On this episode of The Movie Podcast, Daniel is joined by Kristin Kreuk (Smallville, Burden of Truth, Beauty and the Beast) to discuss her new murder mystery series, MURDER IN A SMALL TOWN. The show is based on the Edgar Award-winning Karl Alberg series by acclaimed novelist L.R. Wright and follows Karl Alberg (Rossif Sutherland), who moves to a quiet, coastal town to soothe a psyche that has been battered by big-city police work. He’ll quickly learn that this gentle paradise has more than its share of secrets and will need to call upon all the skills that made him a world-class detective in solving the murders that, even in this seemingly idyllic setting, continue to wash up on his shore. Kristin Kreuk stars as Cassandra Lee, a local librarian who becomes Karl’s muse, foil and romantic interest. Murder in a Small Town debuts Tuesday, September 24 at 8PM ET/PT on Global and STACKTV with a one-time 90-minute episode then moves to 9PM ET/PT on Tuesday, October 8 before landing in its regular day and time on Wednesday, October 16 at 10PM ET/PT.
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When you need meal time inspiration, it's worth shopping Kroger for thousands of appetizing ingredients that inspire countless mouth-watering meals. And no matter what tasty choice you make, you'll enjoy our everyday low prices, plus extra ways to save, like digital coupons worth over $600 each week and up to $1 off per gallon at the pump with points, so you can get big flavors and big savings, Kroger, fresh for everyone, fuel restrictions apply. Hello, and welcome to the Movie Podcast. My name is Daniel. I'm one of your hosts today, and joining alongside me, it's Shabbat. Hello, Shabbat. Bonjour, Miss Annie. Oh, I am doing so well now that you're here, Shay. Oh, thank you. That means a lot to me. Of course. How's your day going? So far, so good, man. We did some interviews, we're off to do some more event stuff. The life of the movie podcast is very interesting and it's also nonstop. It is nonstop, but I wouldn't want to be doing it. I wouldn't stop. I wouldn't stop. I wouldn't stop at all. Shabbat, today on the Movie Podcast, we are joined by someone who I have admired for so many years and someone that we've actually met very briefly before we were in this world. Yes. We met as civilians. We met as civilians and now we got to meet again as industry professionals. I say that with air quotes. Joining us on the Movie Podcast today from Smallville, from Bird and the Truth, from Beauty and the Beast, it's Kristen Crook. Wow. That's so cool. Did you show her your tattoo? No. The one on your chest? No. Just to be clear, I do not have a Smallville or Kristen Crook tattoo. The worst part about that tattoo is because you've got a bit of a hairy chest so she can excuse the beard on it. I'm so glad that you're putting that out into the world. Now that you've said it, people are going to believe it. They're going to look for it. They're going to look for it. They're going to look for it. Daniel, do you always just airbrush everything out of your photos and the answer is yes, I do. Why is this one part of his chest so smooth? We are so delighted to be talking to Kristen about her brand new show Murder in a Small Town, which is going to be debuting today on Global and Stack TV and then on Fox and Hulu, a few are in the United States. It's a very cozy show. It's like a murder mystery. It's all shot in Canada. I know it's weird to say it's a cozy show murder mystery, but it is. It's like that ultimate fall show where you're just like, I want to just be inside. It's raining outside. It's foggy. It's starting to cool down a little bit and you're just going on this journey of this cop trying to solve these murders and Kristen's character, Cassandra, is there and just helping out and maybe keeping something secret as well too. It's really cool that we got the opportunity to talk to her because you know Shbas. I do. I'm a huge Smolville fan. I think a little bit too big. A little bit too big. It's one of those things that getting to talk to somebody who's been part of a show and been part of something that you've really grown up watching. It's a really cool experience. Yeah, I agree with you. Absolutely. I just want to say thank you to you Shbas as well. You were kind of feel like, you know what, Daniel, you go do the solo, this is your journey that you have to go on. I just don't want to be there when you were barking, you know? God, I'm so sorry to everybody who's into this. We are the movie podcast. You can catch brand new episodes all throughout the week with new interviews, reviews and discussions on all the latest movies and series. If you want to follow us on socials, that is the best place to do it. Instagram, Twitter, TikTok and Letterbox, you could follow us there. The show notes below have everything you need to know and more, including our Discord and our YouTube. Just a reminder, like I said, murder in a small town is debuting today on Global and on Stack TV with a 90-minute episode, and you'll also be able to watch it on Fox and Hulu if you are in the United States. Check out our show notes for all of the information, like I said, and more. And without further ado, please welcome the wonderful Chris and Crook to the movie podcast. Hi, Chris. How are you? I'm great. How are you? I'm doing so well. Thank you so much for sharing your time with me this morning. Thank you. You know, a full disclosure, big fan, obviously, Smallville was a huge show for me. I bombarded my family with that. So it's great to be talking to you about this, and I promise I'll save those questions for later on. Don't worry. