Can the world ever have enough laughter? It still helps to turn that frown upside down and ignites those neurons like the candles on a birthday cake. Laughter is euphoric, it’s universal and it still grabs our attention no matter how crappy our day went or how much is on your plate. If you can do it well, then you will never be without an audience or friends. Darcy Waite understands comedy and laughter better than many and it’s one of his best qualities… amongst a great many. His new comedy series DJ Burnt Bannock reminds us to laugh at ourselves because of our flaws and our imperfections. As long as we’re having fun along the way, politics, power and money don’t matter.
If you can’t laugh at yourself, then laugh at DJ BB – a struggling Cree DJ (Darcy Waite) who is determined to chart his own path. He must prove to himself and the world that he has what it takes to achieve stardom, but his journey is about to go terribly wrong. With support from his cousin Allan (Paul Rabliauskas) and tough love from his Kookum (Joy Keeper), Kevin is ready to take on the world.
This comedic web-series stars an ensemble cast including Darcy Waite (That’s AWSM!, Ruthless Souls), comedian Paul Rabliauskas (Acting Good), Ivana Yellowback (7TH GEN), Joy Keeper (Burden of Truth), Meegwun Fairbrother (Mohawk Girls), Sarah Luby (Skymed) and GeNie Baffoe (Edgar). The series premiered on APTN lumi on April 11th. In addition to the DJ BB series, Darcy is the founder of Turtle Mountain Media and is one of Canada’s fastest rising producers and content creators. Darcy recently joined the Board of Directors of the CMPA.
He recently produced his first feature film through Telefilm’s Talent to Watch program, Ruthless Souls, which premiered at ImagineNATIVE, and was featured at Berlinale in 2019. He will soon produce his second Telefilm-supported feature through Eagle Vision, Madison Thomas’ Finality of Dusk and he is on the writing team for Eagle Vision’s upcoming sitcom Family First, which will star Lorne Cardinal (Corner Gas). His acting credits include Blackstone, Burden of Truth and being the host of APTN’s That’s AWSM!
The supporting actor in the series DJ BB is Paul Rabliauskas, an accomplished stand-up comedian, writer and actor. He’s performed in theatres and festivals across Canada including Oddblock Comedy Festival, Winnipeg Comedy Festival, Just For Laughs, Just For Laughs Northwest and the Arctic Comedy Festival. The chemistry between him and Darcy is pure gold.
Through its modified sitcom structure, DJ Burnt Bannock invites audiences to confront tough issues with a smile and sense of humour!
I had the fabulous opportunity to speak with Darcy Waite on his series and his tremendous tenacity in his pursuit to make us laugh. He was an incredible guest and lives in my home town of Winnipeg, so we’re practically family. Roll the tape!
HNMAG “Congratulations on a very funny series. I think you and Paul have terrific chemistry.”
DARCY “I remember when we originally wrote the show, that I didn’t write it with Paul in mind. I had just written a character that wants to leave the game but then our director Rebecca told me she knew Paul and I also remembered Paul from past interviews. He’d just finished Just For Laughs and was gaining momentum, so we put him into the role and he brought so much more to the character than I could’ve written. It’s been amazing, he’s a cool dude and I’m very happy with the way the chemistry comes out on the screen.”
HNMAG “Where did this idea of creating a character like DJ Burnt Bannock come from?”
DARCY “The idea came to me in 2018, I’d been producing a feature film called Ruthless Souls. I had a roommate at the time and Madison Thomas was directing. We had a big party scene and she needed 2 DJ’s. She asked me if I wanted to do it. I love having fun, so without any DJ experience, I said sure. We were more worried about how we looked than how good we played. By the end of the night, we pulled it off; we had the furs, the hats, the glasses, the entire wardrobe. The next day, the actors, the set and crew were ready and my roommate and I wanted to do a big reveal, so we hopped behind some equipment and changed. I had some dark sunglasses on and tripped over a chair and broke it when we were coming out. Glasses went flying and the hat was gone but everyone was laughing so hard. When we were doing the scene, my roommate was doing his homework on his laptop as I’m beside him on my equipment mixing. It looks like we’re working together, we’re chest pumping… and I started to imagine the world of this character. We slowly built it from there and the first thing I started with was the logo and the DJ name. When I began to think of ideas, I thought about the travesty of burnt bannock, it’s such a sad thing for me. That’s where DJ BB came from.”
