Allan Hawco
“Not many of us get national recognition in this business in
Canada,” shares the 40-year-old via telephone from his home in Newfoundland’s
provincial capital. “If you are lucky enough to have achieved that, well, I
have a great level of appreciation for it. Your currency as a performer is in
the people who want to watch you, and Doyle fans were very loyal.”
The hit series ended in 2014 after six seasons when its
writers “reached our creative conclusion” and has since vaulted into the
Netflix realm.
That hasn’t slowed the native Newfoundlander down, however;
Hawco has just finished production of Caught,
a four-episode CBC television series set to air in 2018. Based on a novel by
Newfoundland writer Lisa Moore, it is an action-packed drama about a drug
smuggler who breaks out of jail and goes in pursuit of his former partner.
“Caught was
wonderful, flawless in production. When I read it, I loved the plot and
characters, so I called Lisa immediately and told her we wanted to make it into
a series.”
He expects the series will be destined for more than four
episodes, and is also hoping for a third season of Frontier, a fiction-based Netflix-Discovery Channel historical series
based on the once lucrative Canadian fur trade.
“Long before oil we had furs, so the show is about warring
factions fighting for control of a valuable commodity.”
Along with five other partners, Hawco owns and operates Take
the Shot Productions, a St. John’s company hell-bent on creating its own opportunities.
Because he plays lead roles in Republic
of Doyle, Frontier and Caught, he tends to get the attention he
believes should be focused on the company.
“It is misleading to think it just me because I’ve got amazing
partners, all with great skills and working hard here in Newfoundland.”
Hawco was born on Bell Island, off the Avalon Peninsula in
Conception Bay, on the province’s east coast. His mother was an elementary
school teacher, while his father worked on the ferry that connects the islet to
the Newfoundland mainland. He initially studied business at Memorial University
in St. John’s, but was eventually drawn to stage production.
“I went to university because my mother made me,” he laughs. “I
really wasn’t that interested in business, but I certainly see the irony of
that now, considering how much of my time is tied up with business.”
When he announced to his parents that he would rather study
theatre, the brilliance of his plan was not immediately clear, particularly to
his mother.
“I auditioned for the National Theatre School of Canada and
was one of about 12 students accepted, so that conferred a degree of legitimacy
to what I wanted to do.”
He recalls a particular theatre school instructor telling him
that his best chances for success would come by taking career matters into his
own hands.
“He was right. I like to scout possibilities and I like to be
in charge. I wanted to pick my own roles and without the star power to do that,
my partners and I started our own production company.”
Although CBC offered him the part of renowned hockey
commentator Don Cherry in a biographical series, Hawco brazenly countered with a
proposal for Republic of Doyle - an
idea he had been toying with since he was 19.
“CBC took a huge risk on us, and we may have given them a few
reasons for panic in the early days. Film and TV is about the right fit, and it
took us some time to find it because we had never made a series before.”
He is pleased that Republic
of Doyle - and subsequent productions - has helped to put the province, and
many of its talented actors and crew, on a bigger national stage.
“I think it took a long time for Canada to get to know
Newfoundland, and for us to get to know Canadians. Until the 1970s, unless you
were in fish or other commerce, there wasn’t much reason to come to
Newfoundland. That’s all changed now.
“With Republic of Doyle,
we felt we had a moral contract to produce a show that was authentic to our
place. To have succeeded was sheer magic.”
