#Vancouver Actor

[thepermanentrainpress]

THE PERMANENT RAIN PRESS INTERVIEW WITH DORALYNN MUI

Doralynn Mui didn’t view acting as a probable career path in her youth, but she’s making good use of her time now – gaining knowledge both in front of the camera and behind it along the way. After guest spots on shows like Riverdale, The 100, and Kung Fu, the Chinese-Canadian actress finds herself entangled in murderous mystery as Fiona on One of Us Is Lying.

We spoke with Mui about her journey in the arts, growing up in Vancouver, and more.

You have been acting since a young age, dating back to elementary school plays. Did you always see yourself pursuing a career in the arts, and can you describe the feeling you get when you perform?

I did have secret hopes of becoming a pop star (I’m partially kidding?), but I honestly didn’t know that acting was a real, attainable career until much later in life. I remember the first time I acted in a play in Grade 7, there was this buzzy feeling right before stepping onto the stage, and then on stage I sort of lost myself in the moment. I had maybe two lines in that whole play. I crave that feeling when you’re locked into the moment, and so open and present with your scene partner and the story that you lose track of everything else.

Viewers can now see you as Fiona in Peacock murder-mystery series One of Us Is Lying. What did you enjoy most about this role, and what challenged you in playing her?

I love Fiona. She's so messy and insecure, and at the core of it all, she just wants to be loved! I had so much fun exploring everything that goes on in her brain.

During prep, I actually clued in from the makeup and wardrobe tests that she was going to be a bit edgier than I imagined her to be when we shot the pilot episode. I was honestly a bit intimidated about portraying Fiona's constructed "cool girl" persona, while also tying that in with other elements of her character (AKA being an outsider). It was challenging to find the right balance in making her a believable, rounded person.

What excited you about the story this season?

I was so excited about all the action that was packed into this season, they really turned it up a notch! Personally I got to learn how to drive a little motorized dinghy, which was surprisingly scary and fun at the same time.

Aside from Fiona, who is your favorite character and why?

Oof, that one's an impossible question to answer. I love all the characters so much and it would kill me to pick one!

You shared many scenes opposite Cooper van Grootel (as Nate). How was he as a scene partner, and did you discuss your characters' relationship?

How lucky I am to work with Cooper! He’s such a generous and curious person as an actor and human being, it was genuinely a lot of fun. We discussed our characters’ relationship a lot before we started shooting, because we really wanted to be specific about what drew them together. We also brainstormed some ship names (I vote for #fate). During shooting it was great to bounce ideas off each other without judgement, and discover the journey together.

The series was filmed in New Zealand. Did you have the opportunity to sightsee with your castmates on downtime?

Yes! New Zealand is gorgeous, and they’re very protective of their ecosystem so we were extremely lucky to be able to explore the volcanoes, beaches and forests. The first free weekend, I hiked with Zenia [Marshall] and Karim [Diane] up Rangitoto, which is their youngest volcano. Climbing into their lava cave was surreal. We almost didn’t go in because the opening looked so tiny and terrifying, but thankfully some kid shamed us into going in, and it was unforgettable.

I also loved getting to learn about Maori culture in Rotorua and walking around Piha Beach; it was so beautiful. My absolute favourite spot was actually Devonport Village, which isn’t really a tourist destination, but it had the cutest op shops (Kiwi-speak for "thrift stores"), ice cream on every corner, and the best ever CARROT CAKE. I’m still dreaming about it. I feel like I’m writing a travel blog for New Zealand, but anyway, those are my highlights!

You have had guest roles in shows like Riverdale, The 100, and Deadly Class. What did you take away from working on these more high-profile shows?

All the experiences I’ve had make me really appreciate all the moving parts that go into getting a show made. Everyone has their own role and expertise, and you really notice how collaborative the whole process is. As an actor you have to show up and be prepared, but also be flexible enough to roll with the punches. I love watching experienced actors who have been doing this for so long that they have this sense of ease, and are able to try something new on each take. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn't, but they really don't sweat it.

Did you ever face any challenges as a POC in the industry, and if so, how were you able to overcome them?

I would say, especially as an Asian-Canadian, I’m more aware of how POC can get sidelined in stories or neglected in terms of character development. I’m encouraged because I’m starting to see more effort being made to include Asian voices and characters on screen, but I would love to see more representation in the writers’ room, or in producing and directing positions. A lot of times when there is a lack of representation in those roles, our stories can be easily forgotten or misunderstood.

Personally, I'm grateful for every opportunity that I have and try to make the most of each role. For every character I play, I do my best to create an inner world and fill in the lines of their story, even if it's not something that gets to be explored on screen.

Who are some actors you are influenced/inspired by?