Darcy explains that it wasn’t a slam dunk and that he had to go back to the drawing board several times. “In 2019, Imagine Canada had a web series pitch. I had come up with 4 episodes and pitched it but I didn’t win. APTN came up to me and told me they liked the idea but it just needed a little more love. They told us to go back to them and pitch it again once it’s ready. 2020 hit and unfortunately, everyone was sent home. I decided with the extra time, I’d pull DJ BB off the shelf and start working on it. I cleaned it up and pitched it to Eagle Vision, which is the company that produced it. We then applied to APTN and they felt that it was too big for the budget. I repackaged it and rewrote 2 episodes, then also applied to the Bell Fund. They came onboard and it’s really how we got funded. From there, we added Paul, Joy Keeper (Kookum) who I’ve worked with before on a couple of my other films. Ivanna, who plays Paul’s love interest, actually hosts another show with me. It’s my first time working with her but I’ve worked with everyone in the main cast.”
HNMAG “Did you have to shadow any DJs for your research?”
DARCY “Not for the first season because we weren’t too focused on the music. In the second season, I’m going to be hanging out with Eugene Baffoe (Wesley) who’s an actual DJ. He’s gonna teach me everything there is to know about DJing. In the next season, he goes viral, so we’ll have a little more music involved and I don’t think I’m going to be able to fake it (laughing). This season was more about dancing and I did a lot of work with choreographers. We did an episode where it was ladies night and I had to work with a Broadway choreographer. She has a friend that does a lot of Chippindale dancing, so together they designed a dance routine for me. It was one of those scenes, where you have to be all in, you can’t fake it. I recall watching Magic Mike as I’m writing the episode because I knew nothing about the male dance world – Magic mike was the closest thing I knew. Josh (Assor) and Orielle (Marcus) did an amazing job. I predict next season will be the same with Eugene and his DJing. We’ll be coming up with some outrageous stuff.”
HNMAG “How many episodes are in the first season?”
DARCY “They’re six episodes and each is 10 minutes long.”
HNMAG “Have you written the second season yet?”
DARCY “We’re holding back, to see how this season goes first. The hope is to get it onto a mainstream network and build it into a bigger series, so we can explore more with these characters. We have some crazy ideas for season two. I’ve been pitching some ideas to get people’s reactions, so I know what’s working and there’s a couple episodes that are starting to brew that I’m excited about.”
HNMAG “Do you believe the network was willing to support the project partly due to your feature film Ruthless Souls?”
DARCY “I think it was probably my track record from the past couple of years. I do a lot of comedy hosting and I hosted a kids show for two years on APTN, called That’s AWSM! You can always tell when I’m in the office, I’m quite loud and laughing. We have fun, it’s Indigenous humour and a different culture. They’ve seen how hard I work, so it’s less of a risk for them. They say comedy is hard to do because it’s so subjective but I’ve been practising my comedy since I was a kid, so I know how I can make people laugh. I’m always the brunt of the joke, which is how we structured That’s AWSM!”
HNMAG “Many people in film or television will use their art as a platform to say something. Is there anything significant that you’d like to say in your series DJ BB?”
DARCY “I think you’ve recognized the core of what DJ BB is, which is – never lose that child in you. When you turn 18, you’re being pushed to knowing what you’re going to do with your life. I was in nursing as an army medic and I loved it, I loved medicine… but I always wanted to make people laugh. I loved what I was doing but it didn’t feel like the thing that I wanted to do. I began acting and people would tell me it was a pipe dream. There wasn’t much information on how to support a family within this industry. I believe this industry can change lives without having to go to Hollywood. It’s about never losing the kid in yourself and as an urban Indigenous family, how do you connect to your culture. I grew up in the city and not on the Rez, so we’d connect through the Friendship Centres. It was very influential to me in helping me to stay connected to my traditions. This is also a story about a family getting into rooms that BIPOC people haven’t been a part of. I based the character Kookum on my mom. She worked really hard to get into some of those rooms. She started from the bottom and made it to the top of HR, where she was overseeing the hiring of employees in charge of 30,000 – 40,000 oil workers staying in camps.”
Darcy understands that the rule of thumb, write what you know. He says he might not know what it’s like to be a DJ but he does know all about the doubts and the pressures of trying to make it.
“There’s a lot of me in the show and I’m really happy with how it turned out.”
HNMAG “You said that you had based some of Kookum’s character on your mom. Did you base any of the other characters on other people that you knew?”
