In recent years, Netflix has become a proving ground as a second-run outlet for TV series from other networks like AMC, Hallmark Channel, NBC, and now, Syfy. This morning, the entire first season of last summer’s Canadian TV + genre obsession, Revival, landed on the streamer. The genre drama headlined by Melanie Scrofano and a fantastic ensemble follows the aftermath of a seismic supernatural event that resets the town and the people in it. You can get the 411 on it in our original preview here.
If you missed it last year, now’s your chance to partake. And lucky you that you can inhale the whole thing in one go. Earlier today, I chatted with Heather Taylor, who was a co-producer and staff writer on the series, and who really, really hopes y’all watch it in droves so they can get the band back together for a second season.
Taylor was previously a story editor and staff writer on Disney’s Hard Boys reboot, and earlier this spring, she penned her first Hallmark Channel film, sharing script credit with Rick Garman on A Little Park Music, which is now streaming on Hallmark+ in the US and Crave in Canada and was nominated for a Leo Award for Best TV Movie.
When Revival came Taylor’s way, it was if she had manifested a dream opportunity for herself and considers herself fortunate that Revival was a first TV production for co-showrunners Luke Boyce and Aaron. B. Koontz, and that they were specifically building a Canadian writers room vs. two established showrunners turning to their existing stable of writers to staff a show.
“I had gone to Los Angeles and met up with a friend for coffee, and she asked, ‘What is something that you want right now? Just like the one thing … maybe I can help you. Who knows?’ And I said, ‘I wanna be staffed on a genre show because I love genre.’ She said, ‘Okay. I’ll put that in my mind bank.’ And literally, less than a week later, she forwards me a Tweet, back when it was still Twitter, from Aaron that said, ‘I’m looking for Canadian genre writers for a genre show we’re doing. Please DM or e-mail me two log lines of something you’ve written, and if I’m interested, I’ll ask for samples,’” she recalls.
“So I thought, ‘Awesome.’ I submitted my work. It was such a coincidence because I didn’t see the Tweet, and then my friend, because of what I said to her, she saw it, thought of me, and I don’t think she would’ve thought of me if we hadn’t had that coffee.”
“[Separately], I met with a production company called Blue Ice in Canada, in December the year before, 2023. I was talking to them about ghost stories, and they said, ‘We have a show. We don’t know if it’s going yet. It’s set in Wisconsin. We think you’d be good for it. We’ll see. We can’t say anything more, so we’ll let you know.’ I was like, ‘Cool.’”
“And then my agents submitted me to Revival. So, I got a three-prong approach, apparently, to this. I didn’t realize all the things were the same thing. I got an interview, and what happens is you get an interview, they send you the pilot script. So, I was walking on my treadmill, reading the script, and I got to the ending and it was so good, that I punched my fist in the air. I was so excited. I loved it so much. I was like, ‘I have to write on this.’”
Taylor says Boyce and Koontz were invested and inclusive from the jump, and committed to creating a special environment for their very unique show. “I got on the interview call, and because they were making it in Canada, they were hiring Canadian writers, and they didn’t know any Canadian writers. A lot of us were new to them, which I think is to our advantage,” she explains.
“But also to my advantage was that Luke and Aaron are amazing humans. And they literally researched us before they met with us. Most of the time, I’ve had meetings with people who they don’t even remember [my story]. They were so wonderful.”
“And I’m very open. I have ADHD, and they wanted to have a character at the center of it who has undiagnosed ADHD, so they wanted someone with that experience. And Luke had listened to an interview I did. He said, ‘It just was really moving, and it made me feel like you really would understand this character so well.’ It was great because we could have an open conversation about it without me having to disclose my disability, which is a thing you have to think about.”
“I got invited to be in the room, and every day was a joy. I felt like it was an experience where I could talk with my executives, or Luke and Aaron, and I could tell them [when something didn’t work and suggest alternatives] and they were always receptive [and available] if we wanted to talk about anything. The first week, they sent us a care package, which was amazing, of the hardcover comic book, and set up meetings with each individual writer and asked us what they could do to make our experience better.”
While Boyce and Koontz were nascent showrunners, they had a significant bank of production experience to tap into. “They did their due diligence. They talked to every showrunner they knew. They’ve reached out to people. Aaron runs Paper Street Pictures. They’ve done a lot of indie horror. Because of his vast experience in making things as a producer, [he always had a solution for a production challenge from something he’d done before],” she shares.
At the heart of breaking the season was finding the throughline and building the narrative around the characters, and treading the line between the source material. “Tim Seeley and Mike Norton, who are the creators of the comic, came in and talked with us about the touchstones they wanted to make sure we kept. It always went back to the story. ‘What is the core of this story? What do we need to make it good for both the audience of the television show, and the fans of the comic?’”
Taylor had such a fantastic experience with the show that she flew herself to San Diego Comic-Con to be in the audience for the show’s panel. One of the show’s fan’s recognized her in the line and took her straight in and introduced her to other fans. “It was one of the most surreal and beautiful experiences. People had me sign autographs. Someone made me a friendship bracelet that said Revival 2025,” she recalls.
“They said, ‘We know that these stories come from the writers.’ And I’d never experienced that before. A lot of them are big fans of Wynonna Earp. They want to support writers and creators who are trying to make a difference in the world and trying to bring things into storytelling that they feel is really reflective of their own lives.”