I’ve never met her, but I would love to work with Sandra Oh one day because she’s a fellow Canadian-Asian actress who seems genuinely down to earth and just hilarious. I love how varied her career has been so far. Cillian Murphy’s character work is so interesting to me, and I’m always in awe of the work that Jodie Comer, Florence Pugh and Emma Stone do.

You grew up in Vancouver. What are your favorite places to visit - and restaurants to eat at - in or around the city?

I feel like I’m the wrong person to ask for exciting recommendations because all I want to do when I’m home is lounge around at my familiar places. My perfect day would be digging through thrift stores on Main Street or in New West, getting hot pot at Gokudo Shabu Shabu or Boiling Point, then getting chocolate, tea or ice cream at Teapressu, Shiny Tea, Purdys or Earnest Ice Cream. Maybe getting bubble waffles at Crystal Mall after that. There’s also a person in North Van who runs a clothing swap out of her basement – it’s a magical place for me. Ooh! And getting giant bags of fruit for a dollar in Chinatown. I always get a thrill out of that.

What is up next for you?

I’m working on a couple of guest spots on CBS and Hulu shows – I’m not sure what I’m allowed to give away, but I’m very excited about them! I’m workshopping a couple of indie projects with some friends, and slowly doing some writing of my own. I’m also going to continue purging my closet, tending to my plants, and learning how to do a body roll.

If you could be any ice cream flavor, which would you be and why?

I love this question because if you haven’t noticed, ice cream is one of my first loves on this planet! My dad always says I'm like a ball of fluffy cotton candy with spikes hidden underneath – as in, I can seem soft and bubbly on the outside, but I can be pretty feisty if you try to test me. So, if I could translate this into a flavour, maybe… cotton candy mixed with popping candies. Is that a flavour? I'm sure it is somewhere!

My alternative answer is chocolate. If you are what you eat, I think I'm made up of 90% chocolate.

-

Thanks to Doralynn for taking the time to answer our questions! We can’t wait to watch the second season of One of Us Is Lying, premiering in Canada on Thurs, Jan 19th at 9pm e/p on W Network. In other regions, it is out now on Peacock and Netflix (international).

Keep updated with Doralynn on Instagram and IMDb. 

Photo credit (headshot) to: Jenna Berman

[oldshowbiz]

Character actor Larry D. Mann wearing a Vancouver Canucks jacket

[ravensintheeyes]

[taraljc]

somehow my second time Canadian travel series managed to have a more hopeful ending than the first but only because the main character who erased the events of the entire series died instead of living out the rest of their life cut off from everyone they loved including their child.

Oh, Canada. Seriously you guys need to lighten up.

[mioakem]

it was the end of an era, but the start of an age 🫶

[stargatelov3r]

Whenever I spot a stargate actor in The X Files I just imagine that that’s just their stargate role in an alternative universe

[leaves-of-laurelin]

Last Line Written In 2023

Thank you to @kiwiana-writes @firenati0n @suseagull04 @hgejfmw-hgejhsf for the tag. Below is the most recent bit I’ve written for the sci-fi actors au, which I’m going to start posting next week. Happy New Years to you all!

“C’mon, you telling me you don’t want to cuddle up with one of those? Just get all up in there and—” Alex shakes his head back and forth quickly. “—snuggle your face into that fur?”

Henry gives him a somewhat horrified look. “You want to motorboat a grizzly bear?” And the question combined with the way ‘motorboat’ sounds in Henry’s accent causes Alex to break into laughter.

Tagging: @cha-melodius @littlemisskittentoes @happiness-of-the-pursuit @affectionatelyrs @daisymae-12 @inexplicablymine @cricketnationrise @dumbpeachjuice @rmd-writes @clottedcreamfudge @ar-redux

[orionsangel86]

Happy Destiel Day to all who celebrate!

[okmcintyre]

Started watching 'Tracker' and pleased to see our boys Murphy & Gabriel II already making guest appearances in S1 😎

[toffoliravioli]

saturday night live - vancouver style

[oldshowbiz]

Paddy Wing was a dancing nightclub star from Quesnel, British Columbia who became successful in New York City in the 1950s.

He appeared on an episode of The Phil Silvers Show while his family was operating a convenience store next to the Ovaltine Cafe in Vancouver.

[dustedmagazine]

Leathers — Ultraviolet (Artoffact)

Leathers’ music melts the crystalline precisions of darkwave with the warmth and sweetness of dreamy synth pop. But just when you start to really feel pop’s embrace of sunny vibes on Ultraviolet, the dream fades, and darkwave’s characteristic thematics (borderline social spaces, BDSM eroticism, anxiety and depression) start to prickle your skin. It’s a compelling combination, sonically and emotionally, and Leathers’ songs materialize it to great effect — a pretty good trick for a first LP to pull off so consistently.

