For many years, Canada has mostly been a service industry for US film and TV productions. Vancouver, Montreal, and Toronto would constantly be dressed to play New York, Boston, Chicago, Seattle, San Francisco, and even Maine.
Right now the tide is turning, and there are some wonderful movies like Nirvana, The Band, The Show, The Movie, and Mile End Kicks where Toronto and Montreal are not just playing themselves but are essential for the plot.
The most popular TV show in the world right now is the very Canadian Heated Rivalry. Vancouver was constantly showing off its beauty on Family Law. Surrey, BC is featured in Allegiance. Vancouver is also the setting for Wild Cards. There is a Law and Order: Toronto. Canada’s biggest city is also the home to Kim’s Convenience. Private Eyes was set in Toronto, and the new series, Private Eyes: West Coast, will be set in Victoria, BC. Sullivan’s Crossing will inspire you to visit Nova Scotia, perhaps a bit more than Trailer Park Boys. Even though the town is fictional, Letterkenny is absolutely rural Ontario. Which can also be said for Schitt’s Creek. Of course, the international hit that started back in 2004, Corner Gas, proved that audiences around the world would be interested in life in Saskatchewan, as long as it was funny.
Unfortunately, most Canadian actors can’t make a living yet only performing in productions set in Canada. We have to master the standard American accent and try to get cast in US productions that are mostly shot here to save money. A Day Player is typically a local actor who is brought in for one day of work to deliver one to five lines of dialogue. With a monthly installment called Day Players, we will examine that very experience. We first spoke with Hans for an article on February 28th, 2025. Here is our next conversation with Hans about working as a local film and TV actor in Vancouver.
HNMAG: What is your earliest experience on set in Vancouver?
Hans Potter: One of my favorite stories to tell, because it was my first studio booking, was DC’s Legends of Tomorrow.
HNMAG: Wow. Great.
Hans Potter: I always joke about it because everybody forgot I was supposed to be there. When you book your first role, you’re so excited. I showed up an hour early. I go to the Assistant Director (AD) trailer. I say, “hi, I’m Hans. I’m playing German Soldier”; they go, “we already have our German soldier for the day”.
HNMAG: Oh, no.
Hans Potter: I replied, “well, I don’t know what to tell you”. Then they say, “wait, no, that’s German officer. Who are you?” I said, “I’m German Soldier”. They say, “we don’t have a German soldier today”. So, I show them my call sheet. They ask me to wait here. So the first AD leaves. He’s gone for an hour.
Another AD comes by and says, “the BG holding is this way”. I replied that I’m not background. I’m German Soldier. That AD says “we don’t have a German soldier today”. And I said, “yeah, that’s what the first guy said”. He says, “okay, well, wait here”. He leaves. The first AD comes back and tells me to come with him. So I follow him to a trailer, and I’m sure you know the Day Player trailers. They’re nothing more than kind of a bench on the side of a truck.
On the door to the trailer, it says, German Officer, and they scratch that out underneath and write, German Soldier. So I walk in, and there’s somebody else’s stuff there. There’s a bag with civilian clothing.
That AD said, “sit here till someone comes to get you”. So I sit there for about an hour. Finally, somebody from costumes knocks on the door and says, “are you Hans?” She adds, “we’ve been looking for you. We need to put you in your costume”. Thank God somebody knows I’m supposed to be here.
HNMAG: Right?
Hans Potter: So I follow her, and they have my costume. Somebody knew I was supposed to be there. They take me back to the trailer, and the second AD or first AD’s there. He says, “okay, you got your costume, good. Okay, just wait here. We’ll come get you in a bit”. So I sit in that trailer for about six and a half hours. At the six-point-five-hour mark, somebody comes by and they, they kind of knock on the door, open it up, somebody, I don’t know yet. He says, “are you Hans?” I replied, “yeah”. He asks, “are you the German Soldier?” I say, “yeah”. He says, “I’ve been looking for you all day”.
HNMAG: All day?
Hans Potter: I reply, “I’ve been here all day”. He says, “you gotta come with me really quick”. So I go with him. They get a mic on me; they get gak on me. They get me to second unit. I get to second unit, and the second unit director says, “we’ve been looking for you all day”. I explained that I’ve been in the trailer all day. He replies that “it’s weird nobody found you”. I respond, “I don’t know what to tell you”. So I go on. I do two takes with my line, and I go home. So all in all, it’s a nine and a half hour day for a ten minute shot.