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, whatever. Yeah. We'll backload those. No, I just love to know for yourself. Throughout your career, you've played characters who believe in justice, have a strong moral and professional obligation to justice. So how close to the heart is that for you in real life? Oh, that's a good question, and no one has ever asked me that. Well, that's interesting. I mean, each of these characters I've played has a different understanding of justice, a different understanding of what that means. Like the last character I played, Joanna, for instance, was a lawyer. So her experience of justice was very much tied to the legal system, tied to how she needed to... Well, in some ways, her sense of justice grew as the seasons went on, but she really was just bound to like, how do I use the law to get what I want, at least in the beginning? Right. And then it was, how do I use the law to find some sort of compensation or meaningful recompense for people who've gone through to her pain, whereas the character I play now, Cassandra, who is a librarian, looks at justice entirely differently. She's looking at it through the lens of a very... She has a very upstream lens, so she's looking at things like how are their failures within our society, and what are the causal factors of those things, and how do I address it from that vantage point, as opposed to working on it from the downstream level, which is what Cassandra... I mean, sorry, what Joanna was doing. So I guess, when it relates to me, I think that it's something... Since I don't work in these fields, and I'm an artist, or a craft person at the very least, a storyteller, I'm looking at it more from a human perspective than from a legal perspective. And I think that what is just is sometimes gray, or at the very least, very nuanced. And I don't have an easy answer for that, but yes, I am concerned with it. I just don't know. I have no ideology that is easily and comfortable. No, I totally get that. And I think that's what's really fascinating, and seeing that through the different characters that you've played, and seeing that in this show too, because even your first meeting in Santa's first meeting with Carl is so fun, and it's so lighthearted, but it definitely shifts when she finds out his line of work. So I was just curious for herself, what was it like figuring out who your character was and figuring out that dynamic with Rossif as well, in that first scene meeting each other? Yeah, we had so much fun shooting that scene. It was the first scene that we shot for the whole show, and it was the first we had obviously acted together apart from audition scenes, and then reading scenes in readers. But that whole thing was an incredible way to discover a character. Because we just played, and Mylon was, Mylon, our director, was very adamant that we play, that we not get tied into continuity or things like which is weird, because I'm very much used to being precise as an actor. I put my hand here on this line, and having done the TV for so long, I just kind of walk in on putting my hand here on that line, and he was like, "Don't just play." And so we were able to really like move through the scene and find our characters in that moment, and discovering just how hard it is for Cassandra when she hears that he's a cop. And not only is he a cop, he's the chief of police, and I think that kind of heart-sinking moment for her is very real. And that is her conflict for kind of the whole season, which is like really this man is incredible, and he's a special man, and I'm drawn to him. And I feel like I can be myself with him. And also his job is just so counter to what I, in some ways, believe it, focus on. So yes, finding the characters in their dynamics and conflicts in that first scene was a joy, and we were so lucky to be able to do those scenes first, because that relationship, I mean, for me, it's kind of the central part of the show, but for the show itself, it's kind of the heartbeat of the show. No, it is. And that's what was so fun about watching that first episode, and it's a longer first episode too. So you really get to learn a lot about their dynamics, and it makes you really excited to continue watching this. Oh, good. Good. Good. I know it's based off of the L.R. right book, and congrats, I know you're doing the voice as well on the audio book, which is amazing. So you have to live with this character in very different ways. What was it about Cassandra for you that when you first read this script, you're like, you know, I want to be part of this. I want to explore this character. It's a good question. I mean, it was interesting. I'm going to answer this in a slightly roundabout way, but I knew Kim and Tina, who are producers at CPF Films. I've known them for a long time. I did a movie for Tina, gosh, so long ago, a movie called Partition. And I also knew Ian Weir from Edgemont. So he had written the first show that I ever did. And so there was a circularity to it that I really liked the idea of, and I like working with people that I know I like, it makes life easier. So that was kind of why I initially looked at the project, because Tina and Kim brought it to me in, I think, 2021. And it came back around in 2023 when they asked me to read for the role. And the reason I ultimately did is because I really find this character to be different from characters I've played before. She is very free. Obviously, she's hiding things, isn't containing things like every human being does. She has secrets, but she's free. She really is expressive. She laughs. She's got her own traumas, but they aren't overwhelming. And almost every character I've played for the last little while has been very contained. And deals with their lives in a way that they kind of turn inward and get swallowed inside of themselves. And she's the opposite. And I just thought it would be so fun for me to be able to just play someone who was more open. And that was what really interested me. When you need mealtime inspiration, it's worth shopping Kroger for thousands of appetizing ingredients that inspire countless mouth-watering meals. And no matter what tasty choice you make, you'll enjoy our everyday low prices, plus extra ways to save, like digital coupons worth over $600 each week and up to $1 off per gallon at the pump with points so you can get big flavors and big savings. Kroger, fresh for everyone, fuel restrictions apply. It's gorgeous where you guys are shooting this and it's always lovely to see Canada playing itself in productions because it doesn't always happen all the time. So what was it like for you shooting Sunshine Coast? It's just a beautiful place to be. It's beautiful. I mean, I'm a West