Actor Luke Kirby made such an impression on TV writer and producer Tassie Cameron two decades ago that even though she worked with him on just a single episode of the Canadian drama “The Eleventh Hour” she never forgot him.
“He was so smart and so funny and just a great collaborator, and it stayed with me,” Cameron said recently.
So when she and the team at “Law & Order Toronto: Criminal Intent” were looking for a Canadian actor to replace departing star Aden Young, Kirby was at the top of their list.
And rather than contacting casting directors and talent representatives, Cameron reached out to Kirby directly.
“In the letter, I said that we were calling the character Detective Kirby, assuming we would not get him, but trying to say to him that he was the inspiration for this new character.
“Then of course we had to change the name when he agreed, but that was our best problem to have.”
So yes, if you haven’t already gotten the gist, Kirby is a get — and not just because he’s part of a select group of Canadians who have won Emmy Awards for acting, in his case for brilliantly portraying comedian Lenny Bruce in “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.”
He has been making an impression onscreen for the last quarter-century, whether in Canadian films like “Mambo Italiano” and “Take This Waltz,” Canadian TV series like “Slings & Arrows” and “Cra$h & Burn,” or American ones like “Rectify” and “The Deuce.”
Now he has stepped into the relatively unfamiliar territory of a police procedural, starring as Det.-Sgt. John Darcy. His first two episodes debut Oct. 1 on Citytv and Citytv Plus.
It is tempting to paint this in a patriotic light, particularly in the middle of a Canada-U.S. trade war: the Canadian star made good coming home to lend his fame to a made-in-Canada production. But for the Hamilton-born, Guelph-raised Kirby, who lives in Brooklyn, N.Y., it was more about the work than the location.
“I was in Atlanta working on a film and I was looking for the next thing to do. I was looking for something to put the hours into. It had been kind of a slow year after doing a show where the bottom fell out very abruptly,” he said, referring to the Netflix ballet dramedy “Étoile,” which lasted just eight episodes.
After receiving Cameron’s “really lovely email,” Kirby watched some of “Law & Order Toronto,” and said, “I could see how a person would want to keep going back to that well, and I said let’s fill up the dance card and go for it.”
‘A little, precious secret’
Kirby’s first inkling that there might be a performer inside of him came when he was around seven years old.
“I loved to play make-believe,” Kirby, 48, told the Star. As a kid who avidly consumed movies and television, “I was so enchanted by the moving image or any kind of story that I just thought that would be a good place to live.
“But I didn’t pursue it then. It was just a little, precious secret.”
It wasn’t until Grade 9 that he had his first real brush with acting and he wasn’t even the one onstage.
When his high school drama club put on “Frankenstein,” he said, “I controlled the smoke machine and the black light. There was a hatch that I let the guy who played the monster (out of) and I just loved it.”
Later that year, he hit the stage himself in Tad Mosel’s “Impromptu” as part of a student drama festival. Then one of his teachers steered him to a weeklong summer program called Theatre Ontario.
“They had all these artists, real actors and directors and teachers who worked with us as if we were at theatre school,” Kirby said. “We were treated like serious people. It was just amazing.”
Kirby eventually graduated from the real National Theatre School in Montreal, assuming that a career on the stage beckoned, until he started getting screen roles very quickly.
“I really liked the transience of it,” he said. “I liked the excitement of it and it definitely made me less stressed about rent, and also it’s a really worthy pursuit.”
His outrageous fortune
One of his early standout roles was in the cult Canadian comedy series “Slings & Arrows” in 2003.
Kirby played a famous Hollywood actor who comes to the New Burbage Festival (a satirical stand-in for the Stratford Festival) to tackle “Hamlet,” overcoming his own self-doubt and others’ skepticism to give a transcendent performance.
Just a few weeks before we talked, Kirby had returned to his “Slings & Arrows” roots, joining other original cast members onstage at, yes, the Stratford Festival for a read-through of the first two episodes of a proposed TV prequel called “The Amateurs.”
