Miles Morrisseau
ICT
When Eva Thomas first got to Hollywood, her agent had a specific question for her.
“Can you ride a horse?”
Thomas, Ojibway of the Walpole Island First Nation, was offended. She had studied at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York City, the oldest acting school in the country whose alumni includes Lauren Bacall, Robert Redford and Anne Hathaway. She also studied Shakespeare at the Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Arts in London.
“But he was also right, because everything that I went out for was the leather-and-the-feather gigs. They wanted to put me on a horse,” Thomas told ICT. “I worked every October for the Thanksgiving commercials in November, and it was about that time that I was like, ‘Oh, this is not going to change until someone starts to write something different, and I better start to learn how to write.’”
Thomas called to talk from the road as she scouted locations in and around Toronto prepping for her feature film solo directing debut, “Nika and Madison,” which she describes as an “Indigenous Thelma and Louise.” The film is an expansion of her short film, “Redlights.”
The film features Ellyn Jade, Whitesand First Nation in Ontario, and Star Slade, who is of mixed Cree ancestry, and uses storytelling tropes that are both universal and uniquely Indigenous.
“A little bit of City Mouse, Country Rez Mouse happening,” she said. “One’s really comfortable in the city and not comfortable in the bush, and one’s really comfortable on the land and not so comfortable in an urban environment.”
The film features two female leads, she said.
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“One lives on the Rez and one has gone to the city to go to school,” she said. “They’re old friends, grew up together with family and one of them gets in trouble. The other one sort of gets rid of the trouble and then they both go on the run.”
The film follows up her first feature, “Aberdeen,” which she co-wrote and co-directed with Ryan Cooper, and which is still making the festival circuit. Most recently, “Aberdeen” screened at the Forest City Film Festival in London, Ontario, and on Dec. 4-8 at the Whistler Film Festival in Whistler, British Columbia.In “Aberdeen,” the title character is an Indigenous climate refugee forced to relocate to Winnipeg. Aberdeen is played by Gail Maurice, Métis. Her friend, Albert, is played by Billy Merasty, Cree, and his younger lover Raven is played by Liam Stewart-Kanigan. The trio take on the quest of getting Aberdeen’s grandkids out of the foster care system.
The film is shot on Winnipeg’s Main Street and takes on the historical and contemporary traumas of Indigenous life and the insidious web of bureaucracy that continues to entangle them.
Merasty is dynamite once again, playing fabulous and pathos sometimes in the same scene; he is a Canadian national treasure.
The film is carried by Maurice, with close-up shots of her defiant face expressing all the hard and weary miles of her journey. She is not a likeable character, and the film doesn’t give Aberdeen or the audience the easy way out. There is no Hollywood ending, but the ending is real and hopeful and is journey well worth taking.
‘Seeing the obvious’
Since deciding not to focus on acting, Thomas has taken on all the jobs and nailed them. In addition to writing and directing films, she is an accomplished story editor, producer, executive producer and television director.
At the Canadian Screen Awards in May, she took home the award for Best Direction in a Factual series for her work on “Still Standing,” a show that features stand-up comedian Jonny Harris visiting small town Canada and doing a set about the town and people. Thomas directed episodes for seasons 8 and 9 of the popular CBC series, which is now in its 10th season.
She was also executive story editor for “Shelved,” a series that chronicled hijinks at the Toronto Public Library. It received four nominations at the screen awards, including Best Comedy.
She has written two episodes of “Acting Good,” the top-rated show on CTV Comedy Channel that is also available in Canada on APTN.
And she is executive story editor for the coming-of-age series, “Don’t Even,” currently available on Crave in Canada.
“I’m more of a drama person, but I had an opportunity to work on ‘Shelved,’ which is a CTV comedy, and I worked on ‘Zarqa,’ which is a CBC gem comedy,” she said. ““I think I am just really good in the room and I really listen. I’m taking notes and people say something funny, I’m like, ‘Oh, that’s really funny,’ and I’ll write it down. But what I’ve come to learn about comedy is you just have to really pay attention. Comedy, a lot of time, is you’re paying attention and seeing the obvious.”
Building her credits
She is now directing her first solo feature film and it builds around the universe she launched with “Redlights,” the story of two old friends who go out for a drink and at the end of the night, one gets taken by the police out of town.
The short showed that Thomas could create a realistic and compelling world with Indigenous characters living in daily and then dangerous situations.
The story is based around the infamous “Starlight Tours,” in which police would take Indigenous men and women far out of town and drop them off, sometimes without shoes in cold and freezing conditions.
In the upcoming “Nika and Madison,” Jade returns to the project but not in the role she played in the short film. She also takes on the role of producer in the full-length version. Kaniehtiio Horn, Mohawk, who co-starred in “Redlights,” will be executive producer for the film. Jennifer Podemski, the well known Anishinaabe/Ashkenazi actor/director/producer, is another executive producer, and played a supporting role in “Aberdeen.”
In 1991’s “Thelma and Louise,” the characters are on the run to Mexico and are soon pursued by dozens of police and other authorities. Thomas realized when re-watching the movie that the stakes are raised when the women are Indigenous.
“These two White women couldn’t go to the police,” she said. “What if it was two Indigenous women and they really couldn’t go to the police? And that was sort of the spark of what I wanted to explore, Indigenous Thelma and Louise, and tease out all of these issues … I know a lot of people think the police are a safe place. They’re not often a safe place for us. In fact, when I see police, I get all anxious. I don’t get involved with the police. I don’t have a history; but I still feel afraid of them.”
Going home
Thomas returned home to Canada when she saw that things were beginning to happen in the film industry and that there were more opportunities for Indigenous creatives in film and television.
“A game changer, certainly in the industry, also for my career, is the Indigenous Screen Office, having the Indigenous dedicated funding and Indigenous people running it,” Thomas said. “That was the funding that allowed me to be associate producer on ‘Night Raiders.’ That was the funding that allowed me to be assistant director for ‘Darlene Naponse.’ That was the funding that allowed me to make my short film.”
In addition to the Indigenous Screen Office helping to build a healthy ecosystem for Indigenous creatives, Thomas credits her strong network with other Indigenous filmmakers for building a support system.
“A lot of the work that I’ve been able to get is because I helped that writer or creative along the way, like Amber-Sekowan Daniels, my friend who created [‘Don’t Even’]. I read that idea when it was a feature film script,” Thomas said, about the buzzy new series focused on two teenage Indigenous characters growing up in the city.
When the film script developed into a TV series, Daniels brought Thomas on to the project.
“Even with ‘Seeds,’ which is a film that I executive produced, I helped Kaniehtiio Horn on that script for about two years, and she was like, I want you to produce it,” she said.
In addition to the screen office support, there is recognition at the Canadian Screen Awards as well as a growing number of films by Indigenous filmmakers being screened at the Toronto International Film Festivals.
Thomas believes mainstream Canadian audiences are embracing Indigenous storytelling and it makes her glad she decided to come back home.
“I was in Los Angeles a few years ago, and I was like, there’s something really interesting happening in Canada, and I should go up there and be a part of it,” she said. “And I’m really glad that I did, because it did open up my career. I just also think Canada, kind of like mainstream Canadians, were ready to support Indigenous storytelling and see they’re part of our stories, in a way that they haven’t in the past.”
*Corrections: The article has been updated to correct the spelling of Ellyn Jade’s name and her character in the film, and to clarify details of Eva Thomas’s work in “Still Standing.” Star Slade is of mixed Cree ancestry.
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