Blackstone is a rock that keeps on rolling for Prince George actor Steven Cree Molison.
The gritty drama (seen on APTN and CBC in Canada plus other networks internationally) used Molison's acting skills for all five seasons portraying the popular character Daryl Fraser, a dark and conflicted bar owner.
Production came to an end last year, but Molison just got some affirming news. His work as Daryl has earned him yet another award nomination.
"This show just keeps on breathing life into my career," said Molison, who got a surprise call informing him he was a nominee for Best Male Actor at the 2016 Union of British Columbia Performers (UBCP) gala coming up Nov. 12.
"It was a shock to get the news," he said. "I didn't know I was a name on any list, I didn't know I'd been submitted, it was just a total surprise."
The others in the running include Eli Goree for Race, Brandon Jay McLaren for Slasher (In the Pride of His Face), Ty Olsson for UnREAL (Savior), Aleks Paunovic for Numb and Juan Riedinger for The Romeo Section (Mandate of Heaven).
The UBCP awards are peer-nominated and peer-voted, so an extra level of proud humility settled over him from this development.
The only trophies the union (it is an autonomous provincial branch of the national union Alliance of Canadian Cinema, Television and Radio Artists or ACTRA) gives out are for best male and female actors, best stunt, best voice performance, and emerging performer, plus two honourary awards, one for women of distinction and one for outstanding achievement.
Molison has been nominated for three Leo Awards (B.C.'s screen arts industries) in the past five years, one of them a win. He has also been nominated in the Canadian Screen Awards, he acted in the short film Like A Tree In Which There Are Three Blackbirds that won the Best International Feature trophy at the Los Angeles edition of the New York International Film Festival, and now this.
It has been a busy year for the dramatic actor despite the conclusion of Blackstone. He eased into post-Daryl life by portraying another bartender in the feature film Go With Me starring Ray Liotta and Sir Anthony Hopkins.
"I only had one line in the film, but it was a line with Anthony Hopkins," he said with a boyish grin.
He was also cast in the TV miniseries Cardinal based on the Giles Blunt novel character, and an episode in the crime series Motive.
He has a couple of auditions under his belt, particularly recently, and is waiting to hear back on those possible opportunities. In the meantime he is busy with his other creative outlet, woodworking.
He is a carpenter by original trade and enjoys helping his home-builder son on his contracts around the Prince George region, especially since it lets Molison spend time with the shortest people in the house.
"I'm feeling grandfatherly these days," he said. "That's how I like to spend my time. I love the idea of creating a character and getting to embody someone for the screen or on the stage, but it really pulls at you to be gone from the grandkids."
Maybe it's having a hand in houses coming together, maybe it's the family love, maybe it's being able to look back on all the credits and awards he's amassed, but there is a lot of nostalgia in Molison's heart these days. It could also have something to do with the anniversary coming up this spring. May 19th marks the 20th anniversary of a motorcycle crash that changed his life. He was riding full-tilt down a dangerous street, metaphorically speaking. The crash did damage to his brain, the hospital and the slow rehab took him off the dark path and put him out on stage.
"It was just to help me train my brain, but theatre opened something up for me, and I couldn't stop," he said. He made his theatre debut in 1999, his first screen credit came in 2002, a year later he got his first taste of recurring roles (a few episodes of Da Vinci's Inquest), in 2005 he broke into blockbuster territory with a part in the Oscar darling Brokeback Mountain, in 2007 he reached the level of having his lines featured in the movie's trailer (Afghan Knights), in 2012 he got to be one of the featured actors in an award-winning short film (Like A Tree...), and by then he was in the early days of Blackstone not knowing the show was going to go on a television rodeo ride.
The fictional depiction of politics and social angst on a Canadian First Nation turned into a global hit.
It was just released recently onto the Netflix platform and Molison said he could tell when it landed there. His fan metrics (all the liking and sharing done on Facebook, for example) shot up almost immediately.
Nothing in the screen arts industry is ever a guarantee, but the body of past work has set Molison up for a strong future.
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