"Megan Follows Makes Her Mark ... Again"
Ted Shaw

'Anne of Green Gables' star loves playing different characters.

Megan Follows is being haunted by the ghost of Lucy Maud Montgomery.

Or so it would seem for the 38-year-old actress whose turn as Montgomery's "Anne of Green Gables" in the mid-1980s launched her television and film career.

In "Booky Makes Her Mark," airing at 8 p.m. Sunday on CBC (channel 9, cable 10), Follows again has a close encounter with L.M. Montgomery, this time as a fictional character in the adaptation of Bernice Thurman Hunter's story of a Depression-era teen who aspires to be a writer.

"It's pretty funny how Montgomery pops up in that one," said Follows, who plays Booky's mother, Francy Thomson.

Lally Cadeau portrays Montgomery, who offers professional advice to Booky. The scene was actually based on a real-life experience of the author, Hunter.

Follows isn't in the scene, but the mere presence of Montgomery in the script took her back.

"Obviously, that role of Anne Shirley had a huge impact and was enormously successful," said Follows, who has gone on to perform dozens of other roles on TV, in film and on stage.

But "Anne of Green Gables" still looms large in her life.

"It was groundbreaking in terms of the impact it had at the time. It's a very special legacy, there's no doubt about that."

Follows returns to CBC in yet another heartwarming, nostalgia piece, this time based on three adolescent novels written by Hunter in the 1980s. Follows retains all that famous Anne Shirley spunk, too. Her character of Francy is the glue that holds together a destitute west Toronto family that finds itself being evicted from one run-down home after another.

Even though she'll deny "Anne of Green Gables" has typecast her, Follows has so far tried to steer clear of similar costume dramas and period pieces.

Her last TV role was as Canadian country singer Shania Twain in "Shania: A Life in Eight Albums," also produced for CBC by Phyllis Platt.

"I love playing different characters," said Follows. "I love immersing myself in another world."

The presence of Montgomery isn't all that makes "Booky Makes Her Mark" feel like a homecoming to Follows.

The script was adapted by Joe Wiesenfeld, who wrote the Anne series, and it was directed by Peter Moss, who directed Follows in her first stage appearance, a 1988 Young People's Theatre staging of "The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds."

"There are plenty of ironies in it," said Follows.

Earlier in his own stage career, Moss turned the Booky stories into a musical for Toronto's Young People's Theatre and won a Dora Mavor Moore Award in 1987. Now with the TV film under his belt, he thinks it is ripe to be turned into a series.

"It has all the potential of an 'Anne of Green Gables' and people crave these stories of the Depression. Really, it's just a couple of generations removed from ours. I can see 'Booky' as a contemporary version of 'Road to Avonlea.'"

"Booky Makes Her Mark" has the look of a theatrical film, thanks largely to Norayr Kasper's stunning cinematography. In fact, a theatrical version closed the Toronto International Film Festival's Sprockets Festival recently.

The film boasts cameos by three Canadian theatre legends -- Cadeau, Roberta Maxwell and Barry MacGregor -- along with wonderful performances by a large, youthful cast. Booky is played by newcomer and Saskatchewan native Tatiana Maslany, who even bears a striking similarity to Follows in her younger days, a definite casting coup.

Follows' real-life partner, Stuart Hughes, also plays her fictional husband, Thomas, in "Booky."

Performing with her partner was nothing new to Follows, who grew up in a show business environment. Both her parents, Dawn Greenhalgh and Ted Follows, are actors.

"I was actually just having a laugh with my mom about that," said Follows. "They did things like 'Alpha Beta' and 'Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?' and I kidded her that the quietest times at home for us kids was then because they got all their frustrations with each other out onstage."

Follows came to "Booky" from an intense few months on stage with her husband in Sam Shepard's "Fool For Love" for Toronto's Soulpepper Theatre Company.

"We played an incestuous brother and sister and came through that OK," she said laughing.

"It was a real treat for both me and Stuart. Most of his work has been in theatre, so he was very helpful to me in that world.

"Then when we came to do 'Booky's Mark,' I was able to provide him with a little sense of what it's like to act in front of a camera."

She has been able to stay close to her family, too. "There's so much time in our business which we have to spend away from families, I feel fortunate to have worked this time with my partner. To have an opportunity to do what you love with the people you love is a real bonus."

Source: The Windsor Star