What exactly is it that makes this anthology’s time travel conceit such an effective tool for a character study?
I love drama; I’m super into the Scandi dramas [Scandinavian noir]. What I love about Plan B is that it is one of these dark dramas but Jean-François [Asselin], the showrunner, threw in this sci-fi element of travelling back in time. And I don’t think there’s anyone on the planet who hasn’t thought, “If only I could go back in time a day, a week or a month to fix that one thing, then everything would be different.”
So, it really taps into a natural part of being human. We all hope that changing one thing would solve all of our problems. But Plan B shows very clearly that our lives are a combination of a lot of small decisions, and changing one big one isn’t going to make a difference.
Of all the show’s protagonists so far, it feels like Abigail is dealing with the highest, most harrowing stakes . . .
Definitely . . . We have a word for a child who has lost a parent — they’re an orphan. We have a word for a man who’s lost his wife — he’s a widower. But we don’t have an English word for a parent who has lost a child. It’s almost such an unthinkable thing that we’ve just skipped finding a word for it. Any parent who has suffered such a tragedy, there’s nothing in the world they wouldn’t do to go back and fix whatever it is they thought they could fix. That is the fascination of this third season.
Abigail is a very capable person — a famous activist who’s accustomed to overcoming huge obstacles
I kept thinking Abigail’s like a freight train. She’s powerful, she moves quickly, she moves forward. But the problem is that she destroys things along the way without even taking a second to look back and see what she’s done. And that’s part of her journey — looking back and saying, “Were those bold decisions in my interest? Were they in the interests of my family? What actually matters to me?”
Abigail is a fierce feminist — and I do think she maybe misinterpreted what feminism was. She wanted to show her daughter that she can be anything she wants to be. And what Lucy’s character absorbed is that she has to be everything. She has to be as good as her mother. She has to be as smart, as charismatic, as loved by the public. That pressure, on a 15-year-old, it just makes her fall apart emotionally. The journey that Abigail goes through is finding a comfort in showing vulnerability. Because when she shows Lucy who she really is — her failings — that’s when Lucy can say, “Oh, it’s OK if I’m not perfect either.”
You were also recently in Netflix’s Painkiller. What was it like telling such a raw, timely story?
That was an extremely meaningful project. And everyone who worked on that show — from the sound person to the director — understood the gravity of the show that we were making. Being on set, you heard so many people say, “Someone in my family died from an opioid overdose.” Everyone wanted to make sure the show was very truthful and very nuanced.
Finally, what was it like joining the annals of superhero cinema with X-Men: Apocalypse back in 2016?
So, I played Michael Fassbender’s wife. Michael Fassbender was my favourite actor at the time . . . still might be. It was the most fun I’ve ever had, and he is just an absolute delight to play with. I even snuck in a kiss. Why not? It wasn’t in the script, but let’s go for it! [Laughs].
Plan B, streaming now on CBC Gem, the season will air weekly on CBC TV starting Thursday, September 25
MEMORABLE ROLES:
A dual Polish-Canadian citizen, Carolina Bartczak played supervillain Magneto’s ill-fated wife Magda in X-Men: Apocalypse, before starring in hit Netflix miniseries Painkiller as Lily Kryger, a woman who watches her once-stalwart husband spiral into addiction.
CURRENT GIG:
Bartczak leads season three of this homegrown sci-fi anthology, playing a guilt-stricken mother who goes back in time to stop her daughter’s suicide — only to learn that sins of the past aren’t so easily absolved.