where she was featured in 26 episodes.
Cynthia quickly built her resume with guest parts on popular
sitcoms, including Empty Nest, Teddy Z., Newhart, Major Dad
and others. Next came her first starring role as Jennifer
Bass in My Talk Show, an original, offbeat nightly series,
described as "the first cult hit" of the 1990s. It proved to
be Cynthia's big break, as director Robert Altman noticed
and cast her as Bonnie Sherow, playing opposite Tim Robbins,
in his Oscar nominated film, The Player.
Legendary TV producers, Cherie and Bill Steinkellner, chose her
for a recurring guest spot on their iconic hit series,
Cheers. The producers then tapped her for a co-starring role
in their next sitcom, Bob, playing Bob Newhart's daughter.
That performance inspired the production team to create a
new show - Hope & Gloria - especially for Cynthia. Cynthia
was the center of a talented cast, including Jessica Lundy,
Alan Thicke and Rico Colantoni. When talking about her
career path, Cynthia is quick to point out that it was the
Steinkellners who gave it direction.
With a versatility that moves easily between TV and film, Cynthia
had leading roles in character-driven ensemble features,
such as the David Brown produced Watch It, Julianna Lavin's
Live Nude Girls, Jodie Foster's Home for the Holidays, Billy
Crystal's Forget Paris and Todd Solondz's Happiness. She's
been a recurring guest on network and cable shows, including
Ally McBeal, Monk, Six Feet Under, According to Jim and The
L Word.
When Lifetime decided to enter into the half hour comedy
business, they tapped Cynthia for the lead role in Susan
Beavers' Oh Baby, an innovative, first-person take on single
motherhood which ran for two years. She then relocated to
Vancouver (known as "Hollywood North"), where she starred as
the troubled Joy Lass in the long-running Showtime favorite
Dead Like Me. While working in Vancouver, Cynthia was
featured in several family films, including Agent Cody
Banks, Agent Cody Banks 2: Destination London and six Air
Bud comedies for Disney and in Richard Benjamin's A Little
Thing Called Murder opposite Judy Davis. Her roster also
expanded with roles in independent films such as Neverwas,
Case 39 and Reunion.
Before returning to Southern California in 2008, Cynthia was a
series regular, playing the feisty female sheriff on ABC's
Men in Trees, and also starred in Lifetime TV's Christmas
comedy, Will You Merry Me, I Love You Beth Cooper,
Jennifer's Body, and the long-awaited Dead Like Me (The
Movie). Since relocating back to Los Angeles Cynthia has had
guest and recurring roles on such shows as Life Unexpected,
Grey's Anatomy, Off the Map, and Scandal as well as
co-starring in the ABC series, Surviving Suburbia opposite
Bob Saget. Cynthia recently completed the soon to be
released feature film Tiger Eyes.
Cynthia lives in the Los Angeles area with her husband and son.
Kingdom (previously titled Navy St.) is
an American drama television series created by Byron Balasco.
The series premiered on October 8, 2014, at
9 p.m. on
Audience Network.[1]
Season one consists of ten episodes.[2]
On October 17, 2014,
DirecTV announced that the series was renewed for an
additional 20 episodes, 10 scheduled to air in fall 2015 and
10 to air in 2016. Kingdom follows a family with its
mixed martial arts gym and the relationships and addictions
of its members.
We need more episode guide recap writers, article
writers, MS FrontPage and Web Expression users, graphics designers, and more, so
please email us
if you can help out! More volunteers always
needed! Thanks!
Page updated 11/17/14