It took some serious wrangling on the part of “Law & Order Toronto” producers to allow Kirby time off from shooting and he was grateful — as were Mark McKinney, Bob Martin and Susan Coyne, the actors/writers/producers who created “Slings & Arrows” and “The Amateurs.”
“I think they had to move heaven and earth to give him some time to come,” said Coyne.
None of the three could remember exactly how Kirby got onto their radar when they hired him for “Slings and Arrows,” but they all agreed he was lovely to work with.
“We had a bit of a turbulent first season because of budget cuts before we began shooting … and Luke was always very funny and reduced the burden on set,” Martin said.
“We’re just lucky we had him before he got to be a huge star,” added Coyne.
Another “Slings & Arrows” alumnus, director Sarah Polley, co-starred with Kirby in the 2003 romantic comedy “Luck.”
“He’s completely devoted to what he does, but he doesn’t take himself too seriously and he’s deeply kind,” said Polley, who later cast Kirby in her 2011 film “Take This Waltz.”
“He’s got a real humility about him, and a real self-awareness and sense of humour about himself. And that’s hard to find in a really good actor.
“I just keep being surprised over and over by how versatile he is,” she added. “I feel like he’s just begun to scratch the surface of all the things he can do.”
‘Something New Testament about Luke’
Once Kirby said yes to “Law & Order Toronto,” Cameron watched a lot of his other work to incorporate some of the star’s own characteristics.
“His sense of humour, his deep interest in other people and his great listening skills — we tried to play with that,” she said.
“And it sounds a bit odd, but there was something New Testament about Luke versus the Old Testament of Aden’s character. We wanted to play into this curious, less judgmental and funny version of a detective that we know exists, because we work with tons of cops who are like that.”
When I suggested that Darcy has street smarts in contrast to the book smarts of Det.-Sgt. Henry Graff, Aden Young’s character, Cameron agreed: ”(In) the backstory that Luke and I designed together, (Darcy) grew up on the mean streets a little bit more, and he has a lived experience in a slightly dysfunctional family and (was) criminal adjacent as a young man.”
Another difference is in Darcy’s relationship with his partner, Det.-Sgt. Frankie Bateman, played by Hamilton-born Kathleen Munroe. Cameron said it’s more akin to sparring siblings than the mentor-mentee dynamic between Graff and Bateman.
Munroe loved working with Young, but had always wanted to perform with Kirby again after they shot a 2009 episode of the Canadian cop drama “Flashpoint.”
Young, she said, “had this big-hearted thing about him that really fills a room … and I think we’re all just really grateful that we had him for three years.”
(Cameron and executive producer Erin Haskett said Young had signed a contract for only three seasons of “Law & Order Toronto” and wanted to return to his family in Australia.)
“There’s something really energizing about having Luke join us,” Munroe added. “He’s an interesting actor, because he’s really meticulous about his process and he’s very thoughtful, methodical. He does a lot of groundwork before we get to set and then he can be really nimble when we get on camera.”
A police procedural and a workplace drama
The word “nimble” came up again. Kirby used it to describe what it’s like navigating the constant change of a procedural, with its crimes of the week, a format he encountered only tangentially as a guest on “Flashpoint” and several American iterations of “Law & Order.”
“These aren’t character stories, but that doesn’t mean that you aren’t playing real people with real problems,” he said. He considers “Law & Order Toronto” something of a workplace drama, in which the characters are too busy to expound on their lives outside the office, but there are still hints of who they are behind closed doors.
Darcy joins homicide as a transplant from the guns and gangs department. Kirby described him as talkative, a bit antsy, a little encyclopedic, someone “malleable (who) sort of adapts himself to spaces and people to favour his pursuit of the truth.”
He wouldn’t say if he expected to stick with “Law & Order Toronto” for more than one season — even the producers don’t know if the show will be renewed until after the latest season airs — but he expressed enthusiasm for his new gig.
“This is a good one. It’s a really good one,” Kirby said, before adding with a chuckle, “but no one needs to know that I’m happy.”
Season 4 of “Law & Order Toronto: Criminal Intent” debuts Oct. 1 at 8 p.m. on Citytv and Citytv Plus with two episodes.
