BACK TO THE BATES MOTEL
Upcoming TV series tracing Psycho’s origins stars Once Upon a Time’s Keegan Connor Tracy
If Keegan Connor Tracy tells you too much about her upcoming role in The Bates Motel, the upcoming A& E TV series she’s now shooting in Vancouver, she’d probably have to kill you. And since the show is about the formative years of Psycho psycho Norman Bates, that could make for a very bloody bathtub ...
Talking to The Sun on the phone from her Vancouver home where she’s nursing a nasty cold, Tracy, who also has a recurring role as the Blue Fairy in CTV’s smash, Once Upon a Time, will only confess that she has a recurring role as Norman’s language arts teacher. “She’s the teacher who cares about her students and gets involved in their lives — a teacher who would be easy to have a crush on. I get to look very cute. I get to be that teacher.”
The show stars Freddy Highmore ( Charlie in Tim Burton’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory) as teenage Normy and Academy Award nominee Vera Farmiga ( Up in the Air) as his presumably still- breathing mommy dearest.
Does Norman get hot for teacher? And, if so, can that possibly end well?
Tracy says audiences will have to wait until next year, when the new drama debuts.
But this weekend she’s popping up on the big screen in Robert Redford’s new made- inVancouver feature, The Company You Keep.
Did Tracy get to work with Redford?
Redford plays a lawyer with a past and she’s the lawyer’s personal assistant. And The Sundance Kid, OK The Sundance Grampa, flirted with her – “in a charming I’m- kidding way” — but still. “At the end of the scene he’d lean over and say, ‘ You know where to meet me after,’” says Tracy. “I spent most of the day ogling him and thinking, ‘ Wow, that’s why he’s Robert Redford,’ and imagining him in his heyday.” She even talked to him about his heyday between takes, asking him about shooting The Great Gatsby.
Tracy says they worked together in a Gastown loft last Halloween, causing her to miss her then- one- year- old daughter’s first experience with trickortreating ( she was a zebra).
But while she missed that memory, Tracy’s four- year- old daughter had a special Halloween dressing up as one of the leading characters on mom’s hit series, Snow White. “She went through a time when she was constantly drawing Snow White and Prince Charming and the Blue Fairy in the corner.”
Originally from Ontario, Tracy has spent the last 17 years based in Vancouver and says working on Once is like, well, getting a wish granted by the Blue Fairy.
“We all wish in our hearts to someday be on a show that’s a No. 1 show and I’m a fan of it besides being on it. I think it’s a wonderful escape from our reality. They’re never talking about the economy in Storybrooke.”
Tracy — who is happy to let people know she tweets at @ Keegolicious — says one of her other longtime wishes was also granted recently. She’d always imagined being on the cover of a magazine and in December she’ll be on the cover of Revive.
“I kind of thought, ‘ That’s never going to happen.’ And now I get to tick it off my dream box.” Then she laughs.
• Panych play plays the big screen ... Lawrence & Holloman, the dark comedy by two- time Governor General Award- winning playwright Morris Panych ( Vigil, Girl in the Goldfish Bowl) which was produced at the Arts Club in 1999, is headed for a movie theatre new you. The feature film version, which was adapted for the screen by Matthew Kowalchuk ( who also directs) and Daniel Arnold ( who also stars), is shooting in Vancouver, Maple Ridge, Mission and Abbotsford.
Panych told The Sun, “They’re cool guys and they love the story and they’re smart and obviously very resourceful. So I have hopes they can pull it off as an indie hit.”
Lawrence and Holloman are a modern day Panychian odd couple — clashing over life philosophies.
One’s an optimist, the other’s a pessimist. Producers, including Paul Armstrong, are optimistically trying to raise $ 10,000 for the film on the crowdsourcing site, Indiegogo. com.
The Telefilm- funded feature, which is slated to hit festivals next fall, also stars Ben Cotton, Amy Matysio and Katharine Isabelle — who’s about to be the scream queen of the slopes as the title character in American Mary, the debut Midnight Madness screening at the upcoming Whistler Film Festival.
• Sheepdogs wag for Whistler ... The Whistler Film Festival has chosen a documentary about Saskatoon’s Rolling Stone cover boys, The Sheepdogs, for their closing gala and the band is as happy as playful puppies about the movie, The Sheepdogs Have At It.
Ewan Currie ( lead vocals/ guitar) for The Sheepdogs told The Sun, “John Barnard and his crew did a mighty fine job of capturing how we operate both on the road and in the studio. We’re really happy that the documentary is debuting in Whistler.”