Coast girls where I'm from, it's where I live. And I love the Pacific Northwest. I love the rain and the mist and the conifers and the ocean and the brininess of it. I love all of that. And so we started shooting in early February when it's still quite wintry, you know. It is called the Sunshine Coast, but in the summer, it's the Sunshine Coast. The rest of the year it's the Pacific Northwest and so it's a lot of mist and rain. I don't know that Fox was fully prepared for that, but it's a joy to go to work and look out and see the mountains or be out on a beach or, you know, and I got to live like right in a little house on the beach and I called it my vacation job. It was such a beautiful, beautiful experience. And I hope, I haven't seen all the episodes, I've only seen the first episode, but I hope it comes across on screen that that beauty translates onto this little, onto this little camera. No, it does. It truly is gorgeous. I'm really excited for everyone to dive into it because I think especially the season we're going into, it might get a very cozy show. Yeah, it's a cozy show. Yeah. A cozy show. And I really fall for it. You mentioned like the different jobs and different roles that you've had throughout your career too. I'm curious, what's your standard, like how's your standard for choosing roles changed and evolved over the years? Yeah, I mean, obviously I'm lucky and I have the privilege of being able to say no to work and not a lot of actors have that privilege. So that is a big part of what's changed is that I can select, but I think what I said before as part of it is who am I working with? Like I'm going to spend hours and hours and hours and days of my life with these people. I don't want to be in conflict and I've had those experiences where I'm in conflict and I feel stress and keeps me up at night and I just don't want to do that. So I want to know what the what the head writer's like. I want to know what the director's like. I want to know what the producers are like. I want to be able to feel safe to speak my mind, speak my opinion and not to be belittled or all the things that have happened to my career and also have a I'm often cast in with a love interest. Like I'm normally paired. There's normally a love story in whatever show I'm doing, not all of them, but a lot of them. So I want to know that the man that I'm working with because it's normally a man is lovely and that will get along and that it'll be easy. And so those are the things I'm looking for is relational things more than anything else. Yeah. That's lovely. Now I have to connect back to Smolle just because that's my big big show for me growing up. I'm just curious, you know, it's amazing seeing Tom and Michael talking about that show every single week and I know you've jumped on talk to a bunch of times too. How is your relationship with that show changed as more people have, you know, gone back to it, rediscovered it or just watching it for the first time? It's been, you know, it's been so amazing about that for you. Yeah. I was talking, I was talking about the set. We did a SAG panel when we screened the show over at SAG in LA and what's really shifted for me is, like I said before, I've had, I had a complex relationship with Smolle, especially in the beginning. I was really young. I didn't know about how to speak my mind. I was really shy, really reserved. I had no experience and so there was like a lot of complexity to how I dealt with that show and a lot of fear around the success of it. So doing these conventions has helped me redefine my relationship to the show through the eyes of people whose lives it impacted and in positive ways because so many people, for a lot of people, it's their comfort show. It's the show that they washed with their families. It's a show that they have ties to, you know, parents who may no longer be around or siblings or whatever it is. And so I get to have this kind of, I get to get pulled out of myself and see it from outside of myself and accept the show kind of in a broader, more holistic sense and that's been joy for me to redefine my relationship to it and understand that, yes, I have my experience but my experience is like one tiny little piece of this whole puzzle of Smolleville. Yeah. And, you know, it's been, I've been so happy to hear you speak so openly about that too and even just Tom and Michael and everyone speaking so openly about their experiences on it too because, you know, it was a huge show and the time when it came out and also just being trusted upon the world with like this massive show being the massive success that it was. But I think to this day, it is like that bar for I think so many other shows and so many other, not just within superheroes, within dramas of like what people I think look to is like that's like, there's not a lot of shows that feel like that anymore, which is always nice when you go back to it like, wow, this feels so like, it feels other time but it also feels timeless. Yes. I know what you mean. Yeah. And it's also shows then in Smolleville. I feel like there was a real earnestness to it that we kind of don't have as much anymore. I think it's starting to come back this earnestness, like being artists, like being cynical became the way to be and Smolleville was never that. It was never that. And I think that's part of why it's been so lasting is that people felt comfortable seeing love, like all the emotions felt real and felt cool and I just don't see that as much anymore. Yeah. It's funny, like when you mentioned like this, the earnest of it, like even just like Clark in every scene with Lana shows up, it doesn't even like say hi, it's just like Lana and like my dad and I was just died of laughter at it, but it's also just so just, he's always just so awestruck when you do it to so, so funny watching it of how often it happens. But it's just, it's just amazing every time. Yes. Kristin, I'm, I'm so grateful for your time. I really hope we get to talk again and just congratulations on the show and hopefully we could talk soon. Yes. Thank you so much. Have a great day. You too. Bye bye. Bye. Bye bye. 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