On November 22, 2014 the red carpet will be rolled out at the Vancouver Playhouse in Vancouver for the UBCP/ACTRA Awards. Hosted by the immensely talented Tom Cavanagh the gala event will honor five UBCP/ACTRA Members for work done in the past year.

The nominees are:

BEST ACTRESS

Sara Canning: Remedy – Scary Bears
Luisa d’Oliveira: Cracked – Episode 7 Season 2
Pascale Hutton: Arctic Air – On The Edge
Crystal Lowe: Signed, Sealed, Delivered – The Future Me
Colleen Rennison: Down River
April Telek: Leap 4 Your Life
April Telek: Christmas Bounty

BEST NEWCOMER

Iain Belcher: Almost Human – Perception
Joel Berg: Signed, Sealed, Delivered – To Whom It May Concern
Taylor Hill: Leap 4 Your Life
Laine MacNeil: The Killing – Eminent Domain
Christina Sicoli: Afterparty
Cate Sproule: The Killing – The Jungle
Connor Stanhope: When Calls the Heart – Second Chances

For all categories, click here.

Interview: Eric Mabius Talks ‘Signed, Sealed, Delivered’
Reel Life with Jane: Posted by: K.L. Connie Wang
May 17, 2014

Eric Mabius is probably best known to audiences as fashion magazine editor Daniel Meade on “Ugly Betty” and as Tim Haspel on “The L Word.” He currently stars as a postal detective with old-school charm and values on Hallmark Channel’s “Signed, Sealed, Delivered” (Sundays, 8/7c). I had a chance to chat with him recently about his career and his new role.

What draws you to a project, and what drew you to “Signed, Sealed, Delivered”?

Martha [Williamson] had been writing this, developing it with Hallmark for some time, and because of the films I’d done for them, I guess they sort of had me in mind and … waited until everything sort of coalesced. They sent me the script as I was leaving – I was shooting a film in China – so I read it on the plane over to Shanghai. By the time I landed, I wanted them to set up a conference call. I wanted to speak with Martha because I thought that TV really needed a show like this. Martha had created such a memorable show in “Touched by Angel” and had left the business to raise two girls of her own and came back. I really felt she brought her breadth of experience to this new show, that it was an evolution, certainly for Hallmark and her writing.

I think there’s something about intention and will and moral compass that appeal to me in Oliver. I felt that television really needs that now, and I always make this reference, but it’s still so true, that I was raised on – Martha and I talk generally about our favorite shows and how the archetypes don’t exist anymore, really much anymore. There are some exceptions — a show like “MASH” – I always will remember as long as I live because I felt like part of me was raised by that show and the characters they grew and topics they addressed … when no one was allowed to talk about our involvement in the Vietnam war, they said it in the Korean War and yet it was social commentary at the time. The show’s creators had enough guts to take on some of those things that were uncomfortable and no one wanted to talk about.

Certainly, Martha does it in a more gentle way, but there are things each episode addresses – you feel at the end of the experience that you learned something without being preached to. That’s the important thing about entertainment – it’s there to enrich and uplift and not to be mired down…

What passes for television nowadays is something that stirs up dark emotion without really much intention. I don’t think there’s an excuse to be doing that. I think television can be a great tool. I think putting something good into the world is a lost art. It’s much easier to shock than to care for and follow through and to teach. Maybe I feel much more strongly about that because I have kids of my own, but maybe that just sort of happens when you’re not 20 anymore. I think Martha’s onto something.

What do you think of the celebs that live in the middle of the paparazzi, that choose to do so with their kids in tow?

To each his or her own. It’s what is convenient for them or how they’ve chosen to structure their lives. I have no business judging other people’s choices. I know what works for me, and I know what makes me happy and the family happy.

That’s the other thing, having kids – our parents aren’t getting any younger and we don’t want to deprive them of the company of their grandchildren. It’s just worked out in such a wonderful way. My boys are going to school and there’s still one of the same teachers my wife had when she was in elementary school! It’s so great, it’s really great.

I can guess why some people do that … this business is very tough because it will expose your weaknesses in two seconds. That’s why most actors appear like they’re crazy. Everyone’s a little off base in their own ways, but if you’re under a microscope, then it’s multiplied a thousand-fold. Bad behavior gets worse and good behavior gets eroded over the course of a career when you have successes and failures that are so public. I seriously try to stay away from that.

