Reel Beach: A lake-side chat with Thomas Craig of Murdoch Mysteries

By BERNIE FLETCHER

There’s a lovely view of the lake from the verandah of the Balmy Beach Club where I recently had the pleasure of a chat over breakfast with actor Thomas Craig of Murdoch Mysteries.
The amiable Brit is as entertaining in person as he is on television and, yes, the Yorkshire accent is authentic.

Thomas Craig was born Craig Thompson in Sheffield, England in 1962. There already was an actor by that name in the union so he had to adopt his stage name.

BF: Does everybody call you Tom or Craig?

TC: Tom. Because my surname was Thompson I was called Tommy from a young age, Tom as a nickname so I’ve never really been called Craig. Only family call me Craig. When I get called Craig, I know I’m in trouble. “Craig!”

BF: CBC viewers know you as Inspector Thomas Brackenreid, but you’ve had an interesting career in England. Can you tell us about how you got into acting?

TC: I was a plumber for six years when I left school. I’d always been able to read from an early age and I was obsessed with reading the sports pages. Whenever we held assemblies in my junior school, I was always picked to read. I quite enjoyed it, the aspect of getting up in front of people, so when I met this girl in a bar when I was about 19, 20, she told me that she did acting and dancing. I just followed her into these classes and did it as a hobby for a couple of years, improvisation class once a week.
After about a year the guy teaching asked me if I had ever thought of going to drama school and I was like, no, I don’t know anything about drama school. We worked for another year on speeches and technique and I auditioned for drama school and I got in. I went to London for three years to study drama when I was 22, so I was a plumber from 16 to 22, drama school from 22 to 25 and I’ve been a professional actor ever since.

BF: The Sixties were a terrific time for British cinema and music. Did that have an effect on you as a kld?

TC: No, I was too young. I was more influenced by my dad letting me stay up late to watch Burt Lancaster, John Wayne, Cagney films. I found a love of acting in cinema from the films my dad liked. If there was a late-night film, he’d say you can stay up and watch this, it’s a great movie. As for the music, well, that was on the whole time. The two songs I remember from being small are Yesterday by the Beatles and Downtown by Pet Clark.

BF: You’ve been part of long-running television series like Coronation Street and Murdoch Mysteries which is now filming an 18th season. To what do you attribute the lasting appeal of these fan favourites?

TC: I think you have to have characters that people like. When I was on Coronation Street, people didn’t like me, my character. I always thought if I ever got in a soap, I’d be quite a favourite because I think I’m quite personable, but actually my character wasn’t likeable. I didn’t care about that as an actor, but I totally had a shelf life on “Corrie” because my character wasn’t a pleasant person. So I lasted 2 and a 1/2 years and I did about 240 episodes.

BF: I read that it helped you getting the Murdoch role that you were in the 2001 Ken Loach film The Navigators.

TC: The show-runner for Murdoch was Cal Coons who was casting Murdoch at the beginning and he was a big Ken Loach fan. My show-reel had a scene from The Navigators that I’d done with Ken. Cal told me, “We thought if you’re good enough for Ken Loach, you’re good enough for us”.

BF: You spend part of the year here in the Beach and part in England. How does that work for you? Is that tough?

TC: It’s tricky, it’s like living two separate lives and it’s been tricky on relationships, my kids and everybody, but we’ve got through it. I really like coming here to play beach volleyball. I played last night. If the jobs stopped tomorrow, I think I’d still come to the Beach for three months of the year and to play beach volleyball.

BF: What drew you to the Beach neighbourhood?

TC: When I was first here in 2007 when the show started, one of the girls at the office drove me all around Toronto showing me neighbourhoods. My kids were five and four. This just seemed the perfect neighbourhood to have your kids in, with a swimming pool at the end of the beach. I mean, well, I would have been stupid not to have picked the Beach, really.
When I got the job, I thought the character was called Bracken Reid, I thought his first name was Bracken and I thought that’s a great name Bracken Reid.

BF: Brackenreid is gruff and old-fashioned, but he’s softening the last few years.

TC: I think you have to evolve, don’t you? The first five seasons we were on a different channel. I think CBC softened it up for modern sensibilities. If you watch the first five seasons, it’s never been really edgy, but it was slightly edgy. There’s a running gag that if I put the black glove on, somebody’s getting beat up. I’ve learned a lot about Toronto history. Murdoch couldn’t go higher because he was a Catholic. Toronto didn’t have a first Catholic police chief until 1989. That’s what I quite like about the series, he’s a genius, but he can’t be the boss because he’s a Catholic. Toronto was a very Protestant-run town.

BF: You’re not really that tough guy, how do you get in character?

TC: I’ve not had a fight since I was 19. I don’t know, once you put the outfit on, the uniform and you’ve got the hair cut differently. I always think you should wear the right shoes because it makes you walk differently. Whenever I wear the outfit, you walk upright, you don’t slouch. So once you’ve got the outfit on then the words speak for themselves and I change the words anyway. I’ve grown up with a lot of people who’ve got that angst and anger that Brackenreid has. I’ve seen it, I’ve been around it in life.

BF: Paul Sun-Hyung Lee is joining the cast, can you tell us about his role?

TC: He’s the new chief of Station House 4. I’ve been promoted so I’m a chief constable and he’s got my old job. I’m everybody’s boss.

BF: You played a railwayman in The Navigators.

TC: It was all set in 1995 when the British Rail got privatized. All the guys who were working for British Rail lost their jobs and had to reapply. Safety practices were not the same once they privatized. It’s all about the lads getting shafted at work. The film got released a month after 9/11, bad timing. There were six of us in the cast. And we got split up, three of us went to Venice Film Festival and the other three came to Toronto Film Festival. The three boys who came here got stuck here for a week because of 9/11. I had never even thought of coming to Toronto. I didn’t even know what part of Canada it was in, really. I ended up working in Toronto all these years later, that’s quite funny.

Our meal arrived and talk turned to food.

TC: I don’t do coffee shops. I do pubs. The Firkin ‘cause they show football, the Premier League. I like Sauvignon Bistro.

TC: On Murdoch we never thought we’d get this far anyway. They’ve established that we went up a year every year. So now we’re in 1912. We’re not really going to touch on the Titanic. I’ve learned loads of Toronto history from doing this job. I fought the Great Toronto Fire in 1904. I’ve got a picture of Yannick and I fighting the fire.

BF: You should have an episode here at the Balmy Beach Club.

TC: I mentioned that idea for the year 1905, which is seven years ago on Murdoch. I pitched that the club where I play volleyball was opened in 1905, but this here is too modern.

We looked around. Children were screaming and having a good time by the lake.

TC: It’s good to see them out playing.

BF: Are your kids interested in showbiz?

TC: No, thank God! It’s a tough business. It’s great when you’re working, but there’s lots of downside, lot of unemployment. You don’t have any control over your life.

Fun fact: In Victorian-era Toronto the actual boss at Police Station #4 was Inspector Thomas Brackenreid (1847-1919) and his daughter attended dances at the Balmy Beach Club

Kids squealed with laughter below us as we watched them run on the sand just the way children may have laughed and played way back in 1905 at the dawn of a new century.

Thank you, Thomas Craig.