Sheila McCarthy

Midtown’s mom next door on life as the star of Little Mosque on the Prairie and her daring new film that’s got Toronto tongues wagging

MIDTOWN’S SHEILA McCarthy knew she wanted to be an actor by age 10. “I played the Wicked Witch of the West in The Wizard of Oz.And I killed. I knocked it right out of the park,” she says laughing.

The winner of two Gemini Awards, two Genie Awards, two Dora Awards and a starring cast member on CBC’s Little Mosque on the Prairie is on the phone at her daughter’s volleyball game, on a break from filming.

Shortly, however, McCarthy will be back at work promoting Year of the Carnivore, a film in which she co-stars and that was written and directed by another CBC notable, Sook-Yin Lee.

For McCarthy, who has acted in major Hollywood films, including Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen, the decision to appear in a small, independent film such as Year of the Carnivore is an interesting one.

McCarthy joined the project because she wanted to work with Lee.When the two met on Lee’s CBC radio show,“We really gelled,” McCarthy says. Plus, after so many seasons of Little Mosque,“it was refreshing and wonderful to be able to jump into another project.”

Like some of Lee’s other cinematic forays, Year of the Carnivore is both racy and moving. The film, which has been described as “a bittersweet comedy,” follows Sammy Smalls, a 21-year-old who works as a store detective catching shoplifters, who her boss then beats up.

Sammy feels guilty about her role in the mess but needs the money and doesn’t want to move home to her neurotic parents.

In the meantime, she falls for a musician, but when the two become more than friends, the experience is less than ecstatic. The musician suggests they date others to gain more sexual experience. In response, Sammy engages the shoplifters to teach her everything they know about sex. Edgy? Absolutely. How this experience changes her and whether she and the musician find their way back to each other — that’s up to theatre-goers to discern.

McCarthy brought her daughter to the Toronto International Film Festival premiere in September and found herself a bit red-faced during some of the more explicit scenes.

“What our [on-screen] daughter goes through is a real coming-of-age tale in that sort of Juno-esque kind of way.

Sook-Yin Lee likes to push the envelope,” she says.

When McCarthy was asked to address the audience after the show, she seized the opportunity to confront her embarrassment.“Clearly my work as a mother is done,” she remembers saying to huge laughter. “Oh. Dear. God.”

In the film, McCarthy plays Sammy’s mother, and Kids in the Hall veteran Kevin McDonald plays her father.

“We’re Sammy’s rather straitlaced but eccentric parents who, I think, parenting rarely occurs to,” McCarthy says.

Shot in Vancouver in November and December ’08,the film “was a short little experience but was really fun,” she says.

She loved acting alongside McDonald. “It was a marriage made in heaven,” she says. As a director, Lee was “very thorough, very intuitive and strong.” The admiration goes both ways. Lee has been a McCarthy fan since watching the classic Canadian film I’ve Heard the Mermaids Singing, in which McCarthy stars.

In that film, “she’s very funny but also … sweet. She’s just got this beautiful energy to her,” says Lee.

While Mrs. Smalls is a very different character from McCarthy’s in I’ve Heard the Mermaids Singing, Lee could tell McCarthy was suited for the role. She wanted an actor “who could bring humanity to this completely flawed character and make me love them — and that’s what Sheila can bring.…She’s able to make me feel something in my heart, with humour and authenticity.”

Those same qualities characterize McCarthy’s role on Little Mosque. It’s one of the first sitcoms to focus on Muslim families. McCarthy’s character, Sarah, is a convert to Islam.

At first, “Sarah was sort of a straight man in the show and kind of the window of the non-Muslim world into the Muslim world. Over the years, she’s grown and gotten warmer and funnier,” McCarthy says.

People of all ages and ethnicities chat with McCarthy about the show, which airs in 60 countries. “When I talk to my mother’s friends in the bridge club, they no longer talk about it in terms of Muslim and Anglican. They just talk about, ‘Oh, that husband of yours.’”

Midtown’s Debra McGrath, who plays Sarah’s boss,Mayor Popowicz,says McCarthy “has a spirit and an energy unlike anybody else.” In scenes together, “we really feed off each other.”

McCarthy says her close friendship with McGrath is one of the great benefits of Little Mosque — along with security as an actor. “I’m the luckiest person in the world to be doing this show,” the 53-year-old says.

With some plays, “you do show after show for months and months. With films, you are there for a week and then you’re gone.” With TV, you do something new every day but with the same family. “That is a wonderful combination.”

Little Mosque has just been picked up for its fifth season, and the show has “really come of age,” she says.With her penchant for quirky film roles, look for her on the big screen, too. She’s also cowritten a screenplay, St. Lucy’s War, that has drawn interest from a major Canadian network.

As for returning to theatre,McCarthy says the prospect is terrifying. “When I sit in the theatre now, I go, ‘Good Lord, how did I ever do it?’”

McCarthy has had an on-off relationship with Toronto over the years

In 2000, she moved here with her husband, well-known classical Shakespearean actor Peter Donaldson (who stars in this month’s And So It Goes by George F.Walker at the Factory Theatre), and their two daughters.

McCarthy was starring in Ross Petty’s Peter Pan, and the family bought a house in Midtown.

With their older daughter now away at university and the youngest about to finish high school, the couple is once again considering settling full-time in Toronto.“I have refallen in love with the city,” McCarthy says.

With their busy schedules and the constant back and forth between Toronto and Stratford, McCarthy’s hoping she and Donaldson find some time to relax and unwind this Valentine’s Day.

“If we’re in the same city, we’ll try to have dinner together and eat lots of chocolate,” she says.

While McCarthy’s affection for Toronto may ebb and flow, her passion for acting (not to mention her husband) is a constant. McCarthy’s prevalence in film,TV and theatre means, even if you don’t watch Little Mosque, her face — with those big blue eyes — is instantly familiar.

But don’t be surprised if the multitalented actor turns up onstage. There are playwrights she’s itching to work with. “But I must do it soon or I never will. I’m in a cocoon on the TV set, and it’s very safe.”

 

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