Do you still live here in Los Angeles or on the east coast?

I have been in Vancouver for the last four and a half months shooting the show. We moved back home – my wife and I – we tried to raise kids in southern California, and it just didn’t suit us. We thought, what we would we want to give as a gift to our kids, and that was the environment we were raised in — Amherst, in western Massachusetts. It’s the rare mix of rural and progressive. It’s a very special place in the world. There’s no place like it. It’s a lot of writers and professors and people who own small, organic farms and people who are trying to live considerate lives and again, people who are connected to things that are most important.

We had a such a great learning environment. [Mabius and his wife met in high school, but didn’t date until years later.] The high school in Amherst – the Amherst public school system is one of the best — it really is – and we wanted our kids to have that.

No matter how good of a parent you are, you can’t raise your children going to school with other kids living in $20 million dollar homes. You just can’t have your head screwed on straight. It’s just impossible. We didn’t have any family out there. We moved last year, and it’s one of the smartest things we’ve done. The boys are so much happier, I think, and we’re happy and connected to the outdoors in a way that’s a little hard to do in a more populated area. We dig in the dirt almost every day, and we live on a horse farm. The boys take horseback riding lessons. Grandpa lives two miles down the road in the house my wife grew up in. It’s kind of an ideal, perfect, environment to raise children.

You said you were on your way to China to film a movie [“Amazing”] when you first read the script for “Signed, Sealed, Delivered.” What was your experience like filming in China?

My dear friend is a director. His name is Sherwood Hu, and he’s just such a brilliant director. He studied under Joseph Papp in New York. He’s a great theater, opera, film and television director. We had always tried to find something to work on together, and the timing worked out for this. It was a great experience, and it was unlike anything I had ever done. I’ve worked in South Africa and Europe and all over North America, and this was a totally unique experience.

I’d like to go back [to China] and not view it through my “work” eyes. I’d like to just go and be a tourist. Especially, the western part of the country. I tend to not like cities more and more as I get older.

On “Signed, Sealed, Delivered,” your character, Oliver, is reluctant to embrace technology. As an actor, what is your take on the instantaneous reaction from fans when you’re live tweeting the show on Twitter [@Eric_Mabius]?

I set up my account for the pilot. I had never really tweeted before, so I’ve only had it since early winter and the response … I think I really like, it’s like having a question and answer period, which is something that people would love to do when you go to watch a film – you want to sit with the actors sometimes afterward. So it’s sort of like being at a festival all the time. It’s like Sundance – that’s the big selling point – to sit and talk to the filmmakers and actors afterwards.

I think it’s a wonderful aspect of the Internet – that as a tool – that’s usually something that I answer when people say, “What about the post office being a dying organization?” I say, “I don’t think it’s an Internet OR mail service. I find that having Internet is a tool to enrich one’s life and should be treated that way. I enjoy, for instance, being able to point and click, rather than going to a store and dealing with a frustrating salesperson who doesn’t enjoy their job. You find something, you click and it comes to you. I think that’s very useful.

Similarly, certainly for television, being able to have a more complete and immersive experience as an audience member, I think Twitter is a really indispensable tool, especially when the actors are made available to tweet. I think it’s a great thing, although I’m completely torn because a lot of times it’s the first time I’m seeing the shows and I miss them because I’m tweeting. And I want to interact with people, so sometimes I just have to hit pause and keep on tweeting. I just think it’s a great way to fill out an audience’s experience. It’s one aspect of the immediacy of the Internet that benefits everyone, because the people putting the product out there can see in real time how the audience responds, and the people watching can have access to the people who are making it, as well.

Are we going to ever meet Oliver’s wife who fled to Paris?

Yes you are.

Where do you see the relationship with Shane and Oliver — or #ShOliver — going?

Well, there’s a constant sort of deepening that occurs and their bond gets stronger with every episode. That’s the thing that people always go to because it’s easy – when are they going to kiss? Audiences think that’s what they want, but in the end, what you end up with is something much stronger than that – the bond that’s being formed by achieving successes, going through challenges and trials together.

What’s going on here, when people are waiting for them to kiss, is actually a wonderful deepening of the relationship. They go through these challenges and the relationship becomes stronger and they become closer. Not only are the characters more invested in one another, the audience becomes more invested in the characters and the relationship.