HNMAG: Ten minutes of set time?
Hans Potter: Ten minutes of set time for about three seconds of screen time.
HNMAG: That show aired for about seven seasons, so that’s pretty crazy.
Hans Potter: It was a long while. What’s funny was they had me do my own translation for the German, which was hilarious.
HNMAG: To translate German?
Hans Potter: They originally handed me the script in English, and I only had one line in German. I got to set, and they said, okay, what’s the line in German? I went, oh, fuck. I just kind of made it up. Whatever I said, that’s the line now.
HNMAG: Was the mistake because you were scheduled for second unit? Basically, when you got to set, it was first unit ADs, but the crew was separated in terms of communication. They were focused on first unit and didn’t realize what second unit was doing. One hand didn’t know what the other was.
Hans Potter: That would be my guess, because the second unit was basically shooting in between; they would wait to hear cut from first unit and then shoot their stuff really quickly.
HNMAG: And it was the same set?
Hans Potter: We could see first unit from where we were shooting. We could see them down the hill, shooting with all the main cast. We were standing there listening. They yell, cut. Our second unit director then says Let’s get the shot. We get the shot. We’d yell cut. They would be rolling on their take.
HNMAG: Were there any time travelers in your scene?
Hans Potter: No, I never met any of the any of the leads. The only recurring character in my scene was The Atom. He’s the guy who shrinks down. He was written in the scene, but he was obviously CGI’d in later.
HNMAG: Do you have any other stories after that?
Hans Potter: I was on Alaska Daily, with Hillary Swank.
HNMAG: Yes, she was a reporter who took a job up in Alaska.
Hans Potter: Yes, I think it was on for one season.
HNMAG: What happened on Alaska Daily?
Hans Potter: Alaska Daily was interesting because we were, at the end of COVID. It was 2022. The strict guidelines were kind of coming into the tail end. I had been on a commercial, a couple of week previous that were a little more Wild West. They had relaxed a lot of their COVID restrictions, but Hillary Swank was pregnant. So we were back in the throes of COVID restrictions.
HNMAG: Yeah.
Hans Potter: It was totally fine. A very interesting day of shooting because you didn’t get to meet anybody. There were the other reporters and me. We were sitting six feet away from each other with masks.
As well as gloves on. If we wanted to go to the bathroom, we had to take turns. It was very interesting; they got us to set, you know, kudos to Alaska Daily. Their shooting style was incredible. I’ve never seen anybody shoot as fast and efficiently as they did.
My whole day of Alaska Daily was only four hours, from walking onto set to walking off. It was that quick. Simply amazing.
HNMAG: The opposite of Goosebumps.
Hans Potter: It’s the opposite of most shows.
HNMAG: Yeah.
Hans Potter: Props to them. I’ve never seen anybody cut through a day like that, and it was a complicated day. There’s a lot of reporters in a room. They’re moving the camera around. They’re talking to a bunch of different people around the room. So I was very impressed with how they shot that show.
HNMAG: What happened with you, a reporter on Alaska Daily?
Hans Potter: Funny enough, I actually auditioned for a guest star role in that episode and didn’t book it, obviously. So then they offered me this actor reporter role? It was exciting because initially the reporter role was introduced to me as a potential recurring role. They said, oh, you might come back as part of our reporter pool. Of course, the show was canceled right after, so that never happened. So obviously I’m like, sure, great, sounds good. I go on. Once again, I’ve never been on a day that’s that fast. We walked on. They had the three reporters on that day show up at the same time. They walked us from our cars to wardrobe to holding, doing COVID testing all the time. It took maybe an hour to get dressed, mic’d, then brought to set. Boom, boom, boom, no room for mistakes. They shot with four cameras.
HNMAG: Wow.
Hans Potter: It was incredible. It’s your coverage, then a close-up, and then a wide shot, and boom, they just moved the camera, and it was so fast. I couldn’t believe it. It was a really cool experience on that show.
HNMAG: Did anything unusual happen besides being really efficient?
Hans Potter: To me, that was the unusual part, but the crazy part about that show was not the show. It was what’s happening around that show. I don’t know if you remember, but that was in and around the time where the union was forcing credits, so I was non-union coming onto that show. You have to choose. So that’s actually when I had to become an apprentice member after that show.
