Skogland flexing her creative muscles
Prestigious Canadian director thriving in the golden age of TV
Since she began directing in the mid-1990s, Kari Skogland has built a resumé that includes the TV series Queer as Folk, Boardwalk Empire, The Borgias, Penny Dreadful, Sons of Liberty, Walking Dead, House of Cards, The Americans and the feature film, 50 Dead Men Walking.
These days the Ottawa native balances directing and show-running projects with developing ideas and projects as CEO of the Mad Rabbit production company.
When she talked to Postmedia she was just back from London, where she was working on the TV series The Rook, a sort of MI-5 type thriller with a paranormal twist for the Starz network.
London has been good to Skogland. This spring she won a BAFTA for her work on The Handmaid’s Tale. Skogland has directed numerous episodes, including the Season 1 finale, for the hit Hulu show, which is currently midway through Season 2.
When the TV series appeared, it struck a chord and resonated louder than a crowd at Donald Trump rally. People asked: Could this really happen?
“(When we were filming), the Handmaid’s finale last year, Trump was just starting to take hold, and we were just starting to feel the echoes of this weird new world that was suddenly too close for comfort,” said Skogland. “I think everyone knew they were making an important project, but I think it suddenly, through the zeitgeist, we realized, ‘Oh, this is a cautionary tale and super relevant.’ ”
Shot in Toronto and Hamilton, The Handmaid’s Tale is a stunning example of today’s top-drawer TV that’s no longer a bit player next to feature films.
“One could say now that a feature is the equivalent of a short story and a miniseries is the novel,” said Skogland, talking about this current golden age of TV.
“I think, now more than ever, creators ... are able to pick and choose what’s best for the material as compared to trying to fit the material into particular shoe boxes,” said Skogland, who is set to work on the new series The Boys from producers Evan Goldberg and Seth Rogen.
Skogland said Handmaid showrunner Bruce Miller’s mantra was simple: Be creative and push the envelope.
“It’s all about using your creative muscle. If you think you’ve seen it before, don’t do it,” said Skogland. “You’re expected to come at it with everything you have in terms of your creative muscle. That is very empowering.”
Miller pulled together a female writing staff to help him bring Atwood’s feminist novel to TV. That sea change in the number of women on a production isn’t lost on the veteran Skogland.
“I guess I would say, obviously in the last year, it has changed significantly,” said Skogland referencing #MeToo and #TimesUp.
Skogland explained that gender inequality kept some opportunities from her, but she stayed at it and managed to “chip away” at the establishment. These days, she says, her workplaces look very different from even a few years ago.
“You can’t have a set that isn’t diverse. No, you just can’t,” said Skogland.
While her creative vision reigns supreme, Skogland’s role also includes bean counting.
“I’m expected to make lots of suggestions on how to bring it in on budget,” said Skogland, who has a background in economics and at one point considered becoming a stockbroker.
“As with anything, they’re often written to be a little bit bigger than what money is in the bank. So that’s my job, to come in and creatively wrestle it to the ground so that we still getting everything we want to get, but you know, for a price. I do lots of script analysis.”
Working things out for Skogland isn’t limited to a successful day on set. As a working mother of two kids, Skogland also had to balance her children’s welfare with her travelling circus career.
“When they were younger, I just hauled them with me. They had a real sense of the planet being a small place,” said Skogland of her two kids, now aged 20 and 15.
Those early days, however, weren’t easy.
“I know a lot of women who felt they couldn’t have children and be a director. They were certainly told that,” said Skogland.
“I just went ahead and made it normal. What I would do in the early days, when women weren’t really hired, I would just pretend I didn’t have kids and bring them along secretly. Basically nobody really needed to know. I would just set myself up a home wherever we were. I just managed to normalize it.
“I remember with my first, I was still breastfeeding and I had to pump. I had this AD (assistant director) who would say ‘OK, you’ve got time, you can go now, run and pump,’ ” said Skogland who has lived in Romania, Hungary, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand.
“I’m blessed with the fact that I work all over the world. Not only are my stories related to my work, but because I’m curious about the planet, the stories relate to where I have been and where I’m living. I love to tell stories, whether I write them, direct them or imagine them.”
An expert with swords and sandals and horses, Skogland says her favourite stories lean toward the historical. She loves projects that require her to do lots of research.
“Historical projects, I think, are a blast. You’re looking at history,” said Skogland, adding that she hopes the newly emboldened gender equality movement will push writers and filmmakers to revisit history and this time take a different approach.
“What I’m hoping for is that now, more than ever, we’ll start looking at history through the female lens. Because up until now, it’s always been the white male lens,” said Skogland. “The same story told from the female lens is a completely different story.”
It’s all about using your creative muscle. If you think you’ve seen it before, don’t do it.”
Director Kari Skogland