That’s what I love about Martha’s writing. She’ll always try to fold in real life facts or events into every episode. They find their way, in small ways, and sometimes in every scene a story she’s been told or something that’s happened to her or us. Or she’ll have a question, she’ll come to us.

In the first episode with Valerie [Harper], she tells me about my grandfather whom I never really knew. You learn a lot about Oliver in those scenes.

Like my grandfather, who worked for the post office for 25 to 30 years. He was working at the post office Christmas Eve day, and he didn’t come home and they got worried. A farmer had shipped a big egg shipment through the mail and they started to hatch, so he stayed with them and that story is in the episode. That actually happened to my grandfather.

Are we going to learn more about Oliver’s background – why he dresses so dapper, how he is able to afford a Jag on a government salary?

Absolutely. We establish in the pilot that he’s been with the post office so long he could have any job he wants, virtually. He’s a very high pay grade level. If you actually look that Jaguar up, you’ll find how inexpensive it really is.

So I don’t want to burst anyone’s bubble, BUT he’s been there for well over 20 years, and although it’s a cool looking car, it’s not a terribly expensive car. He’s frugal. He enjoys things that are practical and well made, and that is sort of consistent with Oliver’s edict.

Will we get to hear you sing in the church choir?

I hope not! I don’t think you’ll want to hear me sing. I’ve had the question three times, and I realize they’re hoping one of the answers to be a “yes,” that I can sing and it’s not going to happen. I’m a wicked shower singer, but when we go out for karaoke, I sit and watch.

Reel Life with Jane – May 10, 2014
Posted by: K.L. Connie Wang

I recently had the opportunity to talk to Della Reese, who is guest starring as visiting supervisor Cora Brandt, on “Signed, Sealed, Delivered” (Sundays, 8/7c, Hallmark Channel).

From singing in her family’s bathroom to singing backup for Mahalia Jackson at the tender age of 13, Reese, who has a storied history as a jazz and gospel singer, is probably best known to television audiences as Tess from “Touched by an Angel.”

Hi Della, how are you?

I’m marvelous and so are you!

In what way does the gospel influence your work?

Everything. My mother was a personal friend of God’s. I lived on her faith. I was trained on her faith. For example, I was born in 1931, in the middle of a Depression. Two years later I had rheumatic fever and they told my mother I was going to die and then all the other things that happened in childhood – I was not a well child. My mother just stood on her faith and trusted in God and kept saying, “My baby’s going to live.” I’m now 82, so what she was doing must have been right.

You were just a child when you began to sing backup for Mahalia Jackson – what was that experience like?

Before that – I told you about my mother – before that, I could hear my mother in my ear saying, “Don’t you want to go outside and play some, baby?” [Be]cause I found out I could sing – I didn’t have any lessons or anything. Just one time I opened my mouth and I could sing and I loved the feeling of it. I wanted to sing boisterous. I didn’t know any lyrics so I kept getting my mother in trouble.

For example, the man who was the landlord of the apartment building we lived in was Mr. Jones. Mr. Jones drank, and I would get in my singing mood and I would sing, [she sings] “Oh, Mr. Jones is drinking in the basement. Mr. Jones is drinking in the basement. He loves it when he drinks in the basement. Ooooh, ooooh! Ooooh, Ooooh!” He made my mother put a wooden cover on the bathroom because there was an opening, or an extension, that went up … I had to stop singing about Mr. Jones, but I sang about Miss Louise, she was the next door neighbor. They wanted to put us out because … my mom had to sit me down and say, “If you want to sing I’m going to take you to the church. You can sing in the church but you can’t sing in the bathroom. I loved singing in the bathroom because it made it big, you know?

You asked me about Miss Mahalia and I don’t want to go over that – she was very important in my life. She taught me how to communicate with people – to sing so that people would appreciate it and get a feeling from it because I was a lyric soprano at the time, and I found out early that if you hit a high enough note somebody’s going to go, “Oooh!”

I would see her … well she would sit in a chair and just moan. Do you know the word “moan”? Then she would begin to rock. The lady would play the piano and she would begin to rock and she would begin to moan a tune and the people, it was like, one person over here would get to moaning too. And another person over there would get to moaning too. Eventually, the audience would be her instrument. Am I making sense to you?

Yes, like she was conducting the audience?

