SANCTUARY - THE PROVINCE: Amanda Tapping's all-consuming Sanctuary
Actress does double duty as producer on sci-fi-fantasy series
By Alex Strachan
October 5, 2011
Amanda Tapping is fighting the early signs of a cold on this early October morning, but she feels energized and reinvigorated just the same. Filming has concluded in Burnaby on the 13 episodes of Sanctuary's fourth season, and Tapping — an executive producer, as well as Sanctuary's lead actor — is immersed in post-production, putting the finishing touches on a season she says will take Sanctuary's followers on a darker, more cerebral turn.
The modest, homegrown science fiction-fantasy series has confounded the doubters who scoffed at the idea that a eight-webisode series, originally conceived for the web in 2007, would ever make it as a full-blown drama series on prime-time TV, let alone one that would survive four years. Sanctuary returns Friday on SPACE. It has become a mainstay for the U.S. Syfy cable channel, and shows little sign of going gently into that good night just yet.
Tapping may be fighting a cold on this day, but she's a long way from exhaustion. Sanctuary has become a full-time preoccupation for her, thanks to series creator Damian Kindler and a cast ensemble of fellow Canadians that includes Robin Dunne, JPod's Emilie Ullerup, Stargate Atlantis's Christopher Heyerdahl and Battlestar Galactica's Ryan Robbins. Tapping is perhaps best-known from her years playing galaxy-tripping adventurer Samantha Carter in the long-running sci-fi series, Stargate SG-1, but Sanctuary is a personal passion project...
... "It's hugely gratifying to see how far it's come, and also a little surreal, because it did start so humbly," Tapping said. "I often have moments where I think, 'Man, we're getting to make it into a TV show. Nobody thought we could make it into a TV show.' There but for the grace of our finances we go, every year. We are a 100 per cent independent Canadian television series. I think that's an anomaly in this country, and probably around the world, in most countries. To have a television show that doesn't have the backing of a major studio or a major network is really unusual. We are supported by a couple of networks, but basically, it's up to us to make the show happen..."
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