Looking for challenges
Actor Landon Liboiron savors role on Netflix’s ‘Frontier’
Landon Liboiron is all about taking chances.
Which is why he landed in the New Mexico-filmed “Burning Bodhi” a few years ago.
It’s is also why he played Peter Rumancek in Netflix’s “Hemlock Grove.”
Now the actor is back at home with Netflix for the series “Frontier,” in which he plays Michael Smyth. The six-episode season is currently streaming.
“The world in this series is very interesting in the time and history,” he says. “We haven’t seen a lot in film and TV. There’s a thing I really like about Michael in the show. He’s not a brute in any sense. He has to use his creativeness to get his way. He’s sort of a con man for the good of his people.”
The series, now in its second season, follows Declan Harp, played by Jason Momoa — a part-Irish, part-Cree outlaw who is campaigning to breach the Hudson’s Bay Co.’s monopoly on the fur trade in Canada during the 18th century.
In the second season, the series expands with spectacular new views of the northern wilderness, and new players entering the ruthless game in the quest for power and wealth — pushing everyone to either embrace unknown alliances or arm themselves against them.
Fort James is left in chaos after Michael Smyth, played by Liboiron; Sokanon, played by Jessica Matten; and Grace Emberly, played by Zoe Boyle, detonated a munitions magazine, leaving Declan Harp, played by Momoa, to slip through the hangman’s noose.
With Harp gone, the Black Wolf Co. is fractured and no one knows whether Harp survived … but Lord Bento, played by Alun Armstrong, is not taking any chances; he offers a dead-or-alive bounty for Harp, unleashing a threat to Harp and his allies.
Meanwhile, in the burgeoning city of Montreal, the power dynamic of the trade is in flux, as battle lines are drawn between Elizabeth Carruthers, played by Katie McGrath, and Samuel Grant, played by Shawn Doyle.
“Michael is reeling from the loss of Declen,” he says. “They aren’t sure what to do, and they decide to keep the company going and keeping the Black Wolf Co. strong.”
Liboiron says that filming in rigorous conditions for the series, he’s learned that he wouldn’t like to have lived during that time.
“I wouldn’t survive,” he says.
“The beauty about my job is that I’m challenged to transform into a different character. Whether it is for ‘Frontier’ or when I played Dylan back in New Mexico on ‘Burning Bodhi,’ I’m always looking to challenge myself.”
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