Local actress stars in mermaid drama
Calgary actress Allie Bertram plays mermaid on hit show
It’s not the sort of thing covered at the Actors Studio, or even a high-school drama class for that matter.
But there are significant challenges when it comes to realistically portraying a mermaid.
Calgary native Allie Bertram knows this. As Mimmie, the one non-Aussie mermaid in the popular Australian series, Mako Mermaids, she is getting used to acting with distractions. For one, a good part of the action is shot at a reef pool in Sea World on Australia’s Gold Coast, which tends to be filled with sharks, stingrays and a giant grouper or two. For another, Bertram is often fitted with a 20-pound, $60,000 prosthetic tail. It’s custom-made and beautifully detailed, but apparently not the most comfortable of contraptions to have moulded to your body during underwater scenes.
Yeah, and then there’s that: Acting ... underwater.
“Oh my gosh!” says Bertram, on the line from her family’s cabin in Invermere, B.C. “They put you in the water so you are trying to think about holding your breath and seeing underwater. Because, of course, we don’t have goggles on so we just have to pretend like we can see clearly under water and, as everyone knows, it’s really foggy under there. There’s so many other things to think about. The first time coming up after a take I was like ‘Oh my gosh, I don’t even remember what I did under there.’ As an actor you always have to hit marks, and trying to hit a mark underwater when you are attached to a big tail is a little tricky.”
The 25-year-old actress likes to say, ‘Oh my gosh,’ suggesting she hasn’t changed all that much from when Canada first got to know her as an endearingly bubbly contestant on So You Think You Can Dance Canada seven years ago. That earnest personality is likely what attracted producers of Mako Mermaids, a spinoff of the equally popular Australian series H2O: Just Add Water, to Bertram in the first place. The series had managed to reach a devoted and international audience with its first season in 2013. Producers wanted to reflect this worldliness in its second by expanding the cast. So in swam Mimmie, a sweet, shy and “super nerdy” mermaid who arrives from the “Northern Pod” to join the gang.
Producers were impressed with Bertram’s audition and asked her to fly to Australia for further tryouts. At the time, the actress had been secretly creeped out around sea creatures, which she astutely decided to keep to herself. After she won the role, she endured a month of what cast and crew called “mermaid training.”
“I still remember going on holiday with my parents when I was younger out to Hawaii and not being able to get into the water, because I was so terrified of all the fish,” she says. “Of course, when I got the job I had to get in this reef pool and we did one little practice swim before we started filming. I thought ‘OK, I guess they aren’t going to touch me. Everyone else is doing it, I guess I can do it too.’ I quickly got over my fear of fish.”
Season 2 of Mako Mermaids airs on network TV in Australia and Germany. In Canada and the U.S. and other parts of the world, the series streams on Netflix. A few weeks ago, Bertram returned to Canada after spending seven months in Queensland’s Gold Coast shooting the series’ third season. Season 2 has brought the actress the sort of fame that comes from being a lead in a hit tween series. Mako Mermaids is particularly big in New Zealand and Germany, where a line of Barbie-like dolls are being developed based on the series. On YouTube, there is a clip of Bertram being interviewed on set by a host on New Zealand’s The 4:30 Show. She answers a range of queries, everything from ‘ What is her favourite animal?’ (Dolphin) to which cast member is “most likely to blame their fart on someone else?” (Chai Romruen, who plays Mimmie’s hunky merman brother, Zac.)
A classically trained dancer and graduate of Calgary’s Edge School, Bertram left home at 18 to join the Boston Ballet. That same year, she auditioned for the first season of So You Think You Can Dance Canada, which set her on a different career path. She placed second on the show, behind Montreal’s Nico Archambault, and toured Canada alongside her former rivals for a year.
As an actor you always have to hit marks, and trying to hit a mark underwater when you are attached to a big tail is a little tricky.
But she loved being on set and Bertram eventually decided to turn her attention to acting. She landed small roles in series such as Being Erica, Smallville and Supernatural and the 2011 Zach Snyder film, Suckerpunch, before being cast in a recurring role on CW’s short-lived, Glee-like comedy-drama Hellcats in 2011.
“Some of my first jobs were a dancer on Suckerpunch and a dancer in Hellcats,” says Bertram, who divides her time between Los Angeles and Vancouver when not shooting in Australia. “Then I started getting more into act- ing and acting classes. I’m really proud now to be able to say I’m an actor first and I still have my dance background. That was always a struggle for me, deciding whether to be a dancer who can act or an actor who can dance. I’m happy to say that in Mako Mermaids I don’t have to dance at all.”
But she does have to play a teenager, or at least a mermaid teenager. Mimmie is only 17 and Bertram admits her tendency to be cast as much younger characters is something eventually hopes to change.
“Unfortunately, I still look 17, and I think the best thing to do at this point is just embrace it,” she says. “One day, I’ll be playing my own age and I’ll be happy about that. But, at this time, it’s been such an amazing experience to be working as a lead on a TV series.”
She says she likes that Mako Mermaids presents Mimmie and the others as smart, kind and heroic characters, making them good role models for girls around the world. And there is evidence that Australia’s mermaid-mania is crossing the pond to Bertram’s home country.
“When I was in Canada before I went back to film Season 3, I was in The Bay and there were three little girls who were with their mom,” she says. “They were looking at me and said ‘Do we know you from somewhere? Are you a mermaid?’ I said ‘Yes, I am.’ ”
There were three little girls who were with their mom. They were looking at me and said ‘... Are you a mermaid?’ I said ‘Yes, I am.’