Recently I posed some questions to actor Stephen McHattie.
I decided to reach out to this actor after watching the riveting ‘Tokyo Trial‘ where he played Edward Stuart McDougall, the Canadian politician, and judge. This prominent politician represented Canada as a judge on the International Military Tribunal for the Far East in Tokyo. You can read about his life here.
Tokyo Trial
A historical drama that focuses on a decade-long investigation into events in the Pacific during and after WWII.
IMDb
Questions posed
Tokyo Trial:
- From your experience as James Dean (James Dean 1976) through to Edward Stuart McDougall (Tokyo Trial 2017), would you say you prefer portraying real life characters? No.
- In Tokyo Trial, how much research did you do on your character? As much as I needed.
- Was there anything surprising that you learnt about Edward Stuart McDougall? How at that level, small gradations of political insight, when voiced, seemed like earthquakes.
- What was most important to you about portraying this character. Showing how straightjacketed he was.
- Were you able to leave the character after filming for day, seeing the highly sensitive and emotional story you were part of retelling. Pretty much.
Career
- I was quite excited to see you were in one of my favourite shows, The Equalizer, are there any special memories on set you’d like to share? Edward Woodward was a very congenial, fantastic guy to work with.
- What’s been your favourite character to play so far in your career, and why? Grant Mazzy in Pontypool because I had the great pleasure of working with my beautiful wife Lisa Houle who is also typing this for me.
- Where is the strength in Canadian film? The strength in Canadian film depends entirely on whether or not Lisa Houle is in the project. (she’s still typing this)
- Finally, what do you have coming up? A movie called Fixation.
Resources
Stephen McHattie – IMDB
Lisa Houle IMDb – actress (and typist!)
Pontypool
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