“And it just was really, really meaningful for me. It was my dream to work on a show that had that type, type of fandom, but [was also so] supportive. I felt so welcomed by people that I had never met.”
Taylor wrote episode five, “Triage,” which takes place at a pivotal moment in the season where a lot of the secrets that we as viewers know but the characters don’t are finally revealed, setting the stage for the back half when those reunited family and friends face an oncoming threat as a united front.
Other writers for Season 1 included Wynonna Earp and Coroner alumnus Noelle Carbone as well as the co-showrunners. “Noelle was one of the most experienced writers in the room. She’s so amazing. And I’d always wanted to work with her. It was like being taught while also working, so it was really good. She did episode two. And Luke and Aaron had specific episodes that they had wanted to write.”
“[For my episode], I really liked being able to play with who got to be the lead. It has a little bit of a different perspective and it was really fun to dig into the aftermath of a big event and what does that mean emotionally. It was nice just to have a little two-hander moment between sisters, really thinking about my own family and my own siblings. It just allowed me to get to write those really beautiful, emotional moments that I wasn’t expecting to necessarily be writing as much of, but I got to in my episode, which is really nice.”
If you follow Taylor on social media, you know that she is extremely prolific, always writing, and across genres and formats. She says the genre is secondary to the characters and their story, and she writes according to the things that bubble up and demand attention. “I ask, ‘What story do I want to tell here?’ And I think it’s interesting as a writer, you have things that you create, and then there’s things that you’re brought onto to work on,” she explains.
“I always [ask], ‘Is there something here that I can contribute that I can bring something to, through personal experience or emotionally?’ And I think there’s a lot of ways that you can look at that. I have a building slate in the back of my head of things that come next.”
She says the true seed of the story has a common theme regardless of the genre. “You’re doing the same thing to characters, whether it’s a genre like monsters or a personal, intimate romance. You’re still testing characters and having them go through these circumstances,” she points out.
“I start to figure out what are the pieces of me that I’ve overlooked that I need to address? You’re putting them through the ringer, and in one they live happily ever after. In the other case, you hope they live.”
“I was thinking about this a lot, because I like to write about my own personal experience, and we grew up really poor in a small town in Northern Saskatchewan for a part of my life. I was a carer in my family and from a young age, and I think I like to bring those emotions into my work.”
“But I also am very aware [of movies and TV that can force me to relive my own trauma]. When I want to talk about certain subjects, I think sometimes genre allows the layer that allows your audience to not be re-traumatized but still be seen by it. To me, that’s really important.”
“I am genre agnostic. I was the kid who would skip school, and go home and read Lord of the Rings, Douglas Adams, Asimov, and every romance I could get my hands on. [I liked to read about] people who got to say what they really feel. I lived in a family and an environment where I wasn’t allowed to talk about how I felt. And being neurodivergent, I didn’t really understand the world around me. And I get to understand it when I read these books.”
“I think romance is in everything anyways, if you watch every television show. There is always romance, and there’s relationships. And we come back to television because of the relationships. I feel like romance has the largest readership, yet is often looked at as a lesser genre. And it’s such a disservice because it’s a place where you are allowed to have the emotions you have and work through stuff.”
“And to me, the greatest romances are the things where we see people work through things like, ‘I don’t feel like I deserve to be loved.’ And by the end of the movie or the book, they’re like, ‘I do deserve to be loved.’ And I understand that feeling.”
“I wanna see how people come through that. And it doesn’t mean they have to end up with that person, although happily ever afters are the best, but you get also get to see people working through stuff in a real way. And I think that’s why I choose according to, ‘This is the story I wanna tell right now,’ or, ‘This is a story that I’ve been asked to tell, and do I feel like I could tell it?’ I usually can find part of myself in it.”
Taylor is a staunch disability advocate, and she and her sister, Sarah, are in their fifth year of the “Braaains” podcast. “It’s about mental health and disabilities and their representation on film and television. We talk to people about their lived experiences, and what they’d love to see in media. Because we have people beyond film and TV, who talk about what they’ve seen so far in their lives that has represented them well and their lived experience,” she explains.
“We’re very, very big advocates of, ‘If you’re going to talk about a disability in film and TV, then there should be someone with a disability that’s involved in the project,’ especially in a key role, and trying to advocate for more representation behind the screens and in front of the screen.”
“My sister is a film and television editor, and now she is also directing and producing. She has her first feature-length documentary coming out with the CBC next year called Invisible Imagination about aphantasia. She is a picture editor, and she has no visual imagination, so she can’t see anything visually. She can’t visualize. I think she’s a great editor because she’ll say ‘Nope, this is what you have. You have nothing else.’”
“I’m so proud of her. Mental health has been a big part of our family our whole lives. And we’ve seen so much bad representation. But we want to put good in the world, so we’re always like, ‘What can we do better?’ And so, we have been going to, for the last couple years, and trying to cover films surrounding things that either impact your mental health or specifically about mental health and disability.”
“Sometimes it sneaks in the side and you’re like, “No, that’s film is about mental health.” And then we’ll get filmmakers who are like, ‘Yeah, it is. And I’m so glad that you figured that out because, that is what publicity is, right?” You can find “Braaains” everywhere you listen to podcasts and on braainspodcast.com.
Revival Season 1 is now streaming worldwide on Netflix. Here’s a sneak peek. Our original preview piece is here.
Photos courtesy of Syfy, Heather Taylor, and Lauren Sowa; video courtesy of Syfy.
