Gerry Dee looks ahead for laughs
It is not a skill set most comedians are known to possess. But Gerry Dee has no qualms about admitting that part of his success is due to his considerable business savvy. It’s a skill that includes a habit of looking ahead.
CBC’s Mr. D is entering its fifth season, but Dee, the show’s star, has already set his sights on life after Xavier Academy, the prestigious school where his teacher character Gerry Duncan stumbles through social studies class.
CBC recently announced a development deal with Dee for a sitcom called My Scottish Family. The half-hour series is about a Canadian man who marries and raises a family in Scotland. When he lands a big job in his home country, he relocates the family.
“I bring these four Scottish people back, which is my wife and three kids,” says Dee, who was in Alberta this week to receive the Canadian Award of Distinction at the Banff World Media Festival. “It’s fish out of water, it’s about family. My mom and dad are Scottish. I grew up with that culture. I think there’s a lot of humour and uniqueness in the Scottish culture that we’ve never seen on TV over here.”
To be clear, Dee wants Mr. D to go on as long as possible. But he also realizes that even the most successful sitcoms have a limited life span. So why not look ahead? It just makes good business sense.
“It’s a business and I’m a business-minded person,” he says. “I think that’s something unique that I brought to standup. I don’t think I’m the funniest person in Canada. I know I’m one of the more successful comics, but I don’t think I’m the funniest comedian. I think I managed the business side really well and worked on selling my brand.”
In fact, unlike a lot of standup comedians, Dee always saw comedy first and foremost as a direct route to landing a sitcom. The Torontoborn father of three was a teacher when friends convinced him to try out some open mics. He caught the bug fairly quickly, culminating with a high-profile third-place win on the U.S. show Last Comic Standing.
But he was drawn more to the work of comedic actors such as John Candy and Michael J. Fox than standup comedians.
“A lot of comics would say, ‘You know your act is a sitcom. It’s ready to go as a sitcom about teaching,’ ” hesays.“Then,fast-forwardto2007. I had come off a successful run on Last Comic Standing, which put me onthemapalittlebitmorewithnetworks.”
Still, Mr. D has had its struggles. The original pilot Dee made for the CBC was rejected. He “begged” executives for the opportunity to make another one, which eventually led to the series. It came out of the gate strong but ratings dipped in Season 3 and it was at risk of being cancelled. For Season 5, the CBC entered a unique partnership with Rogers to have the series air on both the mother corp. and Citytv.
Alongside My Scottish Family, Dee says he would love to see a Mr. D movie at some point. He’s on a break from the standup circuit to revamp his material, and says he recently turned down an offer to write a second book (his first, Teaching: It’s Harder Than it Looks came out in 2013) because he wants to wait until he has more time and material and is, hopefully, more famous.
ReceivingBanff’sCanadianAward of Distinction puts him in the same club as Will Arnett, Howie Mandel, Eric McCormack, Alan Thicke and Martin Short. While Dee’s business savvy may give his career a certain degree of order, he admits that his success often seems “surreal.”
“It still feels like, ‘Why hasn’t this ended?’ ” he says. “It doesn’t make sense. I was a teacher not so long ago. There was no family in this business. There was nothing pushing me into this business. So I joke that it feels like I won a contest. They keep giving me another year on the contest. And now I’m getting awards.”