TORONTO – When news broke last year that a security guard had been shot outside Drake’s Toronto mansion, local TV crews rushed to the scene. So did Matt Johnson and Jay McCarrol — but not to report on it.
The Canadian duo arrived with their own cameras rolling, ready to turn the real-life chaos into a scene for their new feature, “Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie.”
The comedy, which premiered at the Toronto Film Festival this week, is a revival of the cult web series “Nirvanna the Band the Show,” which thrived on meta gags and public stunts.
Johnson and McCarrol were filming a scene for their film while appearing as guests on the local morning radio program “The Roz & Mocha Show” when they received word that a guard had been shot outside Drake’s residence.
“Because it was a radio station, they got the news of the Drake shooting right there,” Johnson says.
In May 2024, police said suspects opened fire on Drake’s home in the affluent Bridle Path neighbourhood. The rapper’s security guard was shot and in serious condition, but later stabilized.
For the director of 2023’s “BlackBerry,” hearing the initial call about the crime scene was an opportunity too wild to pass up.
“(We) just got into the van that we’d taken there and we drove to Drake’s house.”
In the film, Johnson and McCarrol reprise their roles as two hapless Toronto musicians whose increasingly convoluted schemes to book a show at local bar The Rivoli spiral into time-travelling disorder, unleashing a butterfly effect that tests their friendship.
Drake’s mansion figures prominently in this altered reality, so when news of the real-life crime scene on Bridle Path broke, the duo saw a chance to turn it into an improvised film set.
One sequence in the movie captures the breaking-news media frenzy outside the Toronto rapper’s house, with McCarrol fleeing the scene.
“It was a million-dollar film set!” says McCarrol.
“There were helicopters in the sky, police lined up and down the street,” adds Johnson.
The moment became one of the first pieces of footage they shot for the movie — and forced them to retrofit the rest of the story around it.
When Johnson and McCarrol initially arrived at Drake’s house, their crew was met with a police barricade and some skeptical officers
“They were like, ‘Guys, what do you think you’re doing? Get out of here,’” recalls Johnson.
The pair say they managed to slip past by claiming they were “independent media.”
Once at the crime scene with other news outlets, they began scouting opportunities to turn the situation into film fodder. They captured the police chief speaking to reporters and panned to McCarrol escaping the premises.
“We didn’t even know what Jay was running from,” Johnson laughs.
The pair also shared the story Thursday during a live Q-and-A after the Midnight Madness premiere of the film, which had the packed crowd roaring with laughter.
“It was very weird because I kept running up and down — like everyone was facing me so they could see me bolting down the street. It looked like I had just shot somebody,” McCarrol said.
“Before the police could even decide if ‘we’re going to go after this guy,’ I would just get to the end and then turn around. And so it was just confusing. By the time they asked us (to stop), we were like, ‘Oh, we’re already done.’”
In a CP24 clip that has since made the rounds online, a reporter delivers a live news hit while Johnson can be seen in the background, directing the film’s cinematographer, Jared Raab.
In “Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie,” the duo tears through tons of red tape in Toronto, staging gonzo-style, risqué sequences involving the CN Tower, the Rogers Centre and TTC streetcars.
But Johnson insists they “very rarely” get into legal trouble for their antics.
“I’m good friends with our lawyer, like I really love this man,” says Johnson.
“If I go and shoot something that I think is legally on the line, I will have spoken with him beforehand, 99 per cent of the time.”
Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow attended the “Nirvanna” premiere, where Johnson couldn’t resist joking with her during the Q-and-A.
“What do you think — are we in trouble for real?” he asked, prompting laughter from the audience.
“We might need you to talk to the CN Tower. Bringing you here was by design.”
“Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie” screens Sept. 8 and Sept. 13 at TIFF.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 6, 2025.
