Returning for a second smash season, Haven is a Showcase Original series about a somewhat haunted female FBI agent and some super-strange shenanigans in small-town Maine. It also stands as one of the most unique adaptations of the works of Stephen King. Loosely based on the horror master’s 2005 unsolved-crime novella The Colorado Kid, the series’ creative first season cooked up a secondary level of psychic mysteries — an entire town’s worth — to surround the original story of King’s ‘Kid.’ Season one ended with the town’s ‘troubles’ being (mostly) explained, but uncovered a whole new problem: Not only is it likely that FBI Agent Audrey Parker is related to the Colorado Kid, but she also might not actually be FBI Agent Audrey Parker in the first place. Confusing yet captivating? Of course it is. After all, it’s Haven. Welcome back, you’d better sit down for this.
HAVEN, Season 2 - Blog #2:
Fear Play: Behind the Scenes in Haven (feat. Lucas Bryant)
by Gary Butler
Haven returned last week in typically grand fashion. The premiere episode of Season Two saw the supernaturally sympatico small town suffer the Biblical plagues of Exodus [WATCH “A Tale of Two Audreys” HERE], and the second episode, which aired last night, involved a terror epidemic [WATCH “Fear & Loathing” HERE]. This wasn’t coming out of the gate with a bang -- this was coming out of the gate with a scream.
I was personally fascinated to observe two different references to one particular work of horror master Stephen King, author of The Colorado Kid, which directly inspired the show. You could say that the show this season is already “in for two pennies,” given that episode one saw a boy reach into a dark and forbodeing curbside sewer grate, and episode two saw a menacing clown emerge in the wake of a group of panic-stricken people. The book in question, of course, is It (1986), and the clown is Pennywise.
This isn’t the first time I’ve seen It in Haven (and, I’m guessing, not the last). As I mentioned in Haven Season Two Blog #1, I was fortunate enough to visit the Nova Scotia-based production set of the show earlier this spring. A good chunk of that visit was passed in a converted indoor hockey rink being used as the interior for the town’s police department. Not that I needed to be told that the place was once a hockey rink: adding a certain rustic-cum-nostalgic vibe, the boards were still up!
Within the police department -- in the main office of Sherriff Nathan Wuornos (played by Lucas Bryant) -- are various bits of Stephen King paraphernalia that would never actually show up on camera during filming. But there, on his desk, underneath another book, is a copy of Dolores Claiborne (1992) -- coincidentally(?) also filmed in Nova Scotia -- and there, on a bookshelf, sits It.
Mind you, I did not see a copy of The Colorado Kid, which is the source of the show’s central mystery (and which was briefly noted in last night’s episode, when the Kid’s presumed wife was revealed to be the personification of the greatest fear of... that would be telling, but suffice to say, it’s not who you think). I decided to ask Wuornos/Bryant where he was at with the case:
Q: Have you read The Colorado Kid?
A: Yes. It sets up the world, it’s a jumping off point for the show. It asks questions, doesn’t answer any and...abruptly ends. I like that as an exercise. What is this human need for easy answers, and what do we do when we don’t get them? That is the show we’re making. No one really knows what’s going on. Including me. Well, especially me.
To read the above statement is to presume, erroneously, that actor Lucas Bryant is very much like the character he plays, Nathan Wuornos: shy and reserved, to the point being self-effacing. In reality, Bryant is a source of non-stop quippy fun. He begins our chat by ruminating on the special solace he gets from eating granola bars. He properly classifies Haven: “It’s a reality TV show. A Stephen King reality TV show...” He reveals Duke’s secret power -- yet to be revealed -- which is that Duke is the opposite of Nathan, who is impervious to pain: “Duke feels pain immensely, he’s a Nancy boy.” (More on Duke’s power when we speak with Eric Balfour, in a future blog.) And he’s quick to point out that he’s funnier than the show’s lead, Emily Rose -- “Emily and I like to talk a lot of smack” -- though he has her at an unfair advantage: “Emily can’t read, they give her five words at a time, she spits it out then it’s on to her next line.”
Enter Emily, effecting a stutter: “I can talk, I can say... words... correctly... in order.”
No surprise to learn that, some half-dozen episodes of filming complete, the cast is a bunch of tight-knit jokers and, by Bryant’s estimation, “bloopers are up 3,000% already this season.”
Asked to stop joking, just for a few seconds, Bryant is happy to tease key information about Jason Priestley’s looming role in the show (he hasn’t showed up yet, but will soon): Audrey falls for him, but there’s a far-from-obvious reason. More concretely, he offers a hint about next week’s episode, “Love Machine,” which will contain “a nail gun, and my back.”
‘Back,’ then, to the quippery. Bryant allows that Haven is a show about serious people in difficult situations, and sometimes it’s so difficult that “What do you have to hold on to but a sense of humour?” Agreed, given that I can also confirm that next week’s episode includes... a zamboni.
COMING SOON TO THE HAVEN SEASON TWO BLOG:
Four more cast interviews, including Emily Rose and Jason Priestley, and plenty more backstage scoops and shenanigans.