Kim Cattrall
Under the Skin, her return to TV
Sensitve Skin debuts on Sunday, July 20 at 8 p.m. ET on HBO Canada.
UNDER THE SKIN Don McKellar doesn’t mind acting his age, even when it means facing the occasional jolt of reality. “I had a number of those moments with this,” the 50-year-old director of The Grand Seduction (which debuted in theatres in May) laughs when talking about his upcoming TV series, Sensitive Skin, in which he directs and stars with fellow Canuck, Kim Cattrall, 57, who plays his wife.
“When we were casting our son, I said, ‘We can’t have this grown-up as our son!’ But, in fact, it’s all very possible,” McKellar quips. “Like most people of my generation, I see myself as much younger, but a lot of things are rubbing our nose in it lately, including this series.”
The show, an adaptation of the British comedy series that starred Joanne Lumley, follows 50-something Davina Jackson (Cattrall), who uproots her life and, along with her husband, Al (McKellar), moves to a condo in downtown Toronto in an attempt to remain relevant.
“People my age are free. Their kids are gone, or they’re divorced, and they don’t want the lawn and the two-car garage anymore,” Cattrall explains. “They want to be around young people so they can feel young.”
Cattrall aimed to bring the series across the pond for nearly a decade to “that was the exciting thing about it – unveiling another part of Toronto.”
As for art imitating life, Cattrall says Davina’s story speaks to her even though they share little in common. “Yes, I’m looking at issues of mortality, but I didn’t take the conventional road.” And McKellar’s tendency to shirk stability for “opportunities to throw myself off balance from outside sources” sounds very un-Al. Still, he notes, “Every choice and reaction has bigger consequences” in mid-life. And that makes for compelling TV.
“I’m sort of bored with younger people and their problems now a little bit, ”McKellaradds. “We’ve seen a lot of coming-of-age stories, and I think it’s time to drop the ‘coming’ part.” —MC help fill the void of “stories of women going through a mid-life crisis, using comedy and drama and pathos and irony … as they did in Sex and the City. But it was about sex then. And intimacy. And what do women want? That ... becomes more of a question [in] your middle to late 50s and 60s of … what was my life about? And what do I want?”
McKellar calls it a “fairly unexamined period of life” and, while it’s played mostly for laughs, the show highlights many of mid-life’s figurative and literal wrinkles. Cattrall recalls scenes “where I’m tracing my crow’s feet and the lines on my face and my neck. To do that in a very public way is scary.”
The series is written by longtime McKellar collaborator Bob Martin and co-stars Canadians Colm Feore and Mary Walsh, as well as American Elliott Gould of MASH fame. Toronto, the show’s backdrop, also plays an important role given it’s endured its own share of crises (including, cough, Rob Ford).
“Immediately I thought of … the way the city’s so rapidly gentrifying. What goes on in those weird new condo complexes?” McKellar explains. “The visuals and the streetcars and the rhythm of the city,” Cattrall adds,