International Stars Excited to Adopt Iconic Canadian Uniform in New Series on RCMP Life

By Jonathan Dekel, Postmedia News May 13, 2014, Calgary Herald

(excerpts, see link at bottom for full article)

Growing up in the Australian resort town of Bondi Beach, Daniel Lissing had his first impression of Canada in the form of an older woman.

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Nearly two decades later, Lissing’s work brought him to that mystical, far-off land. On Super Channel series, When Calls the Heart, the Aussie heartthrob plays Jack Thornton, a turn-of-the-century Royal Canadian Mounted Police officer posted in a Western mining town who falls for a transplanted teacher named Elizabeth Thatcher.

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Lissing, who audiences may remember from the short-lived but critically lauded Lost Resort, was living in Los Angeles when he got the call to audition.

Wrapping a jacket over his RCMP costume on the show’s chilly Vancouver set last December, the 32-year-old admitted he knew little of red-serge culture before taking the role. “When I got the job, my old man posted a video on my Facebook page of a singing Mountie from a film,” he said, making reference to fellow import Mountie Nelson Eddy. “Now I’m loving this uniform — the more layers the better.”

Though the series is set in Western Canada, Lissing spoke in a generic North American accent not far removed from that of his American co-stars, Erin Krakow (Thatcher) and former Full House actress Lori Loughlin (repeating her film role as coal-mine-widow Abigail Stanton). “It’s an American show and we’re going to keep the accent as neutral as we can,” he explained.

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Lissing added that most modern Canadians wouldn’t recognize the RCMP of the 1910s.

Being a family series, When Calls the Heart suppresses much of the real-life violence and hardship of Mountie life, making it an outlier in the so-called golden age of television.

Instead, Lissing said, audiences can expect well-produced family entertainment closer in substance to TV’s last golden age.

“This is a Hallmark [series] so we’re not shooting ’em up too much,” he smirked, “but one of the great things about this show is that it’s got a good contrast of drama, action and a whole bunch of romance.”