Meet the rogue with a brogue
Alberta actor plays Irish stowaway in Discovery’s epic drama Frontier
Landon Liboiron’s preparations to play Irish stowaway Michael Smyth in the historical drama Frontier don’t seem overly taxing.
When the 25-year-old Albertaborn actor learned he would be required to adopt an Irish brogue for the epic Discovery Channel series, he quickly decamped to Dublin and set up shop in a few pubs.
“It was No. 1 on my list for a long time,” says Liboiron, in an interview with Postmedia. He was in Newfoundland, where the series is filming. “It was the perfect excuse. I went to Ireland for a week and a half after working with a couple of dialect coaches. I just sat in the pubs, bought drinks for a couple of locals and listened to their stories.”
Liboiron laughs when telling the story, perhaps aware he is not making his actorly research sound particularly gruelling.
“It was actually a great time.” Whatever the case, Liboiron was a good student. Even when out of character and doing press interviews, his Irish accent is front and centre. Not bad for a kid who grew up in the farming hamlet of Jenner, Alta., and is probably best known for playing arrogant rich kid Declan Coyne in Degrassi: The Next Generation and brooding teen werewolf Peter Rumancek for three seasons of the Netflix horror series Hemlock Grove.
In reality, filming Frontier doesn’t sound like a walk in the park. The epic period piece involves plenty of action, elaborate period costumes, knife fights and endless scenes of characters facing the unforgiving climes of late 18th-century Canada.
Liboiron is second-billed behind Game of Thrones star Jason Momoa, who plays a ruthless and violent fur trader named Declan Harp. A resourceful thief, Smyth accidentally becomes a stowaway on a ship bound for the New World when his plan to steal barrels of gunpowder in the Old World goes awry.
After he is captured, he finds an unlikely saviour in the opportunistic Lord Benton (Alun Armstrong), an equally ruthless officer of the Hudson’s Bay Co., who hopes young Michael’s wily skills and Irish background will help him infiltrate Harp’s operations. Desperate and alone, and with the safety of his true love on the line back in England, Smyth accepts the assignment under duress.
In the first episode, which airs Sunday on Discovery, he gets a harrowing introduction to the hulking Declan Harp, who is apparently unmoved by their shared Irish heritage. It’s acting, of course, but the scene looks rather intense.
“I said this once, and I don’t know if I’m going to get in trouble if I say it again, but working with Jason is sort of like the bull and the matador, but you get to have a drink with the bull afterwards,” Liboiron says.
Harp is also behind the bloody opening sequence of Episode 1, which sets the tone for Frontier. It presents this period as rife with terror, violence and treachery.
Michael Smyth starts out as an unwilling pawn in the war between Harp’s upstart Black Wolf Company and Benton’s Hudson’s Bay Co. but becomes aware of opportunity in his new surroundings.
“The New World opened up an opportunity to get rid of their class,” Liboiron says. “In Europe, there was a whole class system of rich and poor. A lot of these guys who were part of the poorer class were able to come over to the New World and redefine their class and make something for themselves.
“That’s an important part of Michael’s character. Once he sees the amount of opportunity in the New World, it creates conflict for him. Why go back to misery and the streets of London when we can make something of ourselves here?”
Co-starring Edmonton native Jessica Matten as warrior Sokanon, a member of Harp’s inner circle, and Republic of Doyle’s Allan Hawco as ambitious Scotsman Douglas Brown, the series will present “a plethora of accents,” Liboiron says.
It will also feature interesting outfits. Later in the series Smyth sports a formidable fur coat.
“Whenever you’re sitting out on a windy, snowy plain and you are miserable because of the weather, you look at yourself, and you have furs and you have a big knife, and you look at those around you, and there is muskets and all this stuff,” Liboiron says. “You go ‘This is pretty … cool.’ ”