Star has fun with offbeat characters
Workin’ Moms star finds misunderstood humans at the heart of her characters
Workin’ Moms Season 3 debuts Thursday CBC, CBC Gem “I obviously have fun with characters that people don’t like.”
Actress Jessalyn Wanlim offers this opinion slowly and in a measured tone before breaking out in laughter, as if surprising herself with such a blunt assessment of her most famous onscreen creations.
The Calgary native is on the line from her Los Angeles home to promote the third season of Workin’ Moms, which debuts Thursday with a double episode on CBC and CBC Gem.
She returns as Jenny Matthews, a new mom who has decidedly mixed feelings about being a new mom in the irreverent series created by writer, actress and comedian Catherine Reitman.
But it’s important to note that Wanlim doesn’t suggest her characters deserve to be disliked, at least not in her opinion. That includes the self-centred Matthews. It also includes the much-hated villain Evie Cho, who Wanlim played in the fourth season of Orphan Black. It even includes Fiona, the icily efficient hostess of an exclusive, high-end restaurant who stands between Jay Pritchett and the Australian barley-and-winefed beef he desperately covets in a particularly funny 2013 episode of Modern Family. Wanlim tends to see her characters with far more sympathy than viewers often do.
“I just enjoy playing the no-sonice people, at whatever level it is,” she says. “They are just misunderstood human beings. They just have their own intentions and it just doesn’t coincide with the rest of the world or the group as a whole. What I love to do is find the human part of a character that is just not going to fit in.”
Jenny Matthews certainly fits the bill. While perhaps not nearly as ruthless as the murderous Evie Cho, chief antagonist in the fourth season of the BBC America/space hit cult series Orphan Black, Jenny has harboured some unorthodox views on motherhood in the past. Introduced at the beginning of the acclaimed comedy in 2017, Jenny had a limited role in Workin’ Moms’ sophomore season. But she returns in a big way for season 3, giving Wanlim a chance to further explore what she calls a “really spunky character.”
At the end of season 2, Jenny had abandoned her young daughter and acrimoniously split with husband Ian (Dennis Andres), having succumbed to her doubts and fears about both her qualifications and desire for motherhood. But she seems to have a change of heart in season 3. Sort of.
“Season 3 reintroduces her and she has an opportunity where she can connect with her daughter again,” Wanlim says. “It’s an interesting journey that Jenny takes. She makes some new friends and, because they don’t know her past and relationship with her ex-husband, she kind of manipulates the scenario to fit her needs. A lot of this season focuses on Jenny basically putting herself first in different
Being able to play this character and representing my culture, I think that’s the one thing that I really love about this show.
situations, whether it be with her friends, whether it be with her ex-husband, or whether it be at work.”
Reitman’s Workin’ Moms became a surprise hit for CBC after it aired in 2017, praised for its funny but realistic portrayal of new motherhood through the eyes of four friends. By the end of season 2, the mothers had dealt with philandering husbands, postpartum depression, identity crises, unplanned pregnancies, mommy guilt and career setbacks, making for a refreshingly authentic comedy that Chatelaine calls “a sharp combination of daily humiliations and non-pg humour.”
Honesty has always been at the centre of the series, and Wanlim sees Jenny as an honest reflection of some of the struggles young mothers go through.
“Jenny, on paper, is a very complicated person,” she says. “You don’t like her to begin with. But, for some reason, whenever she comes to life when I’m rolling on camera she’s a misunderstood human being. She just has a different perspective and point of view on how she approaches everything and her attitude toward it. Granted, she has some selfish moments. But I think, inevitably, that’s what a lot of women struggle with in not necessarily fitting the norm. I think a lot of people can actually relate to this character.”
Wanlim theorizes that her knack for playing these characters who “are just not going to fit in” at least partly springs from her unorthodox upbringing.
Born and raised in Calgary, she left home at the young age of 12 to attend the National Ballet School of Canada in Toronto.
“This is not to say that I’m as evil as some of these characters that appear on television or that I’ve played,” she says with a laugh. “But there’s a part of me that was very different, having been raised the way I was and leaving home at such a young age. There’s an independence and grown-up version of me that evolved a lot faster than the normal teenagers do. It just makes me a bit different.”
After graduating from the National Ballet School of Canada, Wanlim left to study dance at the prestigious Juilliard School in New York. It was there that she discovered acting.
“I fell into it in New York because I shared the same floor as the drama department,” she says. “Which is not to say that you can just transfer over to that department but it kind of gave me a taste of being in New York and experiencing acting.”
In 2006, she landed a recurring role as a nanny on the soap opera All My Children. She went on to recurring roles in series such as the short-lived ABC comedy-drama Scoundrels and the CW teen romance Gossip Girl.
She joined the cast of the trippy clone-filled sci-fi series Orphan Black in 2016, playing a ruthless bioengineer and CEO of the shadowy Brightborn Technologies. Wanlim was so effective in the role that she enraged the fervent international fan base. (“I’m the most hated person on TV,” she told Yahoo! News back in 2016.)
Still, whatever quirks her characters might have, she said she is always happy to play characters such as Jenny who represent her heritage. Wanlim’s mother is Filipino and her father is Chinese-indonesian.
“Growing up, I never saw anybody like me on the screen,” she says. “Being able to play this character and representing my culture, I think that’s the one thing that I really love about this show.”