Modest Mag

Summer 1996 - By Lance Erickson Ghulam - Pages 4-7

Mag and her husband Daniel at the '96 Gemini Awards.

How do you feel about the show ending?
"(A sigh) Mixed. I love my character and I've had a great time with everything that's happened to Olivia. On the other hand, I'm dying to do some more comedy. Maybe I'll play a blood-sucking vampire on Forever Knight, something completely twisted so that I can get away from being so darn wholesome. On the other hand, I've become more and more wholesome as Road to Avonlea has continued, so I may not have the range!
"When all my scenes were wrapped (in January, 1996) I went home an cried for an hour and a half. I was so disapointed it was over. I was so replete with a feeling of richness. How many people can end a job and really feel that level of contentment and achievement? It's such a rare occurrence."

How do you interpret Olivia?
"I think Olivia has a good heart. She's been repressed and unseen for who she is. I think everyone universally feels that way to some extent, so she strikes a universal chord. Olivia is always a little in the background, always wishing for something better, wishing to be more important, more passionate, more popular. Whenever I've played her, I always feel a little bit wistful."

What do you think Olivia brought to the show?
"I've heard different opinions on that. I don't know that I have one of my very own. I know what I would like to have brought to the show. I would have liked Olivia to have been seen as a role model, a behavioural option that people can have in a marriage or a family where there is someone who works hard behind the scenes, doesn't ask for much and is very loving and supportive. There aren't many role models on television where someone is just generally good-hearted and not a wimp. In Olivia's case, I think I could have played her a little bit stronger. I wasn't a gutsy tomboy, which I maybe would have preferred."

How much influence did you have in the making of the show?
"When you go to work on a set, it's a very fluid process. There were days of bitter disappointment when I had a cherished idea as to how I thought a scene should go. When I got to work I found that no one else was going in that direction and there was nothing I could do to shift the current. I'm quite articulate usually, but that doesn't help. I could have all the conviction in the world and be very persuasive, and it didn't make any difference. If people didn't see it that way, I rarely made a case for my ideas. I'd usually be flexible and just go with it."

How did you get the part?
"Oh, it's a funny story. Before I auditioned for the role, I was determined to move to California. In the summer of 1989, I sold or gave away everything I owned and got ready to go. Then I got a call to audition for Olivia. I suppose I should have gotten a clue when I saw that they had four women auditioning for Hetty and only me for Olivia, but I didn't. I moved to California, bought a bed and an answering machine. The first message on my machine was my agent telling me I had gotten the part and had to come back! Well, back I came to start all over again!
"Then, a few months later, I returned to California to visit with friends and met a guy [Daniel Hunter] at a Halloween party. Three weeks later, we got married at the "Heart of Love" Chapel in Reno! I thought the series would end after one season and that I would be able to be with him after that. Well, her we are, seven years later! And I've been commuting back and forth from Canada to California the whole time! Isn't that wild?"

That's quite an amazing story. What has made your marriage work so well?
"We're both very shallow people! (Laughter) We have the perspective of being apart from each other a lot, which is something many couples don't have. Some people never get a break from their partners and don't have the chance to really appreciate what they have."

Your affinity for the works for LMM date back to when you portrayed Gilbert Blythe in a production of Anne of Green Gables at summer camp.
"It was an all girl camp so somebody had to play Gilbert! It was a smashing role! I got to wear overalls and a plaid shirt and kick the dirt under my feet. I was particulary found of the overalls. They were a lot more comfortable than the corsets I have to wear as Olivia."

For many viewers, Road to Avonlea strikes a very universal chord, similar to the affinity many have for LMM's works. Why is that?
"When you read LMM's diaries, you can sense that she wanted something more than what she had. It wasn't at church that she got it, she felt it much more in nature. There's a certain yearning quality running through most of the female artists of the 19th and early 20th century. I think a lot of inspiration for all great art came from people just being out in nature. From painting to poetry to film, so much of it comes from simply being outside. People hardly spend any time outside today. LMM was always rambling through the fields or berry-picking or going out for a traipse, then rushing home to write frantically in her journal about the beauty of the land. Who does that now?
"So, in Road to Avonlea, the simple fact that the characters are out in nature is an echo of how most of us would like to live. Don't we all wish we had a field to ramble through on our way to school?"

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