Frankie Drake Mysteries, CBC Television, Mondays at 9 p.m. For more information visit cbc.ca/frankiedrake.
In Frankie Drake Mysteries, which premiered last week on CBC, Lauren Lee Smith plays a private investigator during the roaring ’20s. However, it wasn’t Nancy Drew that inspired the Vancouver actor, but David Bowie.
“I was watching Labyrinth and I remember looking to my mother and saying ‘I want to do that’,” she says. “Somehow that was a world I wanted to be a part of.”
And so the road from Muppets to mysteries began: Smith started participating in little theatre programs whenever her family’s moves would allow. They lived in Deep Cove for several years when Smith was young but then moved every year or two. “Due to my stepfather’s job we were all over the place,” she says. “They wanted us to see the world… I guess they were kind of hippies.”
She was homeschooled after ninth grade, and moved to Los Angeles after she was done, following the temptation of all Canadian actors to head south for work. Through her early 20s, Smith says, she did “what was expected” and headed south for pilot season. But every time she was in L.A. she’d book jobs back in Canada. “Why did I keep feeling this need to go back to L.A? I’m super proud of the work I’m getting in Canada. Canada is home,” she says.
“I’ve been able to have a career here for the last 20 years, and that’s something I don’t take lightly at all.”
She was a regular on TV shows Mutant X, The L Word and CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, and appeared in films such as Clement Virgo’s steamy Lie With Me, Trick ‘r Treat (with Anna Paquin), and How To Plan An Orgy in a Small Town.
For This Life, the set-in-Montreal family drama adapted from the popular Radio-Canada series, Smith showed up for work a mere six weeks after giving birth to her daughter. “I don’t even really remember a lot of it!” she laughs, noting that she stayed a block away from set in order that her husband could come every hour and a half with the baby and let her breastfeed. “I have a husband who is a saint who has taken off a lot of time to be full-time daddy.”
The girl-power tone of Frankie Drake should make her daughter proud. Drake Detective Agency is staffed solely by women: there’s Frankie’s partner Trudy (Chanel Riley, Race), Mary (Rebecca Liddiard, Alias Grace), a “morality officer” for the Toronto Police, droll morgue attendant Flo (Sharron Matthews), and Wendy Crewson, who has a sassy recurring role. It’s set in 1921, when Canadian women had just earned the right to vote and some continued to work in jobs vacated by men during the Great War. “The writers have done such an incredible job with the show,” Smith enthuses. “It was a trying time for women, difficult, a lot of obstacles, but instead of every episode explaining how an all-female agency gets it done, our actions speak louder than words. No need for explanation: we’re capable, and we do it.”
Ernest Hemingway (played by Steve Lund), who wrote for the Toronto Star from 1920-1924, adds some testosterone to the mix.
This is a big year for Smith. In addition to the starring role in Frankie Drake she plays opposite Michael Shannon in one of the year’s most talked-about films, Guillermo del Toro’s The Shape of Water. “I had met with Guillermo for a different project and it didn’t work out and he had kept me in mind.” Her agent phoned and said the role was hers if she wanted it. “I picked my jaw up off the floor and said yes of course!” She took a break from shooting her series to work on the film opposite Michael Shannon, with a four-month-old in tow. Smith calls Shannon “one of the most intense actors I’ve ever worked with. It’s wild, it’s a trip and it’s a gift to work with someone who has that kind of carnal energy.”
Smith admits that her daughter has spent more time in a trailer on set in her short lifetime than anywhere else, a nomad just like her mother was. But mom has plans to put down roots: she owns a piece of property in the Fraser Valley, and plans to include goats and chickens in addition to her two dogs and a cat.
And if her daughter gets the acting bug? “I would always encourage her to get an education first, but if it’s truly deeply her passion once she’s 18 there’s kind of no stopping her,” she says. “Myself as an 18-year-old there was no stopping me.”