DARCY “If you took me and split me in half, one half would be Allen and the other half would be Kevin. One part is trying to see how far you want to go before you settle down, have kids and have a stable life. But then there’s the other side that’s so ambitious and wants to go after the dream. What’s my ceiling and what will be enough? I took those two sides of me and turned it into 2 characters. It’s always a constant balance of how much I want to work versus how much I want to have fun? I’m still learning that balance – for the past 5 years its all been work. I’ve finally started settling down these last couple of months. I purchased a home, in thanks to the industry and I found myself going on snowboarding trips to Banff. I think I’m too old to be learning, I took a couple spills and I get pretty nervous when I get up there (laughing).”
Darcy continued to express the importance of reaching the youth with his series. He says, “Youth is always my biggest passion, to show them something different. As DJ BB, I tell them if they have dreams, they should always go after them. If it brings you fulfillment, it doesn’t matter if you make it or not. I remember working at GoodLife selling gym memberships 5-6 yrs. ago and looking at my cell phone asking myself if this was it. That’s when actor Henry Cavill walks in. That’s Superman – a guy with a massive career doing what I wanted to do. I couldn’t be half in and half out, so I gave my 2-weeks and got out. From that moment on, I decided – whatever I do, I’ll be doing it in this industry and I’ve been fortunate to be able to keep doing that.”
HNMAG “I think it’s amazing that you’re writing and starring in your own series. You can create your own success in a very tough industry.”
DARCY “Exactly, it’s the reason I started to write. For the series, DJ BB in the Indigenous community, I don’t believe there’d ever be a role out there like that 5 – 10 yrs. ago. I faced a lot of rejection as an actor because I’m half Cree and half European. Sometimes they want a certain look and I always knew that was going to be tough, so I started writing my own stuff. Even then, I faced rejection from one of my mentors after writing my first pilot. He told me I needed a lot of work in my writing, it was a bit of a dogs’ breakfast and that I should go back to school. It hurt, but I took that advice and I went back to Second City and took 2 years of online writing. That’s where I learned how energetic my writing was and who I am as a writer. I’m writing a series right now and I was talking to eOne and they asked me where I went to school. When I told them it was the Second City and I’m a Slapstick comedy writer, they said it made perfect sense; they could see it in the writing. You just have to show up every day and eventually you’re going to make it.”
HNMAG “Aside from your series, you’re also working on your second feature film, Finality of Dusk. Can you tell me about that story?”
DARCY “It’s somewhat of a travel film, about an Indigenous woman trying to find her way back to her community in Manitoba as she’s being chased by a killer. It has a lot to do with the environment. The world has been polluted so much that the air is unbreathable, so they have to wear masks in order to fight for their survival and fight to get back to their communities. Diversity and representation are huge in this film and it’s my second feature working with Madison Thomas, who is an Indigenous director in Winnipeg, Manitoba. We’ve been working together on 2 features, a web series and we’re about to do another short and a bunch of documentaries. It’s very nice to be hanging out and working together again.”
HNMAG “You’re staying incredibly busy. You have multiple projects going on. Do you have anything else you’d like to mention?”
DARCY “I’m actually part of the ImagineNATIVE Feature Film Lab with my newest feature called Lucky Strikes, about a bowling alley. A young Indigenous man is trying to buy his local bowling alley that he and his dad grew up playing in. At the last minute, his offer is challenged by a woman that owns a big chain bowling alley called Party Palace. He challenges her to a tournament, in a winner takes all match to save his dream of owning the bowling alley. In order to win, he turns to an old and wise bowling champ – The Duke. He takes him under his wing to teach him how to win. It’s very similar to Dumb and Dumber meets Tommy Boy. I’m very excited about that and I just finished my first draft. That’s the next project but I’ve also got an incubator program with the NSI for a new series called Zombies Don’t Eat Stupid People. It’s a post apocalyptic series – Dumb and Dumber meets The Walking Dead (laughing).”
HNMAG “Do you tend to gravitate toward comedy?”
DARCY “Oh absolutely. When I produce, it’s social justice stuff but as soon as I put pen to pad, it’s always going to be a comedy. Will I ever make a movie that wins an Oscar – probably not… but I’ll always be making films that allow you to turn your brain off after a long days’ work and have a good laugh.”
I’ve watched 3 episodes of DJ BB and it’s impressively funny! We need escapism and a good reason to laugh. Darcy Waite and Paul Rabliauskas have incredible chemistry and they’re both hilarious. I anticipate a second season. Keep up the great writing Darcy!