Absolutely. Never said a word. Just the feeling she was having from singing what she was singing. She made me understand that my high note was just a high note. What I really needed was to be able to communicate with the people so that they could feel what I was feeling. She kept saying to me, all the time, “You don’t feel it. Nobody’s going to feel it. If it doesn’t come from your heart, it ain’t going to touch nobody’s heart.”

Do you consider your work on television as an extension of your ministry?

No, the work that I do on television is the extension of whoever wrote that, whoever had that feeling. My job is to depict that feeling so that what they wrote and what comes to you has the feeling they desired it to have.

You just joined Twitter (@iamdellareese) – congratulations – how has your experience been so far?

Well, it’s my first. I’m an old-fashioned person. By the time I learn to use the machines, they’d have made a new one.

What do you think of television today? There seems to be a lot of violence and adult themes in “prime time TV.” How do you think shows like “Signed, Sealed Delivered” are filling the void left by shows like “Touched by an Angel”?

I think that people choose what they want to see, and “Touched by an Angel” was not violent, not any of that. People still say to me today, that something that they saw helped their families, that helped them, that some of the shows we did were the exact problems they had and their problems were solved and they got another way to look at it from looking at “Touched by an Angel.” I think there will always be a space like that. The young people seem to like a lot of different stuff. When I was young, I liked a lot of different stuff too.

You’ve accomplished so much – successful recording artist, actress, you’re a minister … Anything you still want to do that you haven’t done yet?

No, because everything that I have asked God for that was for my highest good, He made arrangements for me to have it. Sometimes I have to go through stuff to get to my stuff, but I find that’s a learning process – you go through obstacles and when you get to the other side, you’re stronger than you were when you started through the obstacle. I find that to be in my life and so I’m comfortable in living – if that makes sense to you.

I asked Ms. Reese a few random questions at the end of our interview, and these were her replies.

Your favorite music, artist or song?

Well, I like a piece of this and a piece of that. At this moment right here … Let me kind of explain this to you. I’m a lyricist and the trend of the music nowadays is rhythms and moving sounds. I like to tell a story. There are not many people around now telling stories because they don’t sell records. They have the drums and the 19 people singing … which is wonderful, but I want to hear some more … Duke Ellington. I want to hear more … oneness with orchestra and not just everybody doing what they want to do. I want to hear some cuddly songs, some sentimental songs, some sweet songs, some loving songs.

Book or author you recommend I read?

Well, I’ve written five books and I think they’re doing pretty good. They’re about the UP Church – that’s the name of my church. It’s about having relationships with God – wonderful relationships to wake up in the morning and greet Him like you wake up in the morning and greet your son or your daughter or your husband, of sharing love, of knowing it’s a pleasure, it’s a good thing. It’s not – I was raised that God was going to get you – you know, which I never understood because if God is as powerful as He was, what did he have to worry about getting me? I survived anyway.

Coffee or tea?

Both! I like green tea with honey in it. Every once in awhile I NEED a cup a coffee, you know what I mean? I don’t have to get up every morning and get a cup, but sometimes I just gotta have a cup of coffee.

First celebrity crush?

Well, I don’t know that I have … Oh well, the man that I prayed to God [chuckles to herself] to give me [chuckles again] – and I was serious when I was saying this prayer too – was Nat King Cole. I told God – this is true – that I knew he had a wife and children, [but] that I would work and take care of the wife and children if He would give me Nat King Cole.

Thank you and God bless.

God keep you in joy.

Carol Burnett will guest star on the Season One finale of Hallmark’s new original primetime series, Signed, Sealed, Delivered. The new series from Executive Producer Martha Williamson (Touched By An Angel) premieres on April 20 (8pmET/PT) and stars stars Eric Mabius (Ugly Betty), Kristin Booth (The Kennedys), Crystal Lowe (Smallville) and Geoff Gustafson (Primeval: New World) as a quartet of Postal Detectives who track down the rightful owners of undeliverable mail. These redirected letters and packages can save lives, solve crimes, reunite old loves and change futures by arriving late but somehow on time.

Season One will include 10 one-hour episodes, with Burnett joining the series’ other special guest stars appearing throughout the season, including Valerie Harper, Della Reese, Valerie Bertinelli and Marilu Henner. In “Signed, Sealed, Delivered,” Ms. Burnett will guest star as the grandmother of irrepressible (and adorkable) #POstable “Norman Dorman (Gustafson),” a core member of the quartet of unusual mail detectives. The season finale, guest-starring Burnett, is scheduled to air June 22.