HNMAG: Before 2003, there were a lot of union commercials being shot in Vancouver, and then it dried up. Maybe the ad agencies realized that they could make ads with the same quality of performance due to the incredible non-union talent in town. That would save them a lot of money in the end because the buy-outs are a fraction of the cost of residuals. UBCP changed the rules after COVID because they want to force that talent to join. That would shrink the commercial and vertical acting pool, which they hope would encourage more union commercials.
Hans Potter: The problem they’re running into is the mentality, speaking as the Day Player, moving to Vancouver in 2013, every coach and every mentor I had pretty much told me the same thing. Okay, you’re going to start doing Day Player roles. You’re going to book some of them. You’ll go union, you’ll move up, you’ll start doing guest star and recurring and things like that. Over the years, what I’ve noticed is the guys I knew when I started who were guest stars and recurring are now auditioning for Day Player roles. It’s not a matter of people staying to try to hold on. It’s someone like me; I couldn’t become a union member until five years into working here. I couldn’t become a full union member until after a decade of working. And so I think that’s where the changes have gone away. You have actors who are experienced and good enough to play leads, auditioning for one-line roles.
HNMAG: After Alaska Daily, was there another story you had?
Hans Potter: The interesting part about the next one I had was the time it took to finally book. The Good Doctor was shot in Vancouver for eight seasons.
I auditioned for The Good Doctor every season at least three or four times. They eventually brought me on.
HNMAG: Right.
Hans Potter: I was a guy in a coma. So I had no lines, no nothing. I was just the dude who’s in a coma for the whole episode.
It was a bit of a surreal experience because I was lying in a bed the whole time. Multiple times I had crew put things on me. Apparently they’re used to having mannequins in the beds. Multiple times a crew member would come by with a box of lenses and just put it on me. At one point, Freddie Highmore stabbed me because he didn’t realize I was a real person and he just walked by and kind of absentmindedly poked me with a stick and I think I scared the living shit out of him when I said “ow”.
HNMAG: Was he poking the dummy with a stick? What was the point of that?
Hans Potter: I think he was just bored. He was just fiddling. He was fiddling along and then suddenly, you know, he walks by and stabs me with this stick, and my reaction just scared the crap out of him.
HNMAG: Is he on the spectrum?
Hans Potter: The character is, but Freddie Highmore is not.
HNMAG: Just a good acting performance.
Hans Potter: It was the second time I’ve been on a Freddie Highmore set. That dude is awesome. I did continuity background (BG) on Bates Motel. As far as leads go, he’s got to be one of the nicest guys I’ve ever had the pleasure of being around.
HNMAG: Was there anything else that happened after scaring number one on the call sheet?
Hans Potter: Later on, the director came by, and apparently the director’s thing is he likes to fiddle with the feet of the mannequins; he squeezes them. He was squeezing my feet while talking to Freddie and another actor.
HNMAG: Did you react?
Hans Potter: No, I didn’t want to freak him out as well. I was pulled aside at the end of my day by the showrunner, who was very nice. He said, listen, we’ve been trying to get you on this show for years. We just couldn’t find anything for you. I hope you don’t mind playing a guy in a coma. I said, it’s all good, man. It’s work. Happy to take the work, but it was just funny; clearly they recognized me from the a billion tapes I had sent them.
HNMAG: The thing about most Day Players is we’re cast with non-specific character names such as German Soldier, Reporter, Guy in a Coma…
Hans Potter: Yes, exactly. Well, it’s funny, I had a name in Good Doctor. They refer to my character as Ethan. So I actually did get a name even though I had no lines. I was Guy In A Coma on the call sheet, but they must have realized later that I was referred to as Ethan. It was the same with Alaska Daily, because initially I was labeled on the credits as NSN Reporter, but I said my name in the show. I’m Karl Folkes.
Hans Potter is a wonderful actor, instructor, and dialect coach in Vancouver. He is terrific to work with, has a great attitude, and is always ready to do whatever is needed to get the work done. Hans is one of many very talented performers based in Vancouver. We need our industry to grow so we can tell our own stories that showcase Canadian talent. The work in film and TV through the US service industry is nice, but we can do so much more.