Tatiana Maslany proved she’s more than just a TV actress last night at the Canadian Screen Awards, as she picked up two trophies. Everyone expected she’d win for the hit TV series Orphan Black of course, after all she’d won in the previous three years as well for the role, but she also won a best actress trophy for her role in the film The Other Half as well. In the end, it was Orphan Black taking home the most trophies this year, with 9 altogether.
The other big winner of the evening was Xavier Dolan’s It’s Only The End of the World, taking home six trophies in total, including Best motion Picture. Like Maslany, Dolan has been a fixture at the Canadian Screen Awards, although this year he couldn’t attend to claim his award. His main competition on the evening was the bio pic Race, based on the story of Jesse Owens during the 1936 Berlin Olympics. Lead star Stephan James took home the best actor statue for his portrayal of the American hero. The biggest surprise of the night was the series Letterkenny taking home the best comedy trophy over favourites Kim’s Convenience and Schitt’s Creek.
A lot of emotions were played out on stage throughout the evening, including some tears that were shed when Kim’s Convenience star Paul Sun-Hyung Lee accepted the award for Best Actor in a Comedic Role. He said “We might have some cultural differences but deep down inside when it comes to family, we are all the same. I’ve never been more proud to be a Canadian than right now.”
Howie Mandel did a great job as the host of the event, taking jabs at the fact that the CSA’s don’t have a proper nickname yet, and even creating an Oscar like sketch where he was terribly inserted into some of the nominated shows and films. He also make a big deal of this being Canada’s 150th anniversary, and handed out a card he’d picked up from Shopper’s Drug Mart for the crowd to sign. But even he couldn’t upstage veteran actor Christopher Plummer, who accepted the lifetime achievement awards.
“I’m old,” Plummer said. “Dangerously old. I’m so old that when I was a baby, the first word I uttered was in Latin. I’ve spent almost 70 years making a fool of myself in this crazy mad profession of ours and I’ve had the time of my life.”
Like Plummer, the Canadian Screen Awards seem to just get better with age.
