COTTAGE INDUSTRY
The Lake taps into a longtime Canadian summer tradition
Partway through the first episode of The Lake, one of the characters talks about a failed plan to introduce something called Boathouse Drag Race: Canadian Diva Edition to the community of cottage-dwellers who vacation on the lake.
It was rejected for their annual talent show, but is nevertheless described as “you start in with Anne Murray, work your way through Jann Arden, k.d. lang, Sarah McLachlan ... ”
It's a suitably and unabashedly Canadian reference in the first scripted series for Amazon Canadian Original. The Lake is streaming on Prime Video in 240 countries and territories around the globe. But its creators were determined to give it a distinctly Canadian flavour.
“It was important to me and it was important to Amazon as well,” says showrunner and writer Julian Doucet. “It was really important for me to have things which are just for Canadians, to put that forward. If you are going to throw out a Rita Macneil reference, it won't be for everyone.”
Summer trips to the cottage were a rite of passage for many Canadians and so commonplace in our culture that it's sometimes easy to forget how peculiar these communities could be: a mishmash of parents, children, teens and retired folks who mingle for a concentrated but relatively brief period each year and then go their separate ways.
Doucet, who has worked on Canadian series such as St-nickel and Killjoys, spent a lot of time at a lake as a child but was particularly interested in the strange dynamics that can come into play when dealing with how a beloved family cottage is handed down to younger generations.
“One of the things that I remember coming back over and over was the idea of legacy: Who gets the cottage?” says Doucet. “It just tore families apart. Even just changing the drapes or carpet or if you want to do a renovation; because they were your most cherished childhood memories, the idea of somebody changing them just absolutely ignited blood feuds. I thought there was something very funny about that.”
The Lake does involve the strained relationship between Justin (Jordan Gavaris), and his stepsister Maisy-may (Julia Stiles), who has inherited the family cottage. But the primary focus of the series is even more directly autobiographical for Doucet. In The Lake, Justin has returned to the family fold after spending years abroad and wants to reconnect with his biological daughter Billie (played by Madison Shamoun), whom he gave up for adoption as a teenager. Doucet also had a daughter when he was in theatre school. He and the birth mother put her into an open adoption not long before Doucet came out as gay. He has been vacationing with his daughter since she was 16.
“We have a very particular dynamic, so I thought if I threw that in it would be a little Gilmore Girls, a little Succession, a little Red Hot American Summer and here we are,” he says.
The comic chemistry between Gavaris and Shamoun is at the heart of the series. Billie is a conscientious teen but not without her rebellious streak, which is the reason she is stuck in cottage country. Spending time with her birth father saves her from a summer at bible camp, but she is not thrilled to be there.
Meanwhile, it could be argued that Justin is not the most responsible authority figure.
The Lake is one of Gavaris' first major roles since his four-year run as Tatiana Maslany's foster brother Felix Dawkins in the hit sci-fi series Orphan Black. Choosing the right roles to follow Felix has been tough, he admits. He was still in his 20s and early in his career when he landed the role, which became both a critics' darling and a cult favourite that attracted legions of devoted fans.
“I knew I wanted to do comedy,” he says.
“In the last season of Orphan Black, I came out and have since really just appreciated how the industry is changing and finding new angles on old stories or brand new stories entirely, specifically stories that focus on queer characters. I was really impressed with the writing and I was also just totally absorbed with this character, who has been regulated to the periphery of other shows. But he was right there in the crosshairs of this universe.”
Gavaris said he was also excited about the opportunity to play a dad.
“And not a good dad, not a dad who knows how to be a parent,” he says. “But how would I feel, at 32, if I was raising a teenage daughter? Completely unprepared, terrified, constantly anxious. I just knew there was really great humour in there. It had the right recipe, the right ingredients for some really funny and ultimately really touching stuff.”
Given that representation and diversity are hot topics in the industry, the series also provides good fodder for discussion at media events.
“The Lake is not about Justin strong-arming his way to self-acceptance of his sexuality and his place in the world,” he says. “He's got no problem with that. This is a very messy person who is not accustomed to being an adult, who is strong-arming his way to adulthood by way of his birth daughter, trying to grow up, trying to forge this connection with her. In terms of representation, that's the ticket.
“Representation is not something any of us are going to achieve. I don't say that as, `Oh, we're never going to get representation on screen. It's just going to be this lifelong battle!' It is, in a positive way, in the idea that we are always chasing the black cat. We never catch the cat.
“We're never going to reach a point where suddenly we've represented every story from every angle. We just have to keep finding new access points to familiar stories or finding new stories. It's like turning over the rocks and finding another perspective on the world.”