“Carol is an American legend who has used words to bring joy and laughter, to encourage, inspire and heal us through nearly six decades of life,” said Series Creator and Executive Producer Martha Williamson. “It’s my privilege to welcome my hero and mentor to the show,” she added.

Carol Burnett is one of the most beloved, talented and prolific comedians in history. Her career-defining work on CBS’s popular comedic variety hour, The Carol Burnett Show, made her a television sensation, as well as earned her the distinction of being one of America’s most admired women in entertainment. The Carol Burnett Show ran for 11 years and received 25 Emmy® Awards, making Burnett herself a multiple Emmy® and Golden Globe® award-winner. In addition to her accolades for her television genius, Burnett has received the Kennedy Center Mark Twain Prize for Humor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, was inducted into the Television Hall of Fame, and has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Burnett has also written three New York Times bestselling books, including her most recent one “Carrie and Me: A Mother-Daughter Love Story”, for which Burnett received her second Grammy® nomination for Best Spoken Word.

Burnett originating the role of Winifred in Once Upon A Mattress on Broadway and is well known for her starring role as “Miss Hannigan” in the film production of the musical Annie.

Courtesy Taylor Hargis
Joshua Hargis, who was seriously wounded, salutes as he is awarded the Purple Heart.

By Jeff Black, Staff Writer, NBC News

A salute by an Army Ranger — hospitalized with serious wounds after a suicide bomb attack in Afghanistan — is warming the hearts of many people after being posted online.

Cpl. Josh Hargis’ commander was at a military hospital awarding the seemingly unconscious soldier a Purple Heart for his injuries, pinning the medal to the blanket covering him.

And that’s when Hargis surprisingly raised his arm to salute — struggling with his doctors and medical tubes to do so.

The commander sent a picture along with a letter about the incident to Hargis’ wife, Taylor, writing that “grown men began to weep” at the sight of the salute.

The commander added that it was “the single greatest event I have witnessed in my ten years in the Army.”

Hargis was wounded Oct. 6 when an Afghan woman detonated a suicide bomb vest, killing four members of his 3rd Army Ranger Battalion and wounding 12 other American soldiers, according to a report on the website of the soldier’s hometown newspaper in Ohio, the Cincinnati Enquirer.

Taylor Hargis posted the picture along with the note on Facebook Oct. 12, where it has been shared more than 4,000 times. The story and picture were also distributed on the Guardian of Valor website, which called the picture the “the salute seen around the world.”

The letter from the commander, according to Taylor Hargis’ Facebook post, read in part:

“Josh, whom everybody in the room (over 50 people) assumed to be unconscious, began to move his right arm under the blanket in a diligent effort to salute the Commander as is customary during these ceremonies. Despite his wounds, wrappings, tubes, and pain, Josh fought the doctor who was trying to restrain his right arm and rendered the most beautiful salute any person in that room had ever seen. I cannot impart on you the level of emotion that poured through the intensive care unit that day.

It was assumed that Army Ranger Josh Hargis was unconscious during his Purple Heart ceremony in the hospital, but then he raised his arm in salute. NBC’s Brian Williams reports.

“Grown men began to weep and we were speechless at a gesture that speak volumes about Josh’s courage and character. The picture, which we believe belongs on every news channel and every newspaper, is attached. I have it hanging above my desk now and will remember it as the single greatest event I have witnessed in my ten years in the Army.”

Hargis, 24, is a 2007 graduate of of Dater High School on the city’s west side and attended the University of Cincinnati, NBC affiliate WLWT in Cincinnati reported. He has since been moved from Afghanistan to Germany and onto San Antonio, Texas, the station said.

A reporter for another local station, WCPO, spoke to Hargis’ mother Laura Heitman, who said that Taylor and Josh Hargis are expecting their first child. Heitman also said she had recently talked to her son.

Her son, she said, “sounded amazing when I talked to him. He was in good spirits.”

Terri Wessel, who said she had taught Hargis in high school, told WCPO that the picture brought tears to her eyes.

“Seeing the picture of him saluting was the first I knew of him being injured,” Wessel told the station.”I teared up when I saw the picture but smiled at the same time as that picture summed up the type of man that Josh is. True American hero in my mind.”

NBC’s Elizabeth Chuck contributed to this report.

This story was originally published on Tue Oct 15, 2013 11:25 PM EDT

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