After recording two series of Falcon Beach on home turf in Canada, Jennifer Kydd now lives in LA and is busy meeting casting directors about new projects. As ‘Business Barbie’ in Falcon Beach, her biggest TV show to date. Filming on the beach all summer, surrounded by beautiful people must have been tough.
Tell us a little bit about your character.
Paige isn’t a Falcon Beach local and she doesn’t come (to town) of her own free will. She’s dragged by her mother who used to spend her summers there and is trying to go back to her youth. And is kinda everything that Paige isn’t, (pause) initially.
Her arrival sets a few hearts fluttering…
She stirs stuff up. She doesn’t have much tact, and she says what she thinks. She has an instant dislike for everybody who lives in Falcon Beach and represents that kind of lifestyle.
You could accuse Paige of being a bit obsessed with her career. Is that fair?
(laughs) She’s very career driven. Definitely an A-type personality, a perfectionist and she wants to please her father and prove that she can be the best and follow in his footsteps – that’s the goal, you know. So going to Falcon Beach to sit on the beach and tan isn’t what she had in mind.
Can we talk a about filming the show. What it was like?
When my life ends, it’ll probably be one of my favourite experiences, in terms of a work experience. Most of us didn’t live in Winnipeg so we went down for the whole summer and lived in apartment buildings. Living with new people; you never know what you’re gonna get, and we were really, really fortunate because we all got along super well and we all just loved each others company.
On the weekends we’d spend all weekend together. They’re some of my best friends.
Still in touch with any of the cast?
Yeah, yeah! I just got a voicemail from Devon who plays Tanya. She was just like – “what you doing tonight, been trying to call you!” I haven’t got a hold of her yet. And I spoke to Steve (Jason) two days ago. Yeah we’re all kinda spread around.
What are you up to in LA at the moment?
I just got my Visa for the States for the year. In Canada you never have meetings, but here they want you to meet all the casting directors and stuff.
Obviously the show’s being shown in England. Have you ever been to England yourself?
I haven’t. I’ve been to quite a few places in Europe; France, Germany and Holland. Spain. But I’ve never actually been to England. My boyfriend and I are planning on going ‘cos his best friend is going to the London School of Economics, so we wanna take a trip down and visit him.
And just going back to the show briefly. Are there any particular scenes that stand out for you as favourites? Obviously not giving away too much of the plot…
Oh gosh, um (laughs) I don’t know! Obviously anything outside was memorable. Either it was really hot and beautiful and you were trying not to have all your make up knock off or it was freezing and we were trying to fake like it was beautiful.
More than the actual scenes, I would say the days that we were kind of like giddy and giggly and we had a hard time getting through the scenes. In season one it was me and Morgan and Steve and we were outside of a country club trying to convince Lane to go in and get some money from his locker. That day we were so giddy, and we couldn’t stop laughing, we couldn’t get through the scene, we were getting on the golf cars and driving around – and you know just having fun.
Paige is rather beautiful. Do you have any beauty tips?
(Laughs) I don’t know if I would describe myself as such um (pause)… No. I don’t have any sort of beauty tips. Sleep? Which we didn’t get any of when we were filming.
This “extraordinary story” begins with an act of naive voyeurism. Robert Forester, a depressed but fundamentally decent man, liked to watch Jenny through her kitchen window—a harmless palliative, as he saw it, to his lonely life and failed marriage. As he is drawn into her life, however, the recriminations of his simple pleasure shatter the deceptive calm of this small Pennsylvania town.
With striking clarity and horrible inevitability, Forester is caught up in a series of deaths in which he is the innocent bystander, presumed guilty. Highsmith has once again, as Graham Greene wrote, “created a world of her own—a world claustrophobic and irrational which we enter each time with a sense of personal danger.” And that sense of danger grows from the first page to the sinister and chilling conclusion.
Jennifer was born in 1976 in Halifax, Nova Scotia. She attended Acadia University where she majored in the Theatre Program. She is best known for her role as “Paige” on the ABC Family Series Falcon Beach that only lasted 2 seasons, and ended in 2007. She currently lives in Toronto.
