Sunday night, the penultimate episode of The Way Home follows the Landry women across three timelines, including New Year’s Eve 1926, with Elliot and Kat along for a Haily Mary plan from Tessa (Megan Follows). In case you missed it, we chatted with Follows last week about bringing Tessa to life for the final season. In part two of our chat, I talk to Follows about her directing career, which began in television when she was a series regular on Reign, but was sparked much earlier in the theater.
“I’m so grateful that the showrunner backed me on Reign. I love sets, I love props, I love spaces, and I love that moments can be told in through an image and not always through a whole lot of something else. I’ve always been a real visual person. I’ve always loved photography. I tend to really think visually,” she explains.
“I wanted more agency and creativity than being an actor and often being at the mercy and whims of other people’s opinions. And that can still happen as a director, but there’s a creative element. I’ve always thought very broad, seeing the whole score of a piece. I always say that directing is a bit like being a conductor. You have an oversight and recognize everybody’s note in a piece.”
“I grew up in a theater family. My first directing was actually in the theater. And what I loved about that was it also forced, literally the proscenium, the perception of looking at every element happening. And so your eye, taking in the whole picture, and then unlike the beauty of cinema where we have cuts to create those feelings, in the theater, you have to do that through movement, focus, light it, all of that happening there.”
While she’s a frequent director, she still craves performing. “I love it, but I also love acting. I’m sort of demanding for myself that I still get to be on a screen because it is my first love. It’s my first marriage and my second marriage is directing. So, I’m really in throuple—myself, the director, and the actor. And we’re getting along famously. We’re making it work,” she laughs.
Follows is most recognizable around the world for her turn as the titular Anne of Green Gables, which began in 1985 and continued across multiple films. Now, she’s embarking on new adventures for that fandom. “I’m directing a documentary, so I’m going into the field doing that, and I’m developing a mini-series. We’re still in the development stages on the life of the author of Anne of Green Gables, Lucy Maude Montgomery, so I’d be wearing multiple hats and not directing and performing,” she shares.
“I love, and I’m always deeply proud of, my connection with Anne and Anne of Green Gables and my documentary is an exploration on the fandom around that. It’s called Fan of Green Gables. The connections generationally with that novel and now really the reinterpretation of it, are really interesting and exciting and inclusive.”
“Anne crosses the aisle. What’s really beautiful and important in one of my explorations is that people who often do not see themselves in other people see themselves in this character. So, I think that’s really important. I have a very huge international young, fan base from Brazil to Japan to Korea to Poland to the United States.”
Beyond Anne, Follows has built her own generational fanbase, too. “I have found people, sometimes when they hear my voice first, they know my voice. Reign was a nice way for me to get connected with a newer, younger audience. Wynonna Earp introduced me to a whole world and fan base that was really deeply interactive and supportive. I’m a bit of a chameleon. I’m kind of always morphing. That’s what we like as actors.
Follows goes back and forth between directing episodic series like When Hope Calls, Murdoch Mysteries, and Heartland, and films. “The difference oftentimes [with series work] is when you’re coming into the structure of something else … visiting other people’s worlds, depending on the budget, you can have a lot of support. You are a guest. I was very lucky with Reign because I was also an integral player and had an understanding of that world. I loved that part of it, too.”
“When you are your own boss [on a film], you get to make choices and explore and experiment. You have more of that freedom, obviously. And indie films often allow that, or at least in that collaborative process, you have more agency and you have more of a voice, but you also have a whole lot less money.”
Stealing the Sky, now streaming on Tubi, is a love letter to the city of Toronto, which has seen a significant part of its architectural history disappear in recent years. The film, written by Marie Dame, who also stars, follows a microcosm of residents and visitors in an apartment building slated for demolition. Follows directs and co-stars and says it was a deeply personal project for all involved.
“That was done with a lot of blood, sweat, and tears, and good graces and people who were really supportive, [including] that incredible cast and the writer, Marie. It was a script that I always really loved. And Marie, myself and the late Penny Noble, who was Marie’s agent, decided to make this film because that building was coming down and there was no waiting now.”
“We tried to develop it through all the channels, and you can get developed to death, so we decided, ‘Let’s just do it.’ I had an outrageous character, which was fun, and my mother is in that film [playing] Tom’s mother. [Toronto] is a city I grew up in, and it’s changing, and in some ways, it’s changing beautifully as people come in and bring in fresh, new ideas and fresh energy and blood. But it is just being torn down, too.”
The Way Home airs linearly at 9 pm/8c Sundays on Hallmark Channel and streams the next day on Hallmark+, where you can catch every episode so far. In Canada, you can watch it live Sundays at 8 pm e/p on W Network and streaming on StackTV.
Here are a couple of sneak peeks of “Auld Lang Syne.”
Photos courtesy of Michael Tompkins for Hallmark Media and and video courtesy of Hallmark Media.
