THE BEAVERTON: SEASON 3 premieres Tuesday (July 23) at 10 pm on CTV and streams on CTV.ca in Canada and on YouTube internationally.
Miguel Rivas and Emma Hunter are gearing up to take The Beaverton global.
The news satire series premiered in 2016 on the Comedy Network, but is making the jump to CTV for season three. In addition to a bigger Canadian audience, the show will be made available internationally for the first time via YouTube. And Rivas and Hunter, veteran sketch performers (Rivas made his bones with Tony Ho, Hunter with She Said What) who play anchors “Miguel Rivas” and “Emma Hunter,” are the faces of it.
Sitting down in the middle of a whirlwind press day that has them doing every CTV show that tapes in Toronto, the pair are genuinely excited to be escorting the series – and their fascinating fictional dynamic – onto a bigger stage. We spoke to the pair about branching out beyond Canadian political satire, the rise of far-right politicians and the how they plan to make fun of Doug Ford.
This season, The Beaverton goes global. How are you pulling that off?
Miguel Rivas: We’ll be simultaneously available on the CTV app and CTV.ca and also on CTV’s YouTube Channel, which is no longer geo-locked. So we’re going to be able to share full episodes literally simultaneously as they air on CTV with anyone in the world. That’s been sort of an issue in the past, as everything was geoblocked and kept within Canada. But any snippets we released outside of that would go nuclear – like, any piece we would do about Donald Trump would show up on the top page of Reddit. It was clearly something we needed to do moving forward, and as we start airing on CTV – which is a much bigger show than what we were able to do on the Comedy Network – we want to have as many eyes as we possibly can.
Is the show expanding its scope accordingly?
MR: That’s sort of the plan. We still want to be Canadian, but we are going to be talking about what people are talking about now, and commenting on it a lot more as it happens around the world, more outside of these borders.
Emma Hunter: I think because of the capacity to reach a greater audience, the time we spend on the more international stuff can be a little bit heavier than before. We definitely are servicing Canada, in terms of being cutthroat for what’s going on at home, but that the other arm of the show is just going to get better and better.
Maybe it’s just the crush of news and social media, but it feels like everything is a global story now anyway.
EH: Our show wants to reflect that. Instead of it being hyper-Canadian, it’s [about] what’s relevant. And Canada has a seat, in terms of being relevant as a global entity, so we won’t shy away from that at all. We are in this unique position where the Canadian perspective can apply to everything, and that doesn’t mean, as Miguel says, “the maple syrup and beaver thing.” All it means is, where do we stand on an issue? Canada’s not trying to change the world, but we have pretty good ideas. We’re just as funny as the rest of them. Maybe funnier. And we have that position of going “them over there” with regard to the U.S. It’s a great position to be in in terms of satire.
MR: I always think about this old clip from The Daily Show when Jon Stewart was still the host. When Stephen Harper was elected, they did a quick story about how some guy named Stephen Harper – who clearly no one had ever heard of in any capacity in the States – was the leader of the Conservative Party, “which in Canada is like some gay-rights supporting party” – like there’s no such thing as conservative right-wing people like that up here. I remember thinking, “Hmm, there’s a missing viewpoint here. Stephen Harper is not what you are describing.”
EH: Or like when the Rob Ford thing happened – we didn’t have a show on TV at the time that offered a late-night perspective on what was going on. And it was insane! A mayor on crack! We gave all of that to the U.S.!
MR: “Don’t make fun of my kids, I make fun of my kids!” And also this year I’m making fun of your kids.
How do you make fun of the current generation of conservative politicians? Doug Ford and Andrew Scheer have this twisted sibling thing where they clearly can’t stand one another, but they know they need each other’s support. Scheer also knows he shouldn’t be seen with Doug. That’s ridiculous on its face, so how do you satirize that?
MR: It’s becoming a little bit easier because they keep winning everything, and it’s really easy to punch up at winners. If it was just, “Look how absurd this guy is!” maybe that’s a tougher angle. But now it’s like, “This is the person who’s in charge of everything and they’re ridiculous.” Suddenly it’s like you can say anything you want. And the fact that Doug Ford has no sense of humour about himself makes it easy as well.
EH: You can only roll your eyes at the collective rolling of eyes so much before it becomes kind of uninteresting, so the better they do the more rife it is for us to puncture the balloon and deflate it. That helps.
MR: You can be scared of Scheer’s policies and you don’t want to make fun of some of the things he talks about… but then you watch his campaign video where he walks down the street and you’re like, “That’s the silliest way I’ve ever seen a human walk in my life.” Like, that is objectively funny.
EH: Or Trudeau putting on completely inappropriate Indian garb. That’s amazing too. As long as they’re offering us these beautiful juicy moments, we’re gonna have no problem finding the comedy in any part of the political spectrum, right or left.
It certainly helps hold back the dread. We can mock these people for their opportunism and their pandering, but then Andrew Scheer will get all cute about refusing to condemn conversion therapy because it pleases his base and we remember what the stakes are.
MR: It’s this dangerous dance that the Conservatives in Canada have built. A lot of policy in Canada seems to happen just a few years after it happens in the States, and I think that the Republican Party in the United States took some further right-wing groups under their umbrella like the Tea Party and some white-nationalist types of people leaning that way maybe more so than regular Republicans, whatever that means. Then you see that coalition, over a number of years, sharing all of their values and suddenly that starts to look pretty ugly. I think Scheer’s trying not to affiliate himself with Doug Ford but also get all of Doug Ford’s voters, and it’s like a weird dance he has to do that makes him look silly.
EH: The larger their reach globally – or nationally, in this regard – the more vanilla they’re going to be, which can actually be boiled down to some pretty scary ideas. But again, in terms of us and the Beaverton in season three, go ahead! I want the world to be better but if these mishaps are going to come up, watch us! Because we’re gonna get ’em! [laughter]
I can see Beaverton Emma being really into this disastrous Mad Max future.
MR: Unfortunately, she’ll be very successful.
EH: Real Emma too! I can see myself driving in a car, shaking my head. It’s very liberating.
How much influence have you had over your characters’ evolution over the years? Have you found yourselves becoming more politically conscious because of the show?
MR: I think they’re becoming closer and closer to us. This season we’re full-time in the writers’ room, so we’re having some actual say in what we’re doing. But also, we have the luxury of having been on for multiple seasons and you get to refine your performance. They were more character-y [in the past] and now they’re slowly bending into being more like us.
EH: CTV is a great opportunity for us to speak to the nation. We’re not politicians and we have no interest in influencing anybody, but what we want to do is point out the holes in all of the leaders and all of the parties, and just talk about what is going on in Canada in terms of what is okay and what is not okay. It’s not like a lesson in morality, it’s just a really funny show that is going to go for it. If I can say one thing about season three, it’s that we are totally fearless. Nobody’s safe.
MR: [Mock horror] Oh, don’t say that.
EH: I’m saying it. [Drops character] But I know what you mean – it’s an interesting feeling, the influence you have as the seasons go on. Where do we land? What are our ideas? I’m definitely guilty now of processing the news with this filter of, “How can we twist this? Where can we take this?” Which is actually a blast, I feel lucky to be able to do that.
@normwilner
