Ed Asner joins tortured souls of Halifax-set church drama ‘Forgive Me’

By Cassandra Szklarski, The Canadian Press

TORONTO – Forgiveness is increasingly hard to come by amid the tortured souls beset by shame, guilt and rage on “Forgive Me.”

The acclaimed church saga returns for a second season Sunday with little relief in sight for its conflicted hero, a cancer-stricken priest weighed down by unsettling confessions.

A deepening storyline about a decades-old sex scandal brings new characters and stars, including Ed Asner as a bishop who may have been involved in a cover-up.

Sins of the father, indeed.

Asner joins an already impressive lineup including Oscar winners Olympia Dukakis and Brenda Fricker, while Wendy Crewson joins as a disgraced politician who seeks counsel from Mike McLeod’s unnamed priest.

Writer/director Thom Fitzgerald says the sparse drama —featuring extended scenes set within the tight confines of the confessional — lives and dies by the ability of its cast to pull off sometimes painfully intimate dialogue.

“It can’t get by on the visuals or even the story, it just really has to be performed by great actors,” he says of enlisting Asner for the Super Channel show.

“He’s kind of the greatest television actor that we have and I think for people like Ed and Brenda Fricker, Wendy Crewson, it’s the unique aspect of the show, the intimacy of it, that excites them to do it.”

Dukakis returns as the priest’s grandmother, Hugh Thompson is back as the accuser known only as Smith, while Fricker resumes her role as Smith’s mother.

McLeod scored the demanding lead role — his first TV gig — after meeting Fitzgerald on a play they did together five years ago. He says shooting the series is akin to doing “small-scale theatre.”

“It really is a lot of the time two people just playing off of one another for long periods of time and Thom’s a big fan … of shooting things in extended takes,” says McLeod, whose character is plagued by visions he likes to think are of saintly origin but are more likely caused by a brain tumour.

“We let the scene gestate and move and for good or for bad, we end up finding things.”

As such, “Forgive Me” is not the easiest material to perform, he says. Shooting those emotionally draining confessions can mean 12-hour days.

“It is so heavy and it is so dark that a lot of the time you’re really going to a place that you yourself might not be super comfortable going to. You have to explore a lot of painful emotions, honest emotions (but the work is) so gratifying because it is unlike anything that I think you get an opportunity to do on film and television,” he says.

McLeod says the second season expands beyond the church with more scenes taking place out in the world, putting the priest in contact with a wider circle.

The series is an all-consuming endeavour for Fitzgerald, who writes and directs each episode — as he does with his other Halifax-shot show, “Sex & Violence,” which just aired its second season on OUTtv.

The New York transplant, who burst into the spotlight with his acclaimed 1997 feature film “The Hanging Garden,” says having a singular vision for a TV series can make the project all the stronger.

But he suspects he’ll likely have to continue that work elsewhere in light of a recent provincial cut to a $24 million film tax credit.

Fitzgerald says “Sex & Violence” will leave the province when a third season begins shooting in early 2016. He doesn’t know where exactly, but he is considering British Columbia where OUTtv is based.

“It will be a slight reinvention of the show. I’m not going to pretend its Halifax,” he says.

“Forgive Me” has yet to learn whether it will get a third season, but if it does, it would also have to move. Fitzgerald says he planned for that possibility while shooting, “should the Nova Scotia industry collapse.”

“We have two endings, depending on whether or not the priest gets to stay in Nova Scotia,” he says.

“So we’ll see how it goes.”

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