We shouldn’t be surprised. Shannon Hemmett has been releasing songs under the Leathers band name since 2016, and she has been making music with Vancouver post punk act Actors for even longer (her Actors bandmate Jason Corbett does some work on songwriting and production for Leathers). She’s had time to clarify and refine Leathers’ aesthetics, and her professional work as a graphic designer and tattoo artist suggests the extent to which craft and image are important to her. It shows. Ultraviolet is a considered record, shaped and presented with thought and care. If all that sounds a little too heady, don’t worry; the record’s strong libidinal charge invests it with life, hard, passionate and sometimes dangerous.

See “Fascination” — and yes, “see” is the wrong verb when what you really do is listen. But the indicative meaning in that usage of “see” has additional significance here. Hemmett intones, simultaneously cool and hot, “We could stay together / For one last Polaroid.” Is this a photoshoot? Or lovers at more informal play with a camera? The lyrics don’t really clarify: “The camera flashes light / Licking at your skin / Coming into focus / Strike that pose again.” “Licking” is figurally powerful, and its parallelism with “coming” eroticizes the lyrics. Certainly someone is turned on, and the song’s power in part derives from its refusal to locate the arousal precisely — in the photographer, the subject, the singer, the listener. The moment remains maximally open, and Hemmett sings, “Elevate / Penetrate / Fascinate.” “Penetrate” feels at least a little gratuitous, until you clock the tune’s imaginary gambit. Everyone, all those aforementioned parties, wants to get inside the situation, to be the focus of the song’s energies.

Hemmett’s interest in the power of image is expressed repeatedly on Ultraviolet, from the cinematic metaphor of “Day for Night” to the more bitter treatment of illusory desires in “Highrise” (“Like a page from a magazine that’s come to life / … Living your best life / You’re never satisfied”). We’re smart enough to know that chasing images of the “best life” is seldom the way toward sustainable satisfaction, but we can’t seem to stop, as a culture or as individual psychologies. We are charmed by excesses, we chase, we go too fast. One of the best songs on the record, “Crash,” dramatizes the excitements of the chase and the disaster that frequently ends it. A synthy bass throb dominates the song, a tense pulse that sets up another flirtation with darkwave gratuity when Hemmett breathily intones, “Punish me for wanting more”; near the song’s end, that gets truncated to “Punish me,” plaintively.

That’s another instance of an ostensibly titillating surface doing some substantive work. The full lyric for the couplet is “Punish me for wanting more / I’m the one you can’t ignore.” There’s a smartly compressed articulation of the two-way play with power that informs a lot of dom/sub relationships, and darkwave is at its best when it opens a song’s erotics to wider representation of social forms and to more public dramatizations of power’s flow. The record’s title track pursues a different strategy for expressing that, projecting a dream of desire into a “prison made of glass.” Maybe that’s a reflective surface, or a camera’s lens, but it seems more likely that it’s a phone — the thing we use, perhaps more than any other tool, in our ceaselessly scrolling chase for something akin to happiness, or at least the charge of arousal. To feel alive.

But our relations to our phones are indeed a prison. And the truncation in the refrain of “Crash” — to the bare plea, “punish me” — is another way to express the way desire can get converted into a portable carceral space, a deformation of desire that we carry around in our heads, keeping us trapped in unfulfilling pursuits. Leathers proposes an implicit means of escape in the songs themselves, which are exciting and emotionally laden. They provoke, in the best meaning of that word. You’ll want to dance, and not to escape feeling, but to move further into it, as a body feeling real things in real space. That’s the mark of good music.

Jonathan Shaw

[tinknevertalks]

Just started E. B. E. and the ashrak from In The Line of Duty is the guy driving the truck. Yaay Canadian actors getting work. XD

And now the Lone Gunmen are here!! *Happy wiggles*

[stevenvenn]

LEATHERS - HIghrise (new single) Shannon (keyboardist for ACTORS) is back with a great new single out today. Dig it! Not sure if she has a larger release coming this year yet.

[rickchung]

Oliver! x Gateway Theatre x Richmond, BC. (via David Cooper)

Composer Lionel Bart's memorable 1960 British musical adaptation of the nineteenth-century Dickensian classic Oliver Twist remains exuberant despite its satirical treatment of orphan street gangs, child labour, and domestic violence. This fortieth-anniversary spin on the Victorian material directed by Gateway alumnus Josh Epstein definitely brings back memories of high school productions upgraded with a higher level of period era costume and set design. What endures is the energetic show about the enduring youthful spirit of children against the authoritarian oppression of seflishly greedy adult authorities dubiously tasked to be in charge of their safety and well-being.

Rickie Wang (as Oliver Twist), Tanner Zerr (as Bill Sikes), Miranda MacDougall (as Nancy), and Anthony Santiago (as Fagin).

Running live on stage until Jan. 4.

[orionsangel86]

Happy Destiel Day to